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Programme of TKIP

Programme of TKIP

Introduction

Imperialist capitalism has become the eve of socialist revolution owing to the level of its development, the contradictions it has aggravated and the decay it has experienced. The internationalisation of productive forces, highly advanced socialization of production and enormous accumulation of wealth, have matured the conditions for proletarian revolution and socialism worldwide. The solution of this epoch determining contradiction between capitalism and socialism has entered the agenda of history. The victory of Great Socialist October Revolution inaugurated the age of proletarian revolutions, the age of transition from capitalism to socialism on a global scale. This new age found its explicit expression in the chain of revolutions covering the greater part of the 20th century and the processes of socialist construction.

The revolt of productive forces against capitalist relations of production in the epoch of imperialism, has become a patent fact. The hundred year long balance sheet comprising imperialist wars, which have twice led humanity to mass slaughters, countless reactionary regional wars, fascist barbarism, “great crises” with destructive consequences, sharp class struggles, civil wars and revolutions, proves that capitalist world system is writhing in incurable contradictions and that as a historical system it has entered a phase of general depression.

The degeneration and destruction experienced by the 20th century socialism does not in any way detract from this argument. The problems and contradictions and hence the material basis engendering the orientation toward revolution and socialism and the social forces carrying this orientation forward remain in place.

In present day world, the objective conditions for proletarian revolution and socialism are more mature than ever. The new wave of world revolution will start at a more favorable point both with regard to material conditions and historical experience and this time round conditions will be more favorable for final victory in all respects.

PART ONE

The international nature of capitalism imparts an international nature to the revolutionary class struggle of proletariat as well. This is the reason behind the common ultimate aim toward which the historical action of proletariat of all countries is directed. In order to arrive at this ultimate aim, the proletariat of each country is faced first and foremost with the revolutionary task of defeating its own bourgeois class. The historical common cause of the workers of all countries, i.e., liberation from capitalist slavery and all its consequences and realization of classless society, is the material basis of proletarian internationalism. Firmly devoted to the principles of proletarian internationalism, both in thought and action, Communist Workers’ Party of Turkey (TKIP) considers itself the vanguard detachment of proletarian world revolutionary army in Turkey.

Capitalism

1) Capitalist mode of production is grounded on generalized commodity production and exploitation of wage labor by capital. The economic evolution leading to the emergence of this mode of production steadily ruins the small enterprises of toilers (peasants and artisans) based on their own labor and means of production. By separating them from means of production, capitalism turns toilers into propertiless proletarians. It concentrates biggest and most decisive portion of means of production in the hands of a few capitalists and large landowners, who appropriate them as their private property.

2) In order to earn their lives, increasingly greater number of proletarians become obliged to sell their labor force to capitalists, who monopolize means of production. Thus, they steadily augment the capital and wealth of capitalists with their own labor.

This subjection of wage labor to capital and its subsequent systematic exploitation by the latter, is the basis of capitalist social order. This is the real source of all sorts of privation, oppression, subjection, humiliation, ignorance, precariousness concerning the future, physical and moral degeneration proletarian and semi proletarian masses live through.

3) As technical and economic superiority of large scale production leads to the progressive concentration and centralization of capital, it condemns peasants and artisans, striving to preserve their capacity to survive despite adverse circumstances, to the oppressive reign of capital as well.

4) Extending the employment of the labor of women and children on the one hand, steady development of technics, leads to a relative decrease in the demand for labor power vis a vis labor supply on the other. This growth of the industrial reserve army of labor turns unemployment into a structural trait of capitalist order. It reinforces the dependence of workers on capital, increases their precariousness concerning the future, and provides a basis for intensifying exploitation.

5) This process is aggravated by periodical crises of overproduction resulting from unplanned and anarchic development of social production. The expression of the revolt of socialized production against the private form of appropriation, these crises lead to the waste of public wealth, create mass unemployment of gigantic dimensions, accelerate the destruction of small producers and augment the poverty and misery of the masses. Precariousness concerning the future becomes a general problem affecting all toilers.

6) Every increase in public wealth engendered by the development of productive forces enriches the capitalist class and leads to the relative or absolute pauperization of toiling masses. An increase in public wealth is paralleled by an increase in social inequalities. Polarization between wealth and misery progressively grows and the gulf between capitalist class and toilers deepens.

7) Economic sway of the bourgeoisie finds its political expression in capitalist state, an instrument of repression and control over workers and toilers. Contemporary bourgeois state is the guardian of rule of capital over wage labor. Whatever its form, this class essence and function of bourgeois state remains unchanged. Economic sway of the bourgeoisie is the basis of its sway over the ideological and cultural life of society as well.

8) Bourgeois class rule based on the order of private property is also the source of political reaction, of war, of national oppression and hostilities and of social subjugation and enslavement of women.

Social Revolution, Socialism and Communism

9) In the process of its development, capitalism creates the class destined to dig its grave and the economic conditions of its own destruction.

In proportion to the development and aggravation of the specific contradictions of capitalism, solidarity of the proletarians who steadily grow in numbers as a result of capitalist development and who are united and disciplined by the process of capitalist production, grows stronger. The struggle of proletarians against capitalists progressively takes the form of a conflict between the working class and the bourgeoisie, the two antagonist classes of bourgeois society. This struggle grows into the struggle of the working class for its liberation from the unbearable subjugation to capitalism.

Socializing labor, means of production and the process of production, capitalist development creates the material economic preconditions of a socialist society.

10) Working class is the most advanced product of capitalism; it is the only entirely revolutionary class. To this or that extent, all other classes remain in the realm of private property. Therefore, they favor the preservation of the foundations of the present economic system. Condemned to ruin by capitalism, toiling petty proprietors shall really become revolutionary only when realize the hopelessness of their plight and adopt the leadership of the proletariat.

11) The emancipation of the working class can only be conquered by the working class itself. The working class shall achieve its genuine liberation only through a struggle for the emancipation of all humankind.

12) The social liberation prepared by the general process of development of capitalism is the basic condition for the emancipation of the proletariat. “Expropriators are expropriated” through this revolution. Capitalist private ownership of the means of production is ended and these means are transformed into public property. Profit oriented capitalist commodity production is replaced with the production of goods and services by the whole society, for the benefit of all members of the society and their welfare and all sided development. Lack of plan, anarchy and competition in social production and together with it all destructive consequences flowing therefrom (crises, unemployment, waste of public wealth, wars, pollution of the environment etc.) are eliminated.

13) The ultimate aim of the proletariat is the abolition of division of society into classes and of all social and political inequalities arising from this division.

In the classless communist society to be arrived at following an historical transition period, the exploitation of man by man shall come to an end. Work shall cease to be a drudgery and an imperative to earn a living; it shall become a natural requirement of life. Enslaving subordination upon division of labor and together with it the distinction between intellectual and manual labor shall disappear. The inequality between men and women and all of its manifestations shall fade away. Together with the breaking down of all manner of fences between nations, state frontiers too shall be abolished. Science, culture and art shall become a sphere of activity, where all individuals shall be able to become involved freely. The inequalities between town and country shall disappear. The balance and harmony between man and nature shall be restored at a more advanced level. And together with all these developments, the distinction between the ruler and the ruled shall disappear and the state shall wither away completely.

In this communist society of the future, which humanity can attain only in a universal framework, the growth of productive forces released from all sorts of fetters shall reach a very much advanced level and the collective sources of wealth shall flow abundantly; therefore the narrow horizon of bourgeois law shall be transcended entirely and decisively and the society shall become able to inscribe on its flags: “From each according to his/her ability, to each according to his/her needs.”

14) Only through the conquest of political power can the proletariat march towards its ultimate aim. The class rule of the bourgeoisie shall be overthrown violently and shall be replaced by a transitional state, the dictatorship of the proletariat.

15) The Communist Party is the representative of and the safeguard for the independent class position and interests of the proletariat. It guides the working class in the struggle to fulfill its grand historical task. It leads the class in its daily struggle and links that struggle to the aim of social revolution. By demonstrating the despondency of their plight under conditions of capitalism, the Communist Party tries to win other oppressed and exploited strata over to the cause of the liberation struggle of the proletariat.

III

Imperialism and the Process of World Revolution

16) The process of concentration and centralization of production and capital, brought forward the decisive role the monopolies have been playing in economic life. Financial capital emerged out of the fusion of bank capital and industrial capital and the export of capital acquired a decisive position. The world was divided by great powers economically and territorially. This stage in the development of capitalism, corresponding roughly with the beginning of the 20th century, inaugurated the epoch of imperialism.

A direct outcome of the basic tendencies and laws of development of capitalism, imperialism bared, aggravated, generalized on a global scale all contradictions and antagonisms of the former and added new ones of fundamental importance to them.

17) The ruthless competition between imperialist monopolies raging on a global scale, took the form of violent struggle between great imperialist states for markets, sources of raw materials, profitable fields of investment and for spheres of interest in general. Further aggravated by the uneven development, this struggle became the source of militarism of unprecedented dimensions and of imperialist wars for world domination.

18) Subordination of weak countries and nations economically, financially and politically to a handful of imperialist states and their enslavement by them, resulted in the generalization of national oppression and exploitation. This prepared the ground for the revolt and liberation struggles of the oppressed and exploited peoples against imperialist exploitation and subjugation.

19) Imperialism imparted an international nature to economic and financial crises as well. It made them much more acute and destructive. The hierarchical structure of the system facilitated the imposition of the burden of crises on weak and dependent countries. This resulted in chronic problems and severe ruin in the economic and social life of dependent countries.

20) Imperialism is a trend toward violence and reaction; it is the primary source of all reaction in contemporary world. Fascism is the concentrated form of bourgeois reaction at the stage of imperialism. When it becomes institutionalized, bourgeois reaction assumes the form of fascism.

21) Imperialism is decadent and parasitic capitalism. Imperialist monopolies impede the free development of productive forces by limiting technical progress or employing it in destructive spheres whenever profit maximization requires it. In spite of towering progress in science and technology, the monopoly of capital obstruct the use of the fruits of this progress for the benefit of the great majority of humankind. Suffering of hundreds of millions of people from hunger, sickness and lack of care and mass deaths are tragic reflections of the extreme decay of the system. The use of science and technology in the framework of capitalist greed for profit, has led to the unrestricted and merciless plunder of nature as well. This has resulted in an ecological ruin posing a great danger for civilization and human species.

22) Parasitism and decay of imperialist capitalism manifests itself also through the following phenomena which have acquired huge dimensions:

The export of capital and an international imperialist debt order for the subjugation of peoples. Progressive growth of rentier strata sustained by these phenomena. The domination of speculative capital. Stock exchanges which have been transformed into modern international gambling houses. Increasing criminal nature of capitalist economies.

Chronic unemployment reaching tremendous heights. Separation of hundreds of millions of people, who are excluded from social life as well. Slave style employment of hundreds of millions of child workers in spite of this. Excessive growth of marginal and unproductive sectors (advertisement, luxury consumption, military industry etc.) A largely parasitic population employed in the apparata of repression, ideology and propaganda.

Enormous resources allocated to militarism and war. A series chain of imperialist interventions and reactionary wars. Ethnic and religious bloodbaths. Systematic state terror, fascist massacres and torture. Growing criminal nature of states, increase and institutionalization of bribery, corruption and all manner of dark and underhand undertakings. Fascism, racism, xenophobia and chauvinistic nationalism.

Cultural degeneration and moral ruin. Terrible havoc and alienation in human relations. Growth of pornography and prostitution into gigantic sectors. Increasing spread of alcoholism and drugs. Depolitization of the masses, intellectual passivity and deculturalization. Strengthening of religious reaction and fanaticism and all manner of false cults and superstitions.

23) The dreadful and destructive level of parasitism and degeneration present day capitalism has achieved, confronts humankind with the dilemma “Collapse into barbarism or socialism!” in a more urgent manner than ever before. World revolution to be fulfilled under the leadership of the proletariat, is the only solution that can save humankind from the barbarism of capitalism and from the repression, exploitation and subjugation and ruin and disasters of wars of imperialism.

24) The working class as well is influenced by the parasitism and decay of imperialism. A narrow section of the working class, fed by crumbs from imperialist super profits, gets corrupted. This privileged stratum consisting of labor aristocracy and trade union bureaucracy, is the best lieutenant of the bourgeoisie in keeping broad sections of the working class under control. This stratum is the social prop of social reformism manifesting itself as revisionism and opportunism. An effective struggle against these social reformist trends, which find a social base among middle classes in dependent countries, is an inseparable part of the struggle of the working class for revolutionary state power.

25) The current process of internationalization of capitalism has been going hand in hand with deep contradictions, distortions and difficulties. Imperialist globalization has been sharpening deep inequalities between classes, countries and regions and bringing about destructive and disastrous consequences. The process whereby imperialism consolidates its subjugating hegemony over the globe through new types of relations and institutions, is accompanied by the formation of blocks and sharpening contradictions and ruthless competition among imperialists.

26) The response of revolutionary proletariat to imperialist globalization is revolutionary internationalism and its solution to the former lies in world revolution and socialism. The present level of internationalization of productive forces has created a very strong basis for the class struggle of the proletariat and proletarian revolution. Both the obstacles and problems and the methods of transcending and solving them have been internationalized. At present, various organizations at different levels to serve the international revolutionary class struggle are more imperative than ever before and objectively possible.

27) At present, the socialization of the means of production has reached very advanced levels and an enormous accumulation of wealth and production capacity sufficient to make all human beings to live in welfare and happiness, has come to light. However, today, owing to the private ownership of this wealth and means of production by a handful of multinational monopolies, overwhelming majority of human beings are condemned to languishing in desperation. This universal contradiction can be solved through proletarian world revolution.

28) As the experience of the 20th century has proved, owing to the uneven economic and political development in different parts of the capitalist world system, world revolutionary process shall evolve as a chain of revolutions following one another at different intervals and shall cover an historical period. This process shall progress through the breaking of the weakest link or links of the chain, where conditions have matured objectively as a whole, and through the increase of broken links and shall grow into the union of world socialist republics.

Experience of Socialism

29) The historical period of socialism that has left its mark on the 20th century, has been left behind. Evaluation of the theoretical and practical heritage of this period on the basis of scientific Marxist method, is a requirement of primary importance. So long as international revolutionary proletarian movement does not get armed with the lessons of this period, it won’t be able to prepare itself the historical tasks of the future, which have to transcend those of the past.

30) There are great disparities between the political potentials of starting revolution and the economic cultural potentials of sustaining it in the form of construction of socialism in different links of world chain of capitalism. This contradiction between the potential of conquering the political power and that of the construction of socialism arise from the international nature of proletarian revolution. And this contradiction can be correctly solved only on an international level, through the course of the progress of world revolution.

31) Rising upon the economic and cultural foundations created by capitalism, socialism, as a more advanced civilization can achieve its genuine goal only in a universal framework. The fact that transition to socialism is effected at the weakest links, does not in any way belie this truth. Emanating from the dialectics of history, this circumstance only shows that the processes of socialist construction in particular countries shall encounter a series of problems until they are solved in a universal framework.

32) The need to find proper solutions to these problems, fundamentally differs from the concept of “national socialism”, which takes the national framework as an end in itself. The proletariat of a country, facing the the question of transition to socialism, ought to care never to dissociate the fate of its revolution from the fate of international revolution, if it wants to secure its gains.

33) Socialism is the product of the conscious action of the broad masses of toiling people united under the leadership of the working class. It finds its real meaning in the emancipation of toilers and the establishment of their control over production and administration. Proletarian democracy constitutes the means and safeguard for this. A socialist state power and the party guiding that political power may have been the architect of and heir to the most revolutionary traditions; if however, they are not based on the uninterrupted and effective political life of the masses and if their state power is not nourished from that source itself, in time they will lose their revolutionary idealism and degenerate and decay. Unrestricted, lively and active political cultural life of the masses constitutes the only genuine safeguard in this respect.

34) The working class is the only force capable of constructing socialism and attaining communism. Dictatorship of the proletariat signifies holding of political power by this class, starting from the lowest echelons to the heights of central state power and its leadership to the society as a whole. Party is not the class itself, but a small minority of it. Its historical mission is not to take over the historical mission of the working class, but to lead the class in the realization of this mission. It is duty bound to constantly elevate the class to its level and thus gradually to make itself historically redundant.

35) Experience of socialism has proved that there is a certain gap between the ability of the working class to overthrow the old order and its competence to lead the construction of the new society; it also has shown that this state of affairs presents a series of problems. To exert all efforts to make the working class become the leading and dominant force in the construction of the new society and to attain the political and cultural level needed for that, is the prerequisite task of the party of the proletariat.

36) Transition from capitalism to communism, consisting of lower and higher phases, is a dynamic and integral historical process. Socialism is not an independent social order; rather it is dynamic transition period between capitalism and communism characterized by continuous revolutionary transformations from the one to the other. That’s the reason why continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat is absolutely necessary. This is a revolutionary process, which consists not only of economic, but also of radical ideological and cultural transformations and systematically releases the political energy of the working class and of toilers.

37) Even after the liquidation of the exploiting classes, the source of antagonistic class contradictions, classes, class contradictions and hence class struggles assuming different manifestations, will remain under the dictatorship of the proletariat. This struggle, much more difficult and complicated than the struggle between classes openly confronting each other, has to be waged on all fronts from economy to ideology and culture. This struggle cannot content itself with targeting the remnants of the capitalist class; it also has to target the new bourgeoisie likely to emerge within the party and state apparatus.

38) Elimination of classes requires the removal of all class distinctions between the working class and the peasantry, mental and manual labor and the ruling and the ruled/producers. Unless this is accomplished, commodity economy and the law of value will survive within the context of these distinctions. And the principle of “bourgeois right” will continue to dominate the relations of distribution. This also signifies the presence of a strong ground for the reinforcement of class distinctions and hence re emergence of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. The process of progress of socialist construction and march towards communism, is a process of eradication of this ground as a whole.

39) As long as the imperialist system throughout the world and relations of production and distribution prone to the reproduction of class distinctions at home exist, danger of restoration continues. Uninterrupted flow of revolution and the perspective of world revolution are of decisive importance for definitive victory.

40) Termination of private ownership of means of production, is only a first historical step towards the transition to public ownership. Transition to true public ownership requires the complete union of free producers with means of production and their complete rule control over the process of production. This process goes hand in hand with the process of elimination of the distinction between the rulers and the ruled and the withering away of the state.

41) To reduce socialism to state ownership and economic construction on the basis of planned economy, means to deviate from the essence of socialism. This means a neglect or a total denial of the focal question, which is the liberation of the toilers, their active participation in all spheres of social life. Such a stand leads to a distorted perception of socialist power as well. Here, state ownership is equated with public ownership and a strong socialist power with strong state apparatus and bureaucratic apparata are fortified in the name of “fortifying dictatorship of the proletariat”.

42) This process of bureaucratic deformation brings forward a governing cast armed with economic and social privileges and with a monopoly on political power, while it excludes the working class and toiling masses from political life. Such a petty bourgeois caste was able to succeed to raise its privileged position to the level of ideology and program and to impose it on the party and the political power in the Soviet Union during the 1950s. This cleared the way to revisionist degeneration and the restoration of capitalism.

43) TKIP evaluates the experience of socialism in a theoretical context, the elements of which are outlined above and it maintains its effort to understand this experience with a view to the future. It combines this effort with the struggle against conservative dogmatic and liberal repudiationist tendencies.

PART TWO

Revolution in Turkey

At an intermediate level of development, Turkey is a capitalist country which falls into the category of dependent countries in the imperialist capitalist world order. The contradiction between labor and capital, is the primary axis determining all social contradictions and conflicts.

On behalf of collaborationist monopolist bourgeoisie buttressed by imperialism, the power of capital is the representative of the common class interests of all sections of the bourgeoisie. Urban and rural middle bourgeoisie is a counter revolutionary stratum tied to big bourgeoisie with thousands of threads of interest. To break the ideological, political and cultural influence of middle bourgeoisie over urban and rural toilers, is one of the basic conditions of the victory of the revolution.

Starting from the fundamental economic, social and political realities characterizing Turkey, TKIP concludes that, our society is faced with the historical step of proletarian revolution. Proletarian revolution shall end the rule of capital and ensure the transition to socialism. It shall solve the historically unresolved democratic questions definitively and permanently.

The victory of proletarian revolution is the sole way to liberation not only for the working class and urban and rural poor, but also for the oppressed peasant and artisan petty bourgeois sections, who suffer and are daily crushed under the yoke of capital.

Uniting the semi proletarian and poor masses of the city and the countryside under its leadership,the working class shall destroy the class rule of the bourgeoisie, break the shackle of imperialist subjugation and ensure the victory of proletarian revolution by drawing petty bourgeois strata to itself as far as possible and by at least neutralizing their upper sections.

As a result of the victory of this revolution, first and foremost the following measures shall be taken:

A. In the Political Sphere

1) Bourgeois state power shall be smashed; the instruments of bourgeois class rule, the army, police, bureaucracy, parliament and all other institutions shall be destroyed and dissolved.

2) Revolutionary assemblies of workers, urban toilers and poor peasants, product of the historical initiative of proletarian and toilers and architects of the general uprising, shall take over political power in all spheres and at all levels. Political power of revolutionary assemblies at all levels united under the leadership and guidance of the proletariat, is the concrete form of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

3) All members of the overthrown classes shall be disarmed. All attempts at restoring the old order shall be crushed unequivocally. The general defence of revolution shall be entrusted to armed workers and semi proletarian toilers of the city and the countryside. The control of all arsenals and ammunition dumps as well as arms factories shall be taken over by workers’ assemblies.

4) Subjugation to imperialism shall be ended in all spheres. All privileges accorded to imperialists shall be abolished, all concessions, open and secret unequal and oppressive treaties shall be declared null and void and imperialist military bases and installations shall be seized. All attempts to be made by imperialists to strangle the revolution shall be driven back through the total mobilization of workers and toilers.

5) All basic freedoms of toiling masses shall be recognized immediately and fully. Proletarian state power shall not be content with declaring these freedoms on a general plane, but shall take all necessary steps to ensure that toilers really enjoy them.

6) Combining the legislative and the executive powers, the revolutionary state power of the proletariat shall do its utmost to draw the administrative apparatus nearer to the masses and merge it with them and to ensure the participation of all toilers to the conduct of administrative affairs. This will secure the continuous and active participation of the masses in the construction of socialism and the solution of all economic, political, military and cultural problems.

7) All representatives and functionaries shall assume their posts through elections and shall be recallable by the majority of the electorate, who will be under obligation to maintain constant control upon them. The wages of representatives and functionaries cannot be in excess of the average wage of a skilled worker.

8) A comprehensive local self government shall be implemented within the framework of the general principles determined by the central government. All local administrators shall be elected and be revocable by the local population.

9) Degenerate judicial system of the old order shall be dismantled entirely. Right of jurisdiction shall be transferred to peoples’ courts, members of which shall be elected by workers and toilers. Extensive and active involvement of proletarian and toiling masses in judicial affairs through the jury system shall be encouraged.

10) Revolutionary state power of the proletariat shall steadfastly adhere to the principles of proletarian internationalism in practice. It will be betraying the cause of internationalism and severing its future from that of the world revolution, if it considers the state power of the proletariat as an end in itself. It shall provide actual and moral support to struggles for revolution and socialism throughout the world by all means at its disposal.

11) All secret diplomacy in the sphere of international relations shall be brought to an end. With regard to foreign policy, a principle of transparency vis a vis toilers and peoples of the world shall be implemented.

B. In the Economic Sphere

First and foremost task of the proletariat in the economic sphere after the conquest of political power, shall be the immediate expropriation of the big bourgeoisie and large landowners. This first blow struck at monopolistic property relations, shall be only the first step towards the expropriation of the bourgeoisie as a whole. The victorious proletariat shall take the following basic measures in the context of this first step:

1) All large scale capitalist enterprises owned by imperialists and the big bourgeoisie (factories, mines, power stations, all networks of transportation and communication, media institutions, agricultural enterprises) shall be confiscated without compensation and nationalized.

2) All banks, banking institutions and insurance companies (including their capital, bonds, deposits and gold stocks) shall be confiscated and nationalized. The banking system shall be centralized into a single national bank.

3) The wholesale trade network and big shopping malls shall be nationalized. Foreign trade shall become a monopoly under the control of proletarian state power.

4) All confiscated industrial, financial and commercial establishments and all networks of transportation and communication shall be placed under the administration and control of revolutionary workers’ assemblies. All production and distribution work are administered and controlled by workers and employees commissioned in the relevant establishments.

5) All property of the large estate owners, all large buildings, palaces, mansions, villas and all other luxury dwellings shall be confiscated. Confiscated large buildings, meeting and conference halls shall be transferred to local workers’ organizations.

6) Forests, lakes, rivers, fresh water sources and all other natural resources shall become public property. Necessary measures shall be taken to extend the benefit derived from these resources to all members of the society as natural parks, promenade, entertainment and resort facilities.

7) Economy shall be reorganized according to a democratic plan aimed to satisfy the fundamental needs and welfare of the people and based on the participation and control of toilers. Production oriented towards luxury consumption shall be done away with.

8) A six hour working day shall be implemented immediately. This duration shall be shortened as the economy grows and labor productivity increases. Save for those who are unable to work, a general obligation to work shall be enforced.

9) Excepting basic needs (education, health care, housing, transportation etc.) to be financed out of public funds, the principle of Ato each according to his/her work” shall be applied during the first phase of socialist construction. In this phase, the sphere of free services shall be expanded through the increase of labor productivity and therefore of wealth. So, the field of application for the principle “to each according to his/her needs” shall be broadened day by day.

10) Medium size enterprises not nationalized during this first wave, shall be put under a strict control by the proletarian state power and the workers employed in this enterprises. Ownership rights over such enterprises are restricted gradually and entirely abolished in time.

11) Peasant and artisan enterprises shall be encouraged through various means to form cooperatives and to unite in more advanced collective organizations. No coercion shall be used in this direction and the principle of willingness shall be adhered to.

C. In the Sphere of Social Questions

1) Emancipation of women: A determined and systematic struggle shall be waged in all fields of social life to ensure the equality between women and men. A discrimination in favor of women shall be observed in order to make up for the actual inequalities inherited from the old society.

Maternity is a social function and all rights of women emanating from that function shall be recognized. Child care and housework leading to the subjugation of women in the old order shall be solved through the establishment of social institutions.

TKIP is aware of the fact that the elimination of all remnants of the actual inequality created by the historical oppressedness of women, shall extend over a long historical period during which the construction of the new society and the formation of new men is effected. Conscious of that, it wages a systematic struggle against all ideologies and traditions that enslave and humiliate women.

2) Education: Under the revolutionary state power of the proletariat, education shall serve the emancipation of toilers and their active participation in the construction of socialism, as well as the elimination of classes. A scientific, democratic and secular education policy based on materialist world view and the principles and values of communism shall be pursued.

Education at all levels shall be free of charge. All instruments and material requisite for education shall be financed through public funds.
Compulsory general and polytechnic education up to the age of 17. Education shall be combined with productive work.
A network of institutions to prepare children to school life (day care centers, nurseries and child care and education schools) shall be created.
A network of extensive extra curricular institutions of education and instruction (libraries, public halls, reading rooms, toilers’ universities, vocational schools, courses, conferences, theaters and cinemas etc.) shall be organized for the benefit of urban and rural toilers.

3) Culture: TKIP regards culture and art as the basic means in the cultivation of new generations who will construct communism. It champions progressive, democratic and socialist culture of humankind and makes it available for the service of the society.

Measures shall be taken with an eye to ending culture and art from being the occupation of a narrow elite and making it into a regular social activity of the masses. Cultural and artistic workshops shall be extended to all units of education and to all and residential areas.

All works of culture and art, elements of public wealth, shall be made available to the society as a whole. All historical and cultural wealth inherited from the past shall be conserved carefully, presented to the society and transferred to future generations.

4) Housing and urbanization: Nationalized dwellings of the bourgeoisie shall be made available for the use of workers and toilers. All shall be provided with adequate, sanitary and secure dwellings. Rent payments (including basic requirements, such as electricity, water and heating) shall be reduced to a minimum and eliminated in time.

The need for a balanced and wholesome urban life shall be conscientiously observed in implementing building construction projects. Urbanization shall be gradually extended towards the countryside. Urban overcrowding inherited from the old order shall be dealt with through a planned intervention. A system of free urban public transportation shall be introduced.

5) Health: All nationalized health institutions shall be transferred to local assemblies of workers and toilers. All individuals shall benefit from free health care and medicine. A broad public health network shall be set up. Preventive medical services shall be expanded.

A systematic struggle shall be waged on a social level, against all diseases and bad habits inherited from the old order, especially against drug addiction and alcoholism.

Industrialization and urbanization shall be planned with an eye to human health and the protection of the environment.

All kinds of mass sport aiming at protecting the spiritual and physical health of the people and strengthening friendship and solidarity, shall be promoted. All kinds of sports facilities shall be extended in all production sites and residential areas.

6) Those in need: The elderly, handicapped, orphans and other groups in need of support, shall be protected by the revolutionary state power of the proletariat. All their economic, social and cultural needs shall be financed out of public funds. All necessary measures to ensure the participation of the handicapped in production and in all spheres of social life in accordance with their abilities, shall be taken.

7) Protection of the environment: A production, urbanization, energy and transportation policy observing the vitality of the environment shall be followed. This is considered to be an indispensable condition of the health of the society. Radical measures shall be taken to make for the environmental destruction inherited from capitalism and to protect the natural environment, the soil, the water and the air.

8) Proletarian justice: The notion and system of correction shall aim at educating the criminal and rehabilitating him/her and consist of relevant measures. Prisons shall be structured as educational institutions serving this purpose. The prisoners shall be provided with the opportunity to conduct manifold productive activities. Rehabilitated prisoners shall be freed whether they have fully served their sentences or not.

Social criticism shall be actively used and promoted as a method of correction.

Right of defence shall be fully guaranteed. Nobody shall be subjected to physical and moral coercion, either in custody or in prison. Torture shall become a crime against humanity and be punished severely.

9) Religion: Considering religion as a private matter of each citizen, TKIP takes the struggle against religious prejudices as an indispensable part of the revolutionary cultural transformation and emancipation of the broad masses. It displays a great amount of determination, but patience and attention as well in this struggle. It acts by taking into account the strong unbreakable tie between between the elimination of the remnants of the old order based on oppression and exploitation and the rooting out of the religious prejudices of the masses.

10) The Red Army: Continuous military training of all women and men of the working class and of semi proletarian masses, constitutes one of the fundamental safeguards of the defence of revolution.

Along with proletarian and semi proletarian militia, the Red Army to be entrusted with a specific and temporary role in defending the revolution, shall be based on class principles. No discrimination among women and men shall be observed in its formation. The way of the organization of the Red Army shall be such that, it shall be close relationship and collaboration with toilers and production units, labor unions and toilers’ organizations. Members of the Red Army shall take part in production. Life at barracks shall be held at a minimal level. Discipline in the Red Army shall be based on class consciousness and solidarity, on democratic relations and comradeship values; ranks shall not be used.

The aim is to turn the Red Army into a socialist militia encompassing the whole people in proportion to the elimination of classes and its becoming redundant in the process of the withering away of the state.

D. Agrarian and Peasant Question

1) In Turkey, capitalist relations are dominant in rural areas as well. Semi feudal remnants survive especially in Kurdistan, as an appendage of capitalist relations. The relatively widespread occurrence of small scale agricultural enterprises waging a struggle for survival in the clutches of mechanisms of capitalist exploitation and plunder, is a characteristic feature of Turkish agriculture.

2) Petty peasant producers are systematically exploited by domestic and foreign monopolies, large landowners, banks, merchants and usurers and lastly by the state acting on behalf of the whole capitalist class. Compounded by small size of plots of land, inadequate and primitive means of production, scarce and unfavorable nature of sources of money and credit, this appalling and manifold exploitation is daily driving this stratum of toiling peasantry to poverty and destruction. Only the proletarian revolution can deliver the rural toiling masses from exploitation and subjugation at the hands of capital.

3) Aware of the fact that, without the support of the broad masses of rural toilers, comprising rural proletariat, semi proletarian peasants and small peasants, the victory of proletarian revolution would be inconceivable, TKIP conducts a systematic activity among these strata. It guides them in their struggle against the oppression and exploitation of capital.

4) In its work in rural areas TKIP relies on rural proletariat. It regards organizing this stratum independently of other rural toiling strata, a very important question of principle.

5) Striving to obtain the support of rural toilers and especially of rural proletariat and semi proletarians and to neutralize the upper strata of middle peasantry, TKIP shall realize the following demands and measures in the agrarian sphere with the victory of the revolution:

a) Nationalization of all large landed estates. Prohibition on the sale and purchase of land and transfer thereof to others. Satisfaction of the land needs of landless peasants and small scale tillers.

b) Elimination of all manner of feudal remnants and usury in the countryside. Distribution of all land subject to semi feudal relations of exploitation to the peasants tilling it, through the medium of revolutionary peasant committees.

c) Cancellation of all debt burden of the peasantry to the state, banks, monopolies, landlords, usurers and merchants. Cancellation of all mortgages.

d) Nationalization of all large scale capitalist agricultural enterprises along with all kinds of livestock and agricultural implements. Transfer of these enterprises to the organs of proletarian state power and the steering bodies of workers’ assemblies with an eye to creating the groundwork of socialist economy in agriculture.

e) Systematic work for the advancement of agriculture and husbandry. Opening of virgin lands to cultivation, adoption of systematic measures for the improvement of the soil.

f) Promotion of agricultural communes. Employment of education, persuasion, encouragement, credit, assistance for farming implements and inputs to draw the peasantry into cooperatives.

g) An agricultural policy aiming at the re unification of agriculture and industry severed from each other and polarized by capitalism, at a higher level.

E. The National Question

1) Under the present regime, the basic national rights of Kurdish nation are repudiated, Kurds and all national minorities (Arabs, Armenians, Greeks, Lazs, Circassians, Georgians etc.) are subjected to systematic national oppression. Tyrannical rule of Turkish bourgeoisie over Kurdistan is supported by Kurdish bourgeois feudal classes internally and by imperialism externally. This state of affairs links the question of national freedom to the question of the emancipation of Kurdish peasantry and imparts it an anti imperialist feature.

2) Regarding national oppression and inequality as a reflection of class oppression and inequality, TKIP starts from the premise that the radical and permanent solution to the national question lies solely on the ground of proletarian revolution. As a part of the programme of the proletarian revolution, it daily fights for the realization of following demands, which it shall fulfill immediately right after the conquest of political power:

a) Elimination of all national oppression, inequality and privileges.

b) The right of the Kurdish nation to self determination.

c) Full equality for all languages. Abolition of obligatory state language. The right to instruction in one’s own native language for all.

d) To provide all national minorities with the opportunity to use, conserve and develop their own language and culture.

3) TKIP strives to promote the revolutionary class unity and organization of workers of all nationalities in all spheres and at all levels within the borders of a given state. It upholds, organizes and leads the united revolutionary struggle of Turkish and Kurdish toilers and toilers of national minorities. It wages a systematic struggle against oppressor nation chauvinism as well as the narrow mindedness and nationalism of oppressed nation. All other conditions being equal, TKIP is for the free and voluntary union of nations.

4) Proletarian state power shall not be content with recognizing and implementing the freedom of nations and their full equality; it shall also systematically strive to remove the manifold real inequalities inherited from capitalism.

Immediate Democratic and Social Demands

Regarding the conquest of political power by the working class as its strategic aim and in close connection with this aim, TKIP wages a determined struggle for the immediate democratic and social demands of the masses. It strives to influence proletarian and toiling masses in this struggle and win them over for revolutionary struggle through their education on the basis of their own experience. Taking the solution of the question of democracy as a part of the proletarian revolution, TKIP makes active use of all democratic institutions and aspirations in the struggle to overthrow the bourgeoisie.

In the context of this perspective, it puts forward a series of immediate democratic and social demands, of which the outstanding ones are listed here:

Unrestricted freedom of speech, press, association and demonstration.
Abrogation of all fascist laws, such as State of Emergency, Martial Law, Anti Terror Law, Law on Provincial Administration etc.
Abolition of all open and secret fascist militarist organizations (Counter Guerilla, Special Forces, MIT (National Intelligence Organization), JITEM (Gendarme Intelligence and Anti Terror Bureau), Political Police, Gendarmery, Village Guards etc.)
Abolition of MGK (National Security Council), Crisis Management Center,
DGM (State Security Courts) and military jurisdiction.
An end to torture, freedom to all political prisoners.
Right of union along with the right to strike and collective bargaining for all toilers. Unrestricted right of strike and general strike. Prohibition of lock outs.

Abrogation of all open and secret treaties with imperialists.
Breaking off of all relations with NATO, EU, OSCE etc.
Seizure of all military bases and installations in Turkey.
An end to enslaving relations with IMF World Bank and other imperialist financial institutions.
Stop the payment of foreign debts. Annulment of all foreign debts.
An end to the occupation of Cyprus.

Work for all, job security for all toilers.
Sanitary and adequate inexpensive housing to all.
Free health care to all.
Free education at all levels. Compulsory education up to the age of 17. Scientific, democratic and secular education. Autonomous democratic university.
A general insurance for all toilers (covering unemployment, health, accident, old age etc.). Payment of premiums by the state and employers’ organizations. Workers’ and toilers’ control in social insurance institutions.
Care and assistance for the physically and mentally handicapped, the elderly, abandoned children and orphans.
Abolition of all manner of indirect taxes. Progressive income tax and assets tax.

Equality among women and men in all spheres of social life.
Freedom of conscience and belief.
Full separation of religious affairs from state affairs. Dissolution of Diyanet (’Religious Affairs Directorate). An end to the support provided by the state to religious institutions. Breaking up of reactionary sects and religious denominations. An end to privileges accorded to sects and repression on other sects.
An end to all sorts of reactionary repression, censorship and restrictions on science, art and culture.
An end to the destruction of the environment. Protection of natural, historical and cultural environment.
Measures to encourage mass sport.

VIII

Protection of Labor

TKIP also fights for the following demands in order to protect the working class from physical and moral deterioration and to raise the fighting strength and ability of the class to carry on its struggle for emancipation:

1) A 7 hour working day and a 35 hour working week. A maximum period of 5 hour working day in dangerous and unhealthy branches of work.

2) An uninterrupted rest period of two days per week. A 6 week paid leave per year.

3) A minimum wage sufficient to maintain a decent life, that would be exempt from taxation.

4) Equal wages to equal work.

5) Prohibition of all overtime work.

6) Prohibition of night work (from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.) with the exception of those in which it is necessary for technical considerations or the maintenance of social services. A 4 hour working day and extra payment in indispensable night work.

7) Prohibition of female labor in branches injurious to the health of women, children and mothers. Woman workers shall be provided with a three month paid leave both before and after childbirth and with medical care and assistance. Creches and nursing rooms mothers in all works employing women.

8) Prohibition of the employment of children up to 14. Combination of material production with general and vocational education. A 4 hour working day for children from 16 to 18 and a 3 hour working day for children from 14 to 16.

9) Liquidation of the semi feodal practice of apprenticeship inherited from the Middle Ages.

10) Technical and sanitary arrangements and measures aiming to provide job safety and a healthy working environment. Continuous inspection of these arrangements and measures by councils of workplace representatives and labor unions. A labor inspectorate led by the representatives of workers and comprising technical and medical specialists.

11) Prohibition of systems of work, such as flexible production, premiums, piece work and of subcontracting.

12) Deletion from labor legislation of all articles unfavorable for agricultural workers.

VIII

Strategic and tactical principles

1) Victory of the revolution and the construction of socialism, can only be accomplished through the action of the toiling masses united under the leadership of the working class. Aware of this fact, TKIP follows a revolutionary mass line and upholds revolutionary mass violence. It leads all forms of mass actions. It strives to educate the masses in these struggles through their own experience and win them over to the cause of revolution.

2) TKIP considers the forms of struggle in the context of concrete historical setting. Meticulously monitoring the course of development of mass struggle, it derives the forms of struggle appropriate for the period in question through this observation and it generalizes, organizes and gives a conscious expression to them. TKIP does not attribute an absolute significance to any form of struggle. It uses all means and forms of struggle, including violent and peaceful, illegal and legal, extra parliamentary and parliamentary ones, according to circumstances and the level of development of mass struggle.

3) Considering the fight for proletarian revolution and socialism to be the most bitter civil war in the history of the world, TKIP wages a systematic struggle to prepare the working class and toilers for this decisive fight right from the beginning.

4) Labor unions are class organizations by means of which the working class wages its daily struggle against capital and disciplines itself. However, to a great extent, they have been prevented from performing these functions by labor union bureaucracy, with its extensive privileges. TKIP wages a systematic struggle against this gang of traitors, which has become a part of the capitalist class and been charged with playing the role of the agent of capital in the working class movement. It regards the revolutionization of labor unions as a primary aspect of the process of the revolutionization of the working class.

5) TKIP supports all movements fighting against the established bourgeois socio political order. It strives to unite, all who struggle for revolution and sincerely believe in socialism on the basis of the principles and goals expressed in this programme. It wages a determined struggle against all manner of pseudo left bourgeois and petty bourgeois opportunist currents, which damage and distort the revolutionary world view of the proletariat and deflect and degenerate its action.

***

TKIP has inherited the legacy of a rich revolutionary history laden with successes and failures both in the world and in Turkey. This programme rises on the shoulders of the harvest of 150 years of scientific socialism erected by Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin and nurtured by the theory and practice of the Great Socialist October Revolution which ushered in the era of proletarian revolutions. A critical synthesis of Turkey’s revolutionary theoretical and practical harvest on a scientific basis, this programme is the end product of a principled struggle conducted against modern revisionism, social reformism and petty bourgeois populism.

This programme is a flag of revolutionary war raised in Turkish soil against imperialist capitalist world order, which has been dragging humankind, civilization and the environment to destruction. It is a militant call for battle against decayed and degenerate capitalist order of exploitation and oppression in Turkey and the international imperialism backing it.

TKIP calls on the working class and toilers of Turkey and on all who are for proletarian revolution and socialism to unite under the flag unfurled in this programme and to fight for the aims and ends described herein.

“Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their aims can be attained at only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletariat has nothing to lose but its chains. It has a world to win.”
“Proletarians of all countries, unite!”

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