Capitalism is a global social relation that entraps all of humanity.
Capitalism is not the conscious conspiracy of elites, governments, or any other entities, but a worldwide system of profit obscured by increasingly globalized supply chains and financial markets. The car is on fire with no one at the wheel but the automated actions and reactions of workers, consumers, bosses, companies, and governments all directly or indirectly impacting one another and responding to unforeseen social, economic, and political consequences. Our goal is not to substitute any agent or institution in this decaying network with a ‘better’ one – it is to replace the entire structure with the conscious deliberation of workers collectively coordinating our activity for the benefit of all. We seek to overcome the logic of capitalism everywhere, not reform the unreformable or carve out islands of calm within the storms of the 21st century. It is therefore imperative that we see the workers of all nations not as competitors but as allies in struggle.
Workers must build power as workers across social and cultural divides.
Each of us inhabits a multitude of roles and social identities both in public and in private, and capital impacts us all in diverse ways. Where we converge is our present condition of selling our labor in order to survive, and our opposition to having our lives commanded by the whims of the global market and the managers who act on its behalf. We recognize the many other movements and groups that have historically fought for total human liberation, and do not seek to supplant them but to find and cultivate common ground. Nor do we require members to uphold the same social and cultural values, only to be willing and able to cooperate constructively and respectfully with those who may be radically different in background, thought, speech, or self-presentation.
The ILC is not a political party, a union, or a protest movement, but a pre-political base for rebuilding civil society around the interests of workers everywhere.
Workers are not children to be lectured to, and the ILC is not a venue to bring declarations of correct thought for educating the masses. At the same time, leaderless movements and gatherings have continually revealed their inability to work with strategy and discipline towards coherent goals. Only through active communication, organized around mutually agreed centers of gravity can a coherent base of the working class be built. The ILC does not exist to stake out “positions” or issue “statements” on every issue, but to build the class power needed for organized workers to meaningfully impact these issues in the first place. Efforts to address class demands through activism, elections, or workplace organizing all have their places in the world, but this is not one of them. The only efforts the ILC seeks to involve itself in are those that we can directly impact and that affect workers’ ability to organize and build collective power – not because we consider other causes unimportant, but because there exist more appropriate vehicles for pursuing them.
Capitalism can only be overcome by workers themselves, whose interests and institutions must not be subordinated to any other.
From national governments and political parties to union bureaucracies and nonprofits, there is no shortage of institutions that claim to represent working people. But the structural interests of these organizations are not our interests, and we will not hitch ourselves to any other entity in pursuit of incremental reforms that hamper our ability to organize independently in the long term. We do not discourage members from participating in other organizations or campaigns; we will, however, categorically reject attempts to redirect or subordinate the ILC’s activities to them. Any cooperation, collaboration, or front the ILC partakes in will be temporary and maintained only to the extent that it furthers our central mission as laid out in these principles. The interconnectedness of the modern world, along with our own skills, knowledge, and labor already provide us with the materials we need to create a world beyond domination and exploitation – we are the vast majority of humanity and in building our capacity we build the world anew.