New group of sympathisers in Sweden

A number of comrades in Sweden sympathetic to the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT) have, after years of contact with the organisation, decided to formalise their work in a group. We have taken the name Kompass-gruppen after the broadsheet Kompass, of which we have already produced two issues. The ambition is to continue the work of propagating ICT politics in Sweden.

Although only a small independent nucleus today, the ambition is to eventually develop and grow and form an affiliate of the ICT.

The purpose of these common positions is not to proclaim a new group with big words but more to try to give a political framework to the work we already do with translations, writing our own articles, the broadsheet Kompass, leaflets, etc.

The Kompass-gruppen today is based on the following common positions:

1. Capitalist society is in crisis and poses a threat to humanity through the increasing global environmental degradation and the deepening economic crisis that threatens to lead to a generalised imperialist war.
2. We base ourselves on internationalism and give no support to any nation either existing or in the making. National liberation can no longer be a goal of the working class. With Sweden joining NATO, the struggle against rising nationalism and rising militarism and its preparations for war must be intensified here too.
3. The working class is the only revolutionary class. It is the independent struggle of the working class outside the trade unions and parliaments through the formation of its own class organs – workplace committees, mass meetings, strike committees, and workers' councils – that can abolish capitalism and implement socialism.
4. A future revolution must be worldwide, a world revolution, and to be victorious requires the revolutionary minority of the class to form itself into an international revolutionary organisation, party for want of a better name. A party in and of the class, not a government in waiting.
5. The Russian Revolution was a proletarian revolution, an international source of inspiration as part of the beginnings of a world revolution. When the world revolution failed and the revolution was isolated to one country, this led to the betrayal of the socialist ideals of the revolution and the emergence of a more centralised form of state capitalism.
6. Trade unions are no longer fighting organisations of the working class but integrated into the capitalist state. Although trade unions are made up of workers and claim to defend their interests, they can only act in their own interests within the framework of capitalism. We reject any idea of making the trade unions revolutionary or that they should be conquered by the revolutionaries.
7. We reject parliamentarism and electoral participation as parliament is part of the capitalist state and can no longer be used in the struggle of the proletariat. The so-called welfare state built up by social democracy in Sweden during the post-war recovery phase was made possible by the enormous mass destruction of the imperialist wars.
8. We reject any form of popular, united or other front politics that involves class collaboration or the watering down of revolutionary politics. History has shown that whenever the working class or its revolutionary minority has participated in popular, united or anti-fascist fronts with sections of the bourgeoisie, this has strengthened capitalism regardless of the best of intentions.
9. We fight for the unity of the class and against all the divisions that capitalist society exposes it to in terms of nation, race or gender.
10. The former Soviet Union, Cuba, North Korea or China were not socialist but totalitarian state-capitalist regimes that cannot be defended by the working class.
11. We are sympathisers of the Internationalist Communist Tendency (ICT) and work to one day become part of the ICT.