The New Commune-ist Manifesto
Workers of the World, It Really Is Time to Unite

http://newcommuneist.com/read-book/
Year Published:  2013
Resource Type:  Book
Cx Number:  CX17170

The book starts with a question: If Karl Marx were alive today and asked to write a new edition of The Communist Manifesto, how would it be different from the original, composed 165 years ago?

Abstract: 
The book starts with a question: If Karl Marx were alive today and asked to write a new edition of The Communist Manifesto, how would it be different from the original, composed 165 years ago? The New Commune-ist Manifesto is the answer.
While following the spirit of the old, the New Manifesto is written for the twenty-first-century working class and transforms the original from a historical document into a call-for-action to build an economic democracy based on environmental sustainability.
The book argues that regaining our vision of an alternative to the existing system is the key to rebuilding the workers movement. But this vision must be more than “pie in the sky” — it must be practical and based on experience. It must confront the real problems we face, including the environmental crisis that jeopardizes our planet.


Table of Contents

Preface
Conversation With Ernie
Glossary

The Manifesto
Introduction
1. Capitalists and Workers
2. The Working Class and the New Commune-ists
3. Our Relationship to Other Opponents of the Existing Social Order

Another Conversation With Ernie


Excerpt:

The immediate priorities of workers can vary from country to country. New commune-ists will adapt agendas to local needs, but generally campaigns will focus on the following:

Repeal all laws that allow corporations to be treated as individual persons. Replace corporate ownership of land and resources with democratic social ownership by local, state/provincial, national and international communities. Do the same with communications, transport and utilities. Transfer ownership of the media to cooperatives, communities, towns, cities, provinces, states and national governments. Public media, like other socially owned enterprises should operate with workplace democracy and be supervised by boards representative of the diversity of occupations and interests.
Legislate the right of all inhabitants to a voice and equal vote in their communities’ social means of livelihood. Legislate the right of workers in all occupations to democratically direct their labor time.
Wherever practical replace production for exchange with production for human need.
Establish the right of people everywhere to basic needs including: food, housing, social employment, education, healthcare and a guaranteed annual income.
Establish steeply graduated income taxes and inheritance taxes. Expand property tax to include stocks, bonds and all other forms of wealth. Introduce financial transaction (Tobin) taxes. Keep tariffs low enough to broaden international trade, but high enough to encourage domestic production for domestic markets everywhere. Cut military spending to the minimum necessary to protect communities. Rely on transparent international agreements for security.
Support the rights of women everywhere to equal access to employment opportunities, to control their own bodies and to be freed from violence. Provide all families with access to childcare and eldercare. Oppose discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered.
Campaign for electoral reforms that weaken the power of wealthy minorities to control and manipulate political agendas. Support and encourage unions to help finance anti-capitalist reforms. Campaign to establish the right of workers in all occupations to engage in collective bargaining and to be represented by unions of their democratic choice.
Support struggles of indigenous people for control of lands and resources in their traditional territories. Support their right to protect and advance their languages, customs and ways of life. Demand that treaty rights be respected and fully implemented. Campaign for the right of indigenous people to have equal access to education, healthcare and employment opportunities.
Support the rights of immigrants — documented and undocumented — to equal pay, equal social entitlements and the right to transparent due process.
Support campaigns to protect the environment and to immediately act to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Establish transparent environmental planning boards at all levels of government to redirect social employment away from the burning of fossil fuel. Provide alternate employment at equivalent pay and benefits. Provide all communities with the right to veto, by democratic vote, industrial activity in their territory.