Worker's Power is still figuring out a way to go............

[socialist_n_TN]

regarding an anti-austerity and/or anti-capitalist coalition grouping or party. This would be a little more involved and longer term than a united front although it would be similiar in that none would be required to give up their basic credos to join. The idea would be to take a few important and general things that everybody agrees on and work out strategies and tactics for getting them accomplished. But I'm impatient about this and the international is moving too slow for my tastes. I think that it should be a priority, so I thought I'd bring the idea here for some brain storming.

I could see it being divided into an anti-austerity grouping (the largest) and an anti-capitalist wing (the next largest). Everybody works on the anti-austerity programme and the anti-capitalist group would work out a generic anti-capitalist platform that ALL anticapitalists (Trots, Stalinists, unaffiliated Marxists, anarchists, and dem socialists) could agree with.

What I thought might be interesting for this group, which is pretty diverse in it's makeup, is to see if we could put together some overall things that we could agree with as a model for a program. Anybody up for it?

For the anti-austerity general grouping I would think that the first plank of a platform would be that the working class and poor shouldn't have to pay for the mistakes of the wealthy and this capitalist crisis that we're still going through. I would assume that that would mean MUCH higher taxation on the wealth gained through the boom years. Anybody else have any ideas on this part of it?

My idea of a basic tenet of the anti-capitalist sub grouping would be that capitalism has become an unsustainable economic/political system for the majority of the world's population and must be overthrown for the good of the rest of us. Anything else us anti-capitalists can agree on as far as big picture items?

[TBF]

1. Sounds good -

I'm a little brain dead tonight after a long day but let me think about this. Much higher taxation could start with doubling capital gains tax (the tax paid on investment income) - it used to be the same as income but since the 80s (including Clinton's reign) they keep lowering it in the interest of rewarding "saving". But the only ones with any money to save are the elitists.

Also I'd be thinking about resources - how to best allocate water, oil, other natural resources to benefit the biggest number of people (not simply the richest people). I wonder if the Occupy groups have done any white papers on this? I'll have to look around a bit.

[socialist_n_TN]

2. Paragraph one sounds like something for the anti-austerity grouping........

The allocating of resources is definitely for the anti-capitalist sub group. Thanks TBF, I knew I could count on you guys for ideas.

Pitch in as much as you can. If there's enough interest generated by this thread, I'll pass it along to the cadre and see if I can get this idea moving. The British section is already trying something like this, but the IC hasn't given any guidelines for the other sections. I think it's important enough to push for it.

[white_wolf]

3. This has potential.

The anti-austerity group could be a good way to show reformists such as the Greens, Social Dems, etc. that anti-capitalist aren't evil tyrants bend on world domination like the media has been telling them.

[socialist_n_TN]

4. Yeah, the anti-austerity group would be for reformists........

But there would be some (a LOT really) that at this stage of the struggle we could ALL agree on with the reformists.

Of course, the whole idea about it being a longer term coalition or united front would be that the anti-capitalists would be free to critique the reformist version as not going far enough, but that this is something we can work together to try and achieve. And vice versa of course.

I look at the anti-capitalist grouping as a larger version of REVO. You guys have experience with this type of grouping.