Fowom Ouvriye: Mission Statement

central america / caribbean | miscellaneous | policy statement Monday June 15, 2009 23:41 by supporter - Workers Forum Newsletter

This is from a 2008 publication in english, spanish, and kreyol called Workers Forum.

Mission Statement
Fowòm Ouvriye: who are we?

“…we shall substitute an association where the development of each is the condition for the development of all” (Karl Marx)

The totality of the world crisis of capitalism is seen in the basic inability of the European, the former Soviet Union, the Chinese, or the American social, economic or political systems to solve any of the basic problems of the working-class, or to be able to offer any present or future freedom from exploitation, discrimination, degradation, misery or war. Likewise, the revolutions for national liberation in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia, although they raised and advanced ideas of freedom, have failed to establish truly new societies.

Global capitalism, whether in its state-ownership single-party totalitarian form or its private-ownership parliamentary form does not offer a bright future to humanity, and the spread of nuclear weapons and environmental degradation seriously raises the question of the survival of our species. We believe that the working class is the only force in the world today capable of changing present-day society and of evolving the forms and the shape of a future free and human society. We believe that the working class and other working people occupy a place of special significance in present-day society. Their struggle for democratic rights, equality and justice, which is taking place every day in every part of the world and increasing in tempo and effectiveness, stands in the forefront of the struggle of humanity for full freedom from capitalist exploitation and for a new society.

In Haiti, the unfinished revolution, which started with the 1791 slave ­insurrection against French colonialism under the battle cry of “Freedom or Death”, and culminated with the subsequent proclamation, on 1 January 1804, of the Republic of Haiti as the First Independent Republic of Latin America and the harbinger of the Bolivarian struggle for the emancipation of the continent, has established the undeniable truth that the working masses – men, women and children – must be the vanguard in the current struggle to fulfill the revolutionary dreams of our forefathers and establish a new society.

As part our search for a fundamentally new way of life, we hereby establish Fowòm Ouvriye, an internationalist newsletter the creation of which is an integral part of the international working class quest for totally new social relations based on humanist foundations.

Our purpose is to create a means of communication and information among workers, poor peasants, unemployed, women, youth, urban lower middle class and all oppressed people based on their common problems, aspirations, ideas and needs. The newsletter thus becomes a weapon in the class struggle, a center around which the basic ideas of workers’ freedom and human emancipation can crystallize and find a form of public expression.

We believe that the youth is a most precious source of our development. We believe that their idealism is so unique that it can literally bring them alongside the workers as a revolutionary force for the new society, if their rebellious spirit merges with the philosophy of liberation.

We believe that the Women’s Liberation movement against sexism, gender oppression and inequality, points out to the oppressed women as a revolutionary force, and to the inseparability of women’s liberation from the struggle for human liberation.

We believe that the struggle against racism, particularly the struggle of people of African and Indigenous origins against the discriminatory ideology and practices of the ruling classes in both the imperialist and the dependent countries, is also a revolutionary force inseparable from the larger struggle for human emancipation.

We hold the method of scientific socialism, that is, dialectical philosophy and historical materialism, to be the guide for our analyses and action. We hold it to be our duty to interpret and apply this method to our specific conditions. We reject any attempt to identify scientific socialism, which is the working class philosophy of liberation, with its exact opposite, state-capitalist totalitarianism.

Fowòm Ouvriye shall be published at least bimonthly and shall open its columns to the voices of revolt from below and articulate their struggles and aspirations with a philosophy of liberation. It is our aim to promote the firmest unity among Haitian, Caribbean, Latin American, North American and all workers and oppressed people, as well as those intellectuals who have broken with the ruling ideology of capitalism and imperialism. We want the full emancipation of the international working-class and oppressed humanity.

We are not a political party. We are part of an emerging political trend that recognizes and promotes the leadership role of the working class in the struggle against capital, for the construction of a new society. Our editorial staff and contributors come together to promote their ideas in a democratically organized manner and constantly to renew them in the practice of the class struggle. We have no interests separate and apart from those of the international working class and oppressed humanity.

Those who participate in our newsletter do so freely by an acceptance of these general principles. They are bound only to carry out the decisions, which we have arrived at democratically. Any person who agrees with these general principles, who so desires, is free to submit material for the newsletter and to participate in the discussions in its pages or on its web site. The Editorial Board will review all submissions.

Articles that are not signed represent the views of the Editorial Board of Fowòm Ouvriye, based on a democratic process of debate, discussions and consensus. Articles that are signed represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the newsletter and its Editorial Board.

Long live the popular autonomous struggle, with the laboring masses as its engine and the working class as its leading force!

Please visit our website, join the online debates, and contact us at info@fowomouvriye.org