The following resolution was carried unanimously at our party’s ninth congress in October.
This congress confirms that, as communists, we understand that racism and racial prejudices are inextricably linked with capitalism and imperialism, and cannot be eradicated without doing away with capitalism and imperialism themselves.
Congress therefore rejects the notion that these social maladies can be cured whilst leaving the current social-economic system intact; that they are phenomena that can be dealt with separately from the issue of the class contradiction between capital and labour.
Reaffirming our previously adopted positions on identity politics, congress recognises that when movements and campaigns seek to make the right to challenge a particular form of oppression or prejudice the preserve of one particular ethnic or cultural group, the effect is more likely to be a hinderance to building class unity than an aid to achieving it.
An approach implying that the eradication of racism is mainly a concern of ethnic minority sections of society, and that it should be left to these sections to wage the struggle, is a misrepresentation of the problem of racism, which affects the working class as a whole by dividing it against itself and hampering its ability to organise effectively.
This congress recognises that whilst people may, with a well-meaning attitude, accept such an approach in the belief that it will ‘empower’ marginalised communities, this approach in fact obscures an understanding of why racism and xenophobia must be overcome.
Congress believes that racism and xenophobia must be overcome if the working class is to weld itself into a politically unified class with a clear understanding of its own interests and objectives.
It cannot be thought by some workers – even those who are objectively better off (more ‘privileged’) than others – that their commitment to opposing racism is an act of charity; a selfless act engaged in for the benefit of others less fortunate.
This congress resolves to continue to propagate the understanding that eradicating racial prejudice within the working class is necessary because our shared interest as workers is the destruction of imperialism, and one of imperialism’s most sharpened and well-tested weapons is its ability and skill in utilising racial prejudice as a dividing, disorganising tool against us.
