Letter of Introduction to the CWI

Thank you for contacting the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) for more information and for taking an interest in our ideas and activities.

The CWI is an international socialist organisation fighting for the interests of working class people, across the globe, with affiliated parties and organisations in nearly 40 countries, and on all continents.


The purpose of this letter is to give you a short introduction to our ideas, programme and how we campaign. This is not an exhaustive explanation. We urge you to also visit our website at www.socialistworld.net, to find out more about our ideas and activities and to read our articles from around the world.

If you agree with what you read and want to help build the CWI, or want more discussion or clarification, please contact us, as soon as possible.

A world of disorder and wars

Instead of a new world order of peace and prosperity, which the rulers of this world promised to us after the collapse of the former Soviet Union and the Eastern European regimes, we face a new world disorder. This means more imperialist wars and imperialist occupations, military and ethnic conflicts, environmental disasters, and a widening of the gap between rich and poor. The adoption of a neo-liberal agenda on a world scale has had devastating effects on the living standards of the working class and the poor masses in the neo-colonial world, in particular, but also in the so called “advanced” world.

In almost every country in Europe - as well as in other parts of the world - the former workers’ parties, e.g. the social Democratic and ‘Communist’ parties, which were originally formed to fight for socialism, have been transformed into capitalist parties.

This has left the working class and youth internationally without any political organisations with mass support and without a programme to fight the increased attacks on their living standards.

We have, therefore, concluded that it is necessary to build the forces of revolutionary socialism and to rebuild the workers’ movement by campaigning for the need to set up new workers’ parties internationally, with mass support.

Daily struggles

The CWI, and its affiliated parties and organisations, have a proud record of participating in daily struggles of workers and youth against the horrific effects of capitalism.

We played a key role in mobilising young people against the invasion and occupation of Iraq. By setting up Youth Against the War (YAW) in several countries, we were able to organise massive school strikes.

In recent years in Ireland, we played a key role in fighting an unjust refuse tax (bin tax). Joe Higgins, Socialist Party member of the Irish Parliament, and Clare Daly, a Socialist Party councillor in Dublin, were sent to prison for weeks because they had, together with anti-bin-tax activists, participated in blockading rubbish collection lorries.

The Irish section and Joe Higgins recently took up the case of a Nigerian school student who was forcibly deported from Ireland, and won the case. Also, Joe Higgins and the CWI in Ireland and internationally, took up the case of over 300 Turkish immigrant workers in Ireland – the Gama workers – who were owed wages. So far, many significant concessions have been won from Gama, marking an important victory.

In Nigeria, the CWI is the largest socialist organisation. This most populous country in Africa has seen many general strikes since 2000 against the horrendous rise in fuel prices. The CWI has argued that a successful general strike requires the full involvement and mobilisation of the working class and the poor masses.

In Sri Lanka, the CWI consistently fights for the rights of the Tamil-speaking minority in the country. We are the only socialist organisation that publishes a paper in Tamil and in Sinhala. Along with help from the CWI across the world, the CWI in Sri Lanka organised essential practical aid to areas badly hit by the tsunami disaster at the start of 2005 – a catastrophe made much worse due to poverty, poor infrastructure and the corruption and incompetence of the Sri Lankan government and authorities.

A workers’ representative on a worker’s wage

In many countries, the CWI initiates or helps in the establishment of rank and file fighting platforms inside the trade unions to transform them into fighting organisations of the working class, instead of instruments of co-management for the bosses.

In the unions, the CWI campaigns for workers’ representatives to live on an average worker’s wage. The same principle applies to CWI members elected to public positions. Joe Higgins, our member in the Irish parliament, lives on a worker’s wage, and donates the rest of his income to the building of the workers’ movement.

Furthermore, we are actively involved in building the movement against capitalist globalisation. The CWI initiated setting up International Socialist Resistance (ISR), an independent socialist youth organisation with affiliates in Europe and also in Brazil, South Africa, Australia and Kashmir. In addition to that, our members are engaged in the struggle against racism and against the oppression of women. CWI sections developed programmes against all forms of discrimination and victimisation on the basis of sex, sexual orientation, religious belief or nationality.

In 1992, we set up Youth against Racism in Europe (YRE), which mobilised 40,000 youth internationally to demonstrate on the streets of Brussels against the rise in racism and fascist attacks.

In the past few years we also seen the beginning of the the revival of the workers’ movement, with strikes and general strikes in European countries, such as Greece, Spain, France and above all in Italy. As well as that, we have seen a revolt of the masses in almost every country in Latin America. It has brought down governments in Argentina and Bolivia and has enabled Lula in Brazil, Chavez in Venezuela or Kirchner in Argentina to come to power. Movements like that have developed almost spontaneously. The CWI has welcomed them and is inspired by the heroism of the workers, poor peasants and youth.

Nevertheless, these movements, despite having been of an insurrectionary nature in some countries, were also an illustration of what can be achieved is fairly limited if the leadership of the movement has not got a rounded-out socialist programme and method. Hugo Chavez has, to a certain degree, taken a stand against the neo-liberal policies of capitalist institutions like the IMF and the World Bank. The Brazilian working class had huge expectations when Lula came to power that he would be a radical change but, because he is not ready to break with capitalism, Lula attacked the working class and the poor.

This has led to the setting up of a new party, the PSoL, which Socialismo Revolucionario, the Brazilian section of the CWI, is part of, and has a member on the PSoL national body.

We fight for every demand that can improve the conditions and the life of working class and poor people. But we link the struggles of today with the overall aim of the complete socialist transformation of society, not only nationally but internationally. History has shown that the bosses always try to take back with one hand what they have given with the other. Improvements in living standards, and democratic rights, won by the working class through mass struggle, are under attack. The ruling elites are eager to let the workers pay for the crisis their system has brought about.

Method of Marxism

The methods that the CWI uses to analyse events and to organise our parties and campaigns, are basically those worked out by Marx and Engels, and later developed by Lenin and Trotsky. We base ourselves on the experience of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the history and lessons of the international workers’ movement. We share Trotsky’s analysis of Russia’s degeneration into a ‘deformed workers’ state’. Due to the isolation of the Russian Revolution, a bureaucratic elite with dictatorial powers emerged in Russia, which controlled and consumed a larger share of the wealth the working class produced. We refer to ourselves as Marxists. Marxism is not a dogma but a method that helps us to understand the world and is therefore a guide to action.

Our approach assists us in developing the struggle for a just and better world - a socialist world which meets the needs of working and poor people and the youth, and not those of a tiny, greedy minority that live a life of luxury at our expense. To achieve a socialist world, we think it is necessary to overthrow capitalism and to bring the big companies and multinationals under workers’ control and management. The economy could then be democratically planned, taking into account all available human and natural resources.

To be successful, the struggle against capitalism requires ideas, a political programme, and an organisation that is able to unite workers and oppressed people across the globe. We aim to build such an organisation. We think that organised workers in their millions are stronger than millionaires. That is why we need more people to join our struggle!

Please do not hesitate to contact us again and ask any further and more specific questions. We are very interested in discussing them with you and are very interested in your point of view, and your opinion of events and developments in your country and worldwide.

For more information, you can also visit our website on www.socialistworld.net