Unless the struggle of the working class translates into concrete demands the power to change society will be lost. This is the national platform of Socialist Alternative, recently overhauled and updated to reflect the changing economic times and situation for working people in America, which we present as a fighting program for the workers movement to embrace in our struggle against exploitation and injustice. The fight for even these simple demands, which can never all be fully realized under the capitalist system, propels the workers’ and students’ movement to look toward a fundamental transformation in the way society runs as the only way to guarantee these gains – in other words, a socialist system.
Bail Out Workers, Not Wall Street
* Create living-wage union jobs for all the unemployed through a massive public works program to develop mass transit, renewable energy, infrastructure, health care, education, and affordable housing.
* Free, high quality health care for all. Replace the failed for-profit insurance companies with a publicly-funded, single-payer system as a step towards fully socialized medicine.
* No budget cuts to education and social services! Full funding for all community needs. The federal government should bail out states to prevent cuts and layoffs. A massive increase in taxes on the rich and big business, not working people.
* Raise the federal minimum wage to $12.50/hour, adjusted annually for cost of living increases and regional differences, as a step towards a living wage for all.
* A minimum guaranteed weekly income of $500/week for the unemployed, disabled, stay-at-home parents, the elderly, and others unable to work.
* Stop home foreclosures and evictions. For public ownership and democratic control of the major banks.
* No more layoffs! Take bankrupt and failing companies into public ownership and retool them for socially necessary green production.
* Free, high quality public education for all from pre-school through college. Full funding for schools to dramatically lower teacher-student ratios. Stop the focus on high stakes testing and the drive to privatize public education.
* Repeal all anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley. For democratic unions run by the rank-and-file to fight for better pay, working conditions, and social services. Full-time union officials should be regularly elected and receive the average wage of those they represent.
* For a guaranteed living-wage pension.
* Shorten the workweek with no loss in pay and benefits – share out the work with the unemployed and create new jobs.
Money for Jobs and Education, Not War
* End the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Bring all the troops home now!
* Slash the military budget.
* Repeal the Patriot Act and other attacks on democratic rights.
Environmental Sustainability
* Fight global warming – Massive public investment in renewable energy and efficiency technologies to rapidly replace fossil fuels.
* A major expansion of public transportation to provide low fare, high-speed, and accessible mass transit.
* Public ownership of the big energy companies. All workers in polluting industries should be guaranteed retraining and new, living-wage jobs in socially-useful, green production.
Equal Rights for All
* Fight discrimination on the grounds of race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, age, and all other forms of prejudice. Equal pay for equal work.
* End police brutality and the institutional racism of the criminal justice system. Invest in rehabilitation, job training, and living-wage jobs, not prisons! Abolish the death penalty.
* Full legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrant workers.
* Fight sexual harassment, violence against women, and all forms of sexism.
* For a woman’s right to choose when and whether to have children. Defend abortion rights. Full reproductive rights, including affordable, accessible birth control, sex education, paid maternity and paternity leave, and high-quality, affordable child care.
* Equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, including same-sex marriage.
Break with the Two Parties of Big Business
* For a mass workers’ party drawing together workers, young people, and activists from workplace, community, civil rights, environmental, and antiwar campaigns, to provide a fighting, political alternative to the pro-big-business parties.
* Unions and other social movement organizations should stop funding and supporting the Democratic and Republican Parties and instead organize independent, left-wing, anti-corporate candidates and coalitions as a first step toward building a workers’ party.
Socialism and Internationalism
* Capitalism produces poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this system.
* Repeal NAFTA, CAFTA, and other “free trade” agreements which mean job losses and a race to the bottom for workers and the environment.
* Solidarity with the struggles of workers and the oppressed internationally – An injury to one is an injury to all.
* Take into public ownership the top 500 corporations and banks that dominate the U.S. economy, and run them under the democratic management of elected representatives of the workers and the broader public. Compensation to be paid on the basis of proven need to small investors, not millionaires.
* A democratic socialist plan for the economy based on the interests of the overwhelming majority of people and the environment. For a socialist United States and a socialist world!
