Our Program

What is Communism? What is Socialism?

Given the near-century of anti-communist propaganda that Americans have been immersed in since the first Red Scare, many Americans do not really know what socialism and communism mean. Accordingly, it would be useful to establish definitions before we discuss our program further. Communism, in short, is the pursuit of a moneyless, stateless, and classless society. Socialism is the lower phase of communism; it is the bridge between the capitalist present and the communist future.

Socialism is not a set of policy prescriptions. Rather, it is the scientific pursuit of a better world in which the productive forces that the working class has created are used to improve and enrich the lives of the working class rather than to generate profit for a very tiny minority of property owners. The consequences of the current capitalist state of affairs clearly demonstrate the need for such a pursuit. In the United States, roughly 13% of households are food insecure, yet 40% of all food in this country is wasted1,2, and untold tons of produce are destroyed annually to keep prices high. We easily produce enough food to feed every American, but we do not produce food to feed people. We produce food to make a profit. Despite our surplus of food, we will never feed people for the sake of feeding people because doing so is not profitable. Similarly, the advent of AI and other forms of automation threaten the livelihoods of many around the globe. In any sane economic system, the automation of our labor and the ability to produce more efficiently should not be feared. These improvements should liberate the working class, giving us more time to spend with our friends and families and doing what we love. Instead, they are implemented for profit, meaning that thousands will be fired and cast into poverty through no fault of their own. Improvements in mankind’s productive capacity should not harm the working class. The choice between a world driven by the profit motive and a world driven by human flourishing is clear.

Our Goals

As socialists and communists, we believe that the economy and the government should be democratically controlled by and for the working class – people who must sell their labor in order to survive, who earn their living by working and not by owning property. At the national and local levels, with very few exceptions, this is not the case; every workplace is a de facto dictatorship where employers can fire their employees for any reason whatsoever, and our government structures at every level are controlled by the corporate elite. Whatever democracy we have in the United States is a sham, and every decision that matters is decided by those with enough money to lobby (bribe) our local, state, and federal politicians. We believe that the current political and economic system in the U.S. is rotten to the core and must be replaced with one that prioritizes human well-being – one that seeks to maximize the standard of living for as many people as possible rather than to maximize the profits of a select few. 

We are not Democrats, and we are not Republicans. We believe that both of these parties are nothing more than corporate puppets who have no interest in serving the working class. We seek to be an organization composed of and operating for the working class of Knoxville. 

We do not seek “total government control,” nor do we seek to “steal everyone’s property.” These are common caricatures of socialism. As for the first caricature, the type of government we desire is fundamentally different from any form of government in the United States today. We seek a form of government that puts the working class in charge of its own destiny – one that puts the working class in control. The second caricature is based on a misunderstanding of what communists define as “private property.” By “private property,” we mean private ownership of the means of economic production (think farms and factories). We believe that these should be collectively owned and controlled by the workers who actually do the work on them and by those who depend on their production rather than by shareholders whose only concern is their bottom line. One’s house, car, and other commodities are personal property, which communists enjoy just as much as the next person.

In short, we seek a world directed by and for the working class, the overwhelming majority of people.

Our Role in Knoxville

We conceive for ourselves the following the roles in Knoxville:

As communists, our primary purpose is to represent and fight for the interests of the working class over the interests of the capitalist class. To this end, we will consistently stay in close contact with the working class at large to stay aware of what we want, the problems we face, and how we can help.

In order to bring about class consciousness and socialist awareness, we will utilize agitation and education to correctly identify capitalism as the root cause of many of our contemporary problems and to present socialism as the solution. A subsequent goal in this will be to organize the working class as a whole into a political force in order to fight for its interests and for its liberation from capitalism.

Resisting class abuses consists of engaging in community service with local organizations that combat poverty, homelessness, and hunger, among other problems; participating in or driving community organizing; starting community support programs of our own; and highlighting specific instances of class abuses in Knoxville. In standing against the capitalist class, we stand in strong solidarity with members of the working class of all races, genders, religions, and sexualities, for racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and sexism do not only dehumanize and deprive our brothers and sisters of their basic rights, but they also serve the capitalist by dividing the working class. Through these efforts, we seek to establish broad contact with other members of the working class and with other organizers in the community in order to improve our effectiveness and to build solidarity. 

Absolutely vital in accomplishing all of this is people. Through all of the above actions, we seek to increase our numbers so as to more effectively perform them. We aim to organize a group of committed socialists capable of carrying out this program.

Proposed Reforms

While reforms are not our end goal, they can be useful in improving the lives of the working class and in bringing the state closer to worker control. We are not overly concerned with the specifics of these policies; we simply wish to give more concrete examples of our goals and what changes we would like to see brought about.

Local Government

As communists, we wish to eliminate bureaucracy and to create a more democratic state that is more open to working class control and participation. To this end, we put forth the following proposals:

Our broad objective in reshaping the machinery of Knoxville’s government is to maximize the working class’s ability to control its own destiny. The division of labor that has been used to simplify complex jobs such as building cars will be applied to every facet of the state, making the levers of government accessible to the average person. We seek to eliminate the bureaucrat class entirely and to construct a government run by the working class, for the working class.

Housing

Housing is a human right and a basic human need, not a commodity or an investment opportunity. Knoxville is in the middle of a historic housing crisis, and the homeless here cite a lack of affordable housing as the primary cause of homelessness by far3. Decisive action must be taken to increase Knoxville’s housing stock as well as to make what housing that already exists more affordable. A significant cause of this lack of affordable housing is the greed of landlords and property managers. Landlords on the whole are parasitic to their renters (i.e. the working class); they merely act as middle-men between their renters and housing, exploiting the renter’s need for shelter to compel the renter to pay the landlord’s mortgage for them and/or to extract direct profit off the back of the renter’s labor. Landlords fundamentally have a vested interest in dragging out Knoxville’s housing crisis, and it is utterly absurd to allow a class who benefits from a lack of housing to continue existing unchecked.

Housing should be built and provided to meet human need, not for a select few property owners to extract profit from the working class. One should earn their living through meaningful work, not ownership. To weaken the hold of the landlord over the working class, to maximize the working class’s control over their own homes and to pursue our objective of ending homelessness, we propose the following policy goals:

While these proposals address the availability and affordability of preexisting housing units, they do not address the construction of additional housing units. For that, we propose an outright ban on single-family housing zoning. Single-Family homes are among the most inefficient forms of housing, and recent population increases in Knoxville have shown that this city’s reliance on single-family housing is not sustainable. Note that this is not a ban on the construction of single-family homes; this is a measure to make it easier for developers to construct higher density alternatives such as townhomes and apartment blocks throughout the city of Knoxville. Allowing higher density houses will considerably increase the housing supply of Knoxville, which will both help house the homeless and provide affordable housing for those without, and it will also ease housing costs for those who already rent.

Sustainability

It is readily apparent that Knoxville is an incredibly car-dependant city; the bus system is underdeveloped, causing it to not be a viable option for most, and the majority of our roads don’t even have sidewalks, meaning walking is dangerous in many cases. Car dependence leads to other problems for working people as well, such as increased traffic, poorer air quality, and more expensive gas. In addition, cars are the most expensive, most dangerous, and most environmentally damaging form of urban transportation.4 Traveling to most places in Knoxville requires a car, which for many represents thousands of dollars of debt, a costly car payment, recurring insurance payments, and hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year spent on gas and maintenance. A country that effectively requires its citizens to own a car to get around is not a free country. We aim to reduce Knoxville’s car dependence by making other forms of transportation – such as walking, biking, and buses – more viable options. On top of being cheaper, less car dependent cities provide a whole host of social and physical benefits to their citizens.5 Our goal is not to eliminate cars but to make other forms of transportation real options. 

A transition to a more walkable and bikeable – and generally more sustainable future – is not simply a policy preference; it is a necessity. Regardless of one’s preference for gas-powered cars, oil is a finite resource, and we are projected to run out of oil entirely by around 2052.6 If we do not start preparing for a fossil-fuel-free future very soon, we are in for a genuine, painful crisis. We propose the following to the end of reducing Knoxville’s car dependence: