Declaration of principles of the Finnish Communist Party, Moscow Aug. 29-Sept. 5, 1918.

Declaration of principles
of the Finnish Communist Party

The Finnish Communist Party is a proletarian party for wage-earners, and it works only for the interests of the working class - wanting to bring it into power in order to destroy the bourgeois bandit state and along with it the capitalist system of production.

The Communist Party is based on the principles of revolutionary Marxist socialism, on the principle of communism, as proclaimed by Marx and Engels but which have later been misinterpreted by compromising politicians, by the ones, whose theoretical explanations have set the basis for the party program of the old Social Democratic Party of Finland.

The Communist Party wants, as Marx and Engels in their time, to distinguish itself from those "Socialists" and "Social Democrats", who oppose revolutionary socialism and will so lead the working masses astray from that road of the revolutionary struggle that would lead straight away to the dictatorship of workers and to the socialist revolution.

The bourgeoisie with its political and economical bandit organisations is the mortal enemy of the working class, and so fit to be defeated and destroyed. A similar fate is deserved to "Right-wing people" and "Centrists" who going under the names of "Socialists" and "Social Democrats", who with their parties take the workers in and thus, as enemies of the working class, assist the prolongation of life of the bourgeois dominance.

The fundamental reason to the working class's destitution, misery and lack of justice is the capitalistic system of exploiting the fruits of work, laying on the base of a private ownership of means of production, and being supported by the capitalistic class state with its forces of violence, its methods of class oppression. The use of the capital for taking away the result of work from the workers for the very maintenance and well-being of the bourgeoisie and to win ever increasing commercial profits is the characteristic mark of this way of production. In some countries the capitalism has reached its final stage, imperialism. The state power, the ownership of means of production and riches created by workers have concentrated more and more in the hands of dedicated capitalist syndicates who between themselves agree about partitioning the world into large areas of exploitation crossing national, racial and state borders. Like workers in big factories do not see a personal owner but only the cold finance capital, having interest only in figures and percentages not in the fates of individuals, in the same way nations under the business rules of imperialistic capitalism will be driven to a mass misery, even to deaths in masses. This is shown by the terrible world war, a huge collision between the interests of imperialists.

The present stage of development in capitalism has paved way to the proletarian socialist revolutions. This gives birth to revolutionary mass movements. A thought of permanent revolutionary change in one's own country coincides with awareness of an international revolution. Old Social Democratic ideas give way in all countries to the new revolutionary ideas of Communism.

In all countries the hope of revolutionary masses rest in overthrowing the bourgeois power, in total destruction of its class power and in replacing it by workers' power. Revolutionary masses have lost their faith in old ways of fighting and goals, in leaders who have been hired by imperialists. A socialist consciousness will become the pragmatic all-life question making the demands for going over to socialism ever more common.

The private ownership has become in reality an useless brake to development. The system of production based on it have been given a death sentence. New, social means of production are expected to be taken into use, if any progress in economic and cultural development is really expected. The society is ready to go over to socialism. The revolutionary classes should bravely enter into realization of socialism in practise, not to stand and wait for some obscure socialism promised by chamber theorists to be true in some distant future.

It is out of the question that the proletariat, now awakened to class awareness and having tightened its ranks to class warfare, would support a democratic republic, no, the aim of the proletariat is a proletarian rule that usurps all political and economic power into its hands. The bourgeois state will be destroyed and replaced by a workers' state, in which the bourgeoisie is without legal rights and the working class commands every aspect of spiritual and economic life in the country.

A Socialist society for which the Communist Party works and fights is no new political goal for workers, on the contrary, it is an ideal that it has fostered long and which now has grown into a mature fruit by the latest economic development.

It is through to Socialist revolution how the working people of each country rescues themselves as well as the great cause of the proletariat in other countries, ending up in a unified international Soviet republic signalling the victory of the Socialist world order and strengthening it this way.

The Socialist Soviet republic of the Russian proletariat is in this sense, for the time being, the only proper Fatherland of the world revolutionary proletariat, to be safeguarded by Communists of all countries against imperialistic bandits, because the Socialist Soviet republic of Russia is the common combat weapon against the bourgeoisie and their tyranny in all countries.

Therefore, the Finnish Communist Party pronounces:

1. Workers should vigorously prepare themselves to an armed revolution, and turn down efforts to return to the old parliamentary, trade union and cooperative struggle, which was characteristic to workers' organizations in Finland before the revolution.

2. Only that kind of workers' movement and activity which guarantees the spread of Communism and the victory of the forth-coming workers' revolution is acceptable and should be energetically forwarded — other kinds of activities among the working people should be most decidedly condemned, revealed and opposed.

3. All power should be taken in their own hands by the working class, and an iron dictatorship of workers should be established — simply, the aim is in destroying of the bourgeois state, not democracy, not before the revolution or by the revolution.

4. Using the dictatorship of the proletariat a Communist political order should be created and all land and capitalistic property should be expropriated. Organized workers will through their own activity organize all production and distribution of products. The capitalistic exploitative system should not be reformed to a more tolerable one through amendments carried into being by revolution or before it.

5. An international workers' revolution and securing its victory should be promoted as effeciently as possible and all energy should be directed to support the Socialist Soviet republic of the Russian proletariat.

At this moment a bourgeois butcher power prevails in Finland. With bloody terror the bourgeoisie have tried to suppress workers' attempts to freedom. The blood of thousands of our comrades cries for revenge. Tens of thousands orphans and widows curse their oppressor and in starvation - they, suffering from pains, wait for the moment of liberation.

The strength of workers is now stricken down into a horrible class oppression, outweighed but not broken.

It will rise again.

Educated by this hard experience it finally will break the chains of terror of the butchers.

The bourgeoisie is already afraid of this. They use all their power and devilish skills to avoid the ever approaching day of reckoning.

The workers of Finland should carefully weigh their actions without letting themselves to be tempted to premature and imprudent exploits that only weaken its collective strength. Instead, the working class should collect and organize its total force for the forth-coming final, decisive battle.

Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution.

The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.

They have a world to win.

Source: What the Finnish Communist Party wants. Reports of meetings in Moscow Aug. 25 - Sept. 5, 1918. The Central Committee of the Finnish Communist Party. Petrograd, 1918. Translated from the Finnish version and its Swedish translation by Pauli Kruhse(2010).

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