The People’s Will Party’s Draft Program

First: The Vision

In the end, the victor is whoever wins ideologically. Therefore, it was necessary for the PWP to re-read the revolutionary movement during the 20th century in light of the Marxist-Leninist theory and in light of historical data, in order to form its own vision about the course of the conflict and its subsequent outcomes; a vision whose mission is to be the link between the general theory and the tangible reality:

1. The global revolutionary movement went through a phase of progress that occupied the first half of the 20th century, followed by a phase of general decline during the second half of the century. This decline, which culminated in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union, led to the temporary closure of historical prospects before the revolutionary movement and the temporary opening thereof before the global imperialism forces.
   
   
2. Nevertheless, the global capitalist system, which naturally produces new crises that are always larger and deeper than the ones that preceded them, quickly plunged it and humanity with it, since the beginning of the third millennium, into a great crisis that may be final for the global capitalist system, which has exhausted its horizontal expansion, and moved to a phase in which its destructive actions against human and nature are accelerating (and implicitly, systematic dissemination of deadly diseases). The current crisis closes historical prospects before capitalism and, in turn, opens them before the revolutionary process forces. This puts human civilization at a crossroads: either a new socialism based on the positives of the experience that preceded it and overcoming its mistakes, and that is in the event that humanity has the subjective factor, i.e., organized and conscious revolutionary forces; otherwise, if it is not sufficiently available, the door will be open to comprehensive barbarism that has begun to do its damage in vast areas of the world, especially in our region.
   
   
3. Within capitalism, the great capitalist crisis deepened the division within the capitalist camp itself between the American-European imperialist center on the one hand, and the “BRICS” rising powers on the other. This led to a new international balance in which the American unipolarity ended. Not to say that the new polarization will be similar to the one that prevailed during the Cold War. Rather, it is a temporary dual polarization that will before long shift towards a dualism on the global level between the pole of the peoples on the one hand and the capitalist system as a whole on the other. This is because the peoples of the “BRICS” countries (for example), and within the framework of their national struggle to defend their territorial integrity and national interests in the face of imperialism that is governed by the expansion of war and exploitation, are gradually turning against capitalism itself as an economic-social system. This is in line with the interest of the peoples of the Third World, whose national struggle against the imperialist West and against Zionism merges more and more with its socioeconomic struggle. This deep harmony of interests prompts the crystallization of the peoples pole in the face of the capitalist pole, regardless of the various political and international circumstances that will be one form of this true dualism; that is, the peoples-capitalism dualism.

4. The talk about a transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar world is only a superficial description of the transformation taking place globally; the matter is more complex, deeper, and more far-reaching.

   The current transition completes a historical cycle that spans approximately 400-500 years. This is because it radically changes the geopolitical nature of international trade and relations on which European colonialism and its American dimension were based. That is, it undermines exclusive dependence on maritime trade routes as the main trade routes globally, which have always been in the hands of the Western fleets, and the Western-occupied coasts, particularly in the ancient world. The crucial complementary part of this exclusivity is the political division and the fabrication of various types of conflicts and intra-conflicts in the ancient world and managing them, such that chunks of land remain isolated from one another and only open only to the sea. The BRICS, Shanghai, and Astana systems are living examples of breaking this trade exclusivity and starting to disrupt the historical fault lines from which the West benefited, and a significant part of which the West itself created.

   This transition gradually undermines unequal exchange relations at the global level, that is, economic colonialism with its various mechanisms, including technological dependence, price cuts, loans, and brain drain. This would allow the release of enormous dormant energies in all “periphery countries”.

   This transition is towards a new type of international relations; yes, a transition from unipolarity, but through a temporary bipolarity that we are experiencing now, and towards non-polarity, where parity among states and peoples is the actual basis for all international relations.

   The process of American retreat, about which the revolutionaries have always preached, and which we are witnessing today, is not just a retreat of an imperialist pole, but rather a retreat and decline of the entire imperialist capitalist system, and it is the re-opening of history’s door to more mature socialist experiences that are more viable and sustainable.

5. In terms of the tangible form of the transition to a new world, it should be noted that this transition is governed by being a cumulative transition. Cumulative transition does not in any way mean gradual transition. To put it more clearly, what is happening is a process of accumulating points when it reaches a sufficient threshold, the opponent will collapse as if by a knockout blow, but without a knockout blow.

   This transition is bound to take place in a comprehensive and simultaneous manner in the various arenas: economic, military, cultural, ideological, and technical, locally, regionally, and internationally, including aspects tied to international law, international institutions, etc. This is because leaving any loophole for the imperialist center means prolonging the battle, maximizing losses, and opening possibilities for recoil.

   Accordingly, if the process of liberation from old colonialism has actually begun after the new international balance of power became clear post-WWII, then currently, things may occur the other way. Ending the existing world order and moving towards a new world necessarily passes through “points”, that is, through resolving a number of local and regional conflicts against the American-Zionist-Western interest. Resolving them needs to be in parallel and simultaneously, so that their collective outcome is equivalent to the knockout blow.

   None of the crises created post-WWII, especially after completion of the modern colonial system, and until now, has been resolved yet. These crises are now candidates not only for a solution, but to be resolved simultaneously and in parallel. This includes the Palestinian issue, the Syrian and Yemeni files, the Renaissance Dam file, the Saudi-Iranian conflict file, and the multiple conflict files in Asia and elsewhere, among others.

6. The global transition in question is precisely the new form of the “general crisis” of the capitalist system, which pushed and is pushing the imperialist center countries to more aggressiveness. This center has become governed by war and steadily expanding its zone, leading to igniting large areas of the world, especially the “tension arc” region, with a number of internal wars based on secondary divisions: sectarian, ethnic, and national, etc. This has become the case after this center’s entry into direct military wars became more and more difficult as its crisis deepens.
   
   
7. In this context, Ukraine is not a side or secondary conflict, and its consequences are not immediate or temporary. The current confrontation is a turning point whose results are starting to emerge, and with time they will become more apparent on four main levels: a) the dollar’s global dominance will go towards an accelerated decline, and with it the tools of unequal exchange will also decline and retreat; b) all international institutions that emerged after WWII will be reconfigured; c) changes will include starting to end NATO, and ending it for good; and d) all regional systems will be reconfigured at the global level, in line with the basic determinants of the new world.
   
   
8. In the global context, and in the countries of the periphery, decades ago, “neo-Malthusianism” was put into practice, which took shape in a new way some time ago in what has become known as the “Great Reset”. This includes a number of control operations with a global dimension that uses various types of informational and psychological weapons, along with real weapons, including biological weapons, within a specific target of striking the productive forces, both material and human, whose development has put pressure on the existing method of production, i.e., on capitalism itself. Achieving this target includes very diverse mechanisms, including working to break up various countries and various societies, all the way to their smallest units, especially the family, leading to breaking down the human being himself, psychologically and socially. This implicitly includes deepening secondary divisions on sexual, ethnic, and cultural basis, so that there are no possibilities to gather and mobilize people on conscious basis and based on what serves their interests. That is, weakening the possibilities of organized action against capitalism as a socioeconomic formation.
   
   
9. As for the “Third World” in particular, the crisis prompted the imperial center in the first decade of the 21st century to speed up introducing the Trojan horse – savage liberalism thereinto, so that the center could vent its crisis through it. To do that, the imperial center relied on a complex solution with two parts: the internal part of which is liberalism, which destroys and corrupts the civil part of the state apparatus and raises the levels of social tension; and that is complemented with the external part with military aggression in various degrees, which seeks to destroy the military part of the state apparatus.
   
   
10. To activate the economically liberal model in the countries of the periphery, which is a necessarily dependent model and weak in productivity. There had to be a final break with any political freedoms or political liberalism of the kind that accompanied the traditional liberal model 200 years ago. Conversely, it was necessary to deepen the rule of repressive military dictatorships capable of imposing an unfair and deadly distribution of wealth on the peoples of those countries.

11. In our region, the Great East region extending from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, it was also necessary to find a new ideological cloak, so “moderate” political Islam – Muslim Brotherhood as a model – was inseparable from and a generator of political sectarianism as a tool to perpetuate the clashing and weaken and fragment the forces.

    This “moderate” political Islam is advancing in conjunction with its own tool of intrusion, i.e., “extremist” political Islam – ISIS as a model – where facts show that the function of the “extremist” is only to pave the way for the “moderate” and the two are, in the end, two sides of the same coin.

    Within the landscape of the forces of political Islam – completely different from the popular religious current that will be mentioned later – the global Muslim Brotherhood organization emerges in particular as a new fascism that was created and reinforced by global finance capital, which pushed it to the forefront more in recent years to perform the same task that the Nazis of the 20th century tried to play.

12. The exacerbation of the capitalist crisis in the center and its liberal derivatives in the periphery leads to a qualitative leap in the state of social dissatisfaction, which is practically measured as a result of three coordinates, which are the social ramifications of the position of the ruling authority: national, socioeconomic, and democratic.

    Modern history attests that the popular movement is linked to the aforementioned state of satisfaction or lack thereof, and goes through successive bouts of movement and dormancy. When the state of social dissatisfaction reaches certain levels, the masses enter a state of effective and active movement that lasts for decades until it achieves the necessary changes to restore the state of satisfaction. The movement then enters a bout of dormancy that also extends for decades, which is ended by renewed high degrees of dissatisfaction.

13. The history of the 20th century witnessed in its first half an effective, active, and widespread popular political activity, the result of which was bolstering the Soviet Union, the socialist states system, and the welfare states model or the European welfare state, and completing the first round of the tasks of the national liberation movement in the Third World countries. On the other hand, the second half of the century, in which the popular movement became dormant and witnessed at the end of it nearly all of these achievements collapsing, paved the way for the new rising bout of the widespread mass movement that benefited from the experience of past victories and defeats. This means that the global mass movement that started at the beginning of the current century has become more concentrated and massive at the beginning of its second decade, will not be a temporary or fleeting movement, but will continue for more decades to come and its organization will steadily escalate until it reaches its goals.

14. This also means that the real revolutionary parties that strive to direct the popular movement in the most profound and radical directions must start their struggle from the highest platform of knowledge reached by the experience of the previous round of the global popular and revolutionary movement, i.e., from that platform on which the revolutionaries stood at the end of WWII.

    The popular movement also opens the door wide for reconsideration of the idea of Arab unity as a unity of the interests of the Arab peoples in the face of global imperialism and Zionism in general, and in the face of the Zionist entity in particular. It also develops this idea towards the unity of the peoples of the Great East extending from the Caspian to the Mediterranean, since the collapse and fragmentation of this region is the only way, not only for America to escape from its crisis, but for the continuation of the entire global capitalist system.

15. On the other hand, the return of the masses to the arena of political action, albeit a gradual and increasingly organized return, nevertheless once it starts, it will mean announcing the death of the old political space formed in the 1940s and 1950s. It will also mean the start of birth of the new political space that will actually form in the womb of the revolutionary change process, which will include the new as well those from the old who can adapt.

    When people are involved in shaping the new political space, the ideological facades will not be an obstacle to their movement, because the struggle based on those facades belongs to a bygone era. The decisive factor in attracting the people, in their various alliances, and the litmus test for them, will be the political programs of the various forces, with those programs’ socioeconomic, patriotic, and democratic coordinates. People will not be enticed – except temporarily – by the ideological slogans and headings of those forces, and they will distinguish between the actual left and the nominal left, and between the actual right and the nominal right, based on the same three coordinates: patriotic, socioeconomic, democratic.

16. In response, the counter-revolution forces – which by nature belong to the old political space – have worked and will work to protect themselves from the torrent of the masses that threatens them with annihilation, by splitting it vertically and diverting it from the real struggle towards secondary forms of conflict that make it lose its energy and shed its blood. In addition to suppressing and exercising extreme violence against it, the internal and global counter-revolution forces are working to create a group of imaginary dichotomies, according to which the poor align along opposite fronts, some of which reap the lives of others. To achieve this, these forces dig imaginary trenches into which the masses are pushed, not the least dangerous of which are sectarian trenches. In addition to these, there are imaginary trenches of imaginary dichotomies and imaginary conflicts, such as: secular-religious, liberal-Islamic, opponent-loyalist, regime-opposition, and so on.

17. Capitalism – in its endeavor to hide the real conflict between it and the peoples of the world, and to cover the real conflict within the logic of imaginary dichotomies with a number of imaginary secondary conflicts – worked particularly within the Great East region throughout the 20th century and until now to get the three main popular currents in this region to clash against one another. These three currents are the left, the nationalist, and the religious, all of which – as popular currents – are deeply hostile to American imperialism and global Zionism, which was not always exhibited by their political representations. This created a loophole that allowed imperialism to make its way in and depict the differences among these popular currents as unresolvable contradictions, which allowed imperialism to present more imaginary dichotomies like left-nationalist, left-Islamist, and nationalist-Islamist.

    Meanwhile, the two true trenches remain the trench of the oppressed and exploited in the face of their oppressors and exploiters, and the trench of the peoples in the face of global imperialism and Zionism, its allies, and those that let it in, which are the forces of corruption, economic liberalism, and political Islam with both its sides, the “moderate” and the “extremist”.

18. The lines along which the two real class camps are sorted also apply to the state apparatus, and in parallel in society, especially in the periphery countries where the state apparatus is inflated. The task of deepening real sorting within the inflated state apparatus emerges as an indispensable necessity to preserve the state itself, and to achieve the radical changes and the required historical and revolutionary missions.

    The process of real sorting between the exploited and the exploiters in each of society, the state apparatus, and the various political forces, is an objective necessity that is complemented by the subjective factor represented by the revolutionary forces presenting their integrated political programs (national, socioeconomic, and democratic), and their tangible struggle for these programs to gather the oppressed masses around them, in order to speed up the sorting, reduce its costs, and take it forward towards its logical ends.

    This sorting process, and in the Syrian specificity, definitively passes through a comprehensive political solution based on the full implementation of UNSC Resolution 2254, which in and of itself has become an expression of the new international balance.

    This sorting process, through a political solution, is the only way to achieve the required historical decisive events, represented in the Syrian case by ending the catastrophe and restoring the unity of the country and its people, its independence, and its people’s sovereignty over it, leading to the contemporary national democratic revolution, a revolution in which the tasks of the national democratic revolution with its political-democratic character merge with deep social class tasks.

    Such a revolution is a completion of the tasks of the national liberation movement. What is essentially relevant to our region within this context is the liberation of all the occupied Arab lands, primarily the Golan Heights and historic Palestine, and resolving the Kurdish issue based on attaining all the cultural and civil rights for Syrian Kurds.

19. In imperialist countries, the task materializes in the form of achieving the new socialist revolution; a socialism in the 21st century that is based on all the positives of previous experiences and aware of all its mistakes.

    While it seems today on the surface that the current international transition is from a unipolar to a multipolar world, the transformation is immeasurably more profound than that. It is a geopolitical transformation that carries within it a shift of the center of gravity of global influence from the West to the East, and it is an expression of the end of a historical era that extended for more than four centuries in which the West was the main dominant, relying on maritime trade and colonial plundering in its two phases: direct and military, then indirect and economic through the dollar and unequal exchange system.

    The process of striking the unequal exchange that is now in full swing, as well as striking the positioning of the dollar as the sole and dominant global currency, leading to the production of a new currency that derives its value from real production and guarantees the rights of all, does not merely mean the end of a global financial system and the emergence of a new one. Rather, it means the emergence of a new international political system, as well as new regional and local systems.

Second: The Syrian Crisis

• The Syrian crisis did not start on March 15, 2011, but rather it erupted on that date, after a decades-long accumulation of problems and crises on the socioeconomic, political, and cultural levels.
• Over the past five decades, and apart from the formal designations of the adopted economic and political model, the change in the method of distributing wealth between those who earn wages and those who make profits has been along a constant general trend, which those who make profits acquire greater and greater percentages of the national income, while those who earn wages get less and less percentages.
• In parallel, on the national side, the Zionist entity has played its functional role to the fullest over the past five decades, and it has been a major source of attrition for the Syrian people, its forces, and wealth. The Zionist entity’s presence and occupation of the Syrian Golan were used, under the slogan that “no sound is louder than the sound of battle”, not to serve the national battle against it, but rather and on the contrary, to cover up the great corruption and continuously cut political freedoms.
• As the “sound of the battle” continued, and with the economic transformations that reduced the share of wage earners, the level of political freedoms in the country followed suit; thus, the smaller the share of wage earners in wealth, the lower the level of political freedoms.
• Officially adopting the so-called “social market economy” in 2005 greatly accelerated all the negative processes that had been accumulating over decades. This increased the poverty rate in an unprecedented manner in Syria’s modern history, as well as the unemployment rate, and causing severe damage to all real production sectors in the country, in the interest of revenue-generating sectors whose profits went into the pockets of an influential plundering few.
• In essence, the liberalization of the economy was not just a “Western infection” that the influential people were seduced or intimidated to adopt through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Rather, it was at the same time a “natural development” of the internal corruption that transitioned over more than five decades, from a mere bureaucratic bourgeoisie to a parasitic bourgeoisie, and then into finance capital with the transition towards the blatant liberalization in 2005. It then completed its development during the crisis towards complete rottenness by transforming into criminal finance capital operating in various criminal activities, especially narcotics.
• The developments of internal corruption in Syria coincided with major global transformations, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, and then the comprehensive American attack on the Middle East during the first two decades of this century, during which it became clear, relatively early on, the upcoming great rise of both China and Russia. In this context, the West, led by the US, did not spare any opportunity to work on transforming the objective eruption and popular movement that took place in Syria towards a “color revolution” and a civil war.
• The extremists within the regime, and their counterparts within the opposition, and those who share their Western whim economically and politically, have worked to deepen and prolong the crisis. They have rejected dialogue and a political solution for years, and despite their formal acceptance of it today, they are still working against it in every possible way.
• Outside the framework of the imaginary regime-opposition dichotomy, patriotic and democratic opposition forces, including the PWP, struggled for dialogue, a political solution, and radical change from the outset, and remained steadfast in their positions despite nonstop attempts to contain, break, or soften them. The guidance for these forces was the interest of the people, not the temporary, vengeful attitude that repression, violence, and the media played important roles in constantly fueling.
• Over the last 12 years, major transformations have taken place not only internationally, but also regionally. Perhaps the most prominent of these is the formation of the Astana group, which includes Russia, Turkey, and Iran, which managed to achieve a real ceasefire, and recently moved towards grabbing the initiative in implementing the political solution through UNSC Resolution 2254, which was adopted at the end of 2015.
• Likewise, a parallel development has emerged at the Arab level, where features of independence from subordination to the West, and particularly to the Americans, have begun to appear through the behavior of a number of key Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia. It has become possible and necessary to work to achieve high coordination between Astana and the Arab group led by Saudi Arabia to reach a comprehensive implementation of a political solution in Syria on the basis of UNSC Resolution 2254 and primarily based on the Syrian people’s right to self-determination.
• Completely getting out of the current crisis will not be achieved through a political solution alone, as this solution is just a starting point to stop the process of collapse and start resolving the accumulated crises, which requires clear programs in all the main areas: national, democratic, socioeconomic, and cultural.

Third: The Stage and Our Tasks

The deep interconnection, to the point of merging, among the three issues: national, socioeconomic, and democratic, is the only scientific approach to interpreting the Syrian reality correctly in a way that allows changing it.

It is not possible to form a national resistance position amid an economy that favors capital at the expense of the people who constitute the body and soul of the resistance. Nor can it be formed amid an ornamental democracy that considers the interests of the big corruption figures and represses anyone whose voice rises in their face.

Likewise, an economy that is biased towards the people is necessarily associated with a national stance hostile to the colonial West, which does not allow, within any degree of relationship with it, strong and independent economies. A strong and people-biased economy requires high popular oversight over the state apparatus, guaranteed by broad popular political freedoms.

Also likewise, political freedoms lose any value when the country is subordinate in its political or economic position; suppressing them even becomes a necessity to reinforce the subordination.

Based on this deep interconnection, presenting an honest and integrated political program to the Syrian people would not get through without this or that political force making clear its position on the three issues without any form of ambiguity.

The integrated position has additional importance in the era of contemporary national democratic revolution, which is the mission that must be achieved in Third World countries and in our Syria, as it is the revolution in which the overall national democratic political tasks are deeply integrated with the socioeconomic tasks.

1. The National Side

   The continuous sharp decline of the global imperialist pole implicitly means a parallel retreat of the Zionist enemy and a possible demise thereof. It also necessarily means putting up for serious discussion the question of the continued existence of the Zionist entity.

   In this context, the “Abraham Accords” and the “Arab NATO” projects and the like are nothing more than miserable attempts to protect the Zionist entity from the general decline of the Western imperialist center. Reality has proven that these projects are doomed to total failure, a few years after their launch, especially since the great Palestinian resistance has made great strides forward in organizing its ranks, transforming into a comprehensive resistance that includes all means and tools all over Palestine, so that the Zionist entity is living an unescapable continuous nightmare.

   Since historical logic says that the people must pursue their retreating enemy with strikes to finish it off, the transition of Syria from a state of reluctance to resistance leading to the liberation of all occupied territories. In addition to this always being a national necessity, it is today a realistic possibility.

   Considering that the history of conflict with the usurping Zionist entity has proven beyond any doubt that political and diplomatic games are nothing but distractions that do not produce anything, the choice of comprehensive and armed popular resistance as a basis has turned into the only option.

   Moving forward with the choice of popular resistance requires strengthening and developing regional alliances, and continuously reviewing them in accordance with the requirements of the resistance itself. This also includes the need to take clear positions not only on the Zionist entity, but also on those who have normalized with it and their projects, including in Syria itself.

   In parallel, the recent crisis has forced the Syrian national identity to be at a crossroads. The first choice is to go back to the pre-national state; and the second is to deepen national affiliation and activate it at the expense of all secondary affiliations, which requires a socioeconomic and democratic stance that is fully biased towards the impoverished and oppressed classes. This position would transform the Syrian state from a state that sponsors the interests of “businessmen”, as it was in the first decade of this century, into a state of real producers.

   Within the equation of restoring the unity of the country and its people, having a national and unified military institution occupies an important position as a basic guarantor of national unity. This requires deep reform that continuously consolidates the ranks of the military institution and prevents any side from fragmenting or weakening it.

   Additionally, the general retreat of the imperialist enemy will reflect major geopolitical changes in the Great East region, which will open the door wide to reconsidering Sykes-Picot based on the unification of the peoples of the Great East and resolving outstanding issues such as the Kurdish issue within this logic.

   This means that letting go of the fragmentation and fissures discourse has become an essential task for preserving the unity of Syrian land and people and opening the door before its people to activate creative cooperation with the peoples of the region within the framework of these peoples’ collective interest.

   The Syrian refugee crisis is an essential part of the overall Syrian crisis; and working on the return of the largest possible number of Syrian refugees to their country, especially ones with qualifications, should get continuous attention and persistence.

   The Syrian refugee crisis in its most general form did not begin in 2011, but decades before that. In this sense, it is part of the global migration from the “global” south to the north, which was intensified by the security, military, and economic aspects of the crisis. This means that refugees’ return requires not only that a refugee secure his life from war or political repression from whatever side, but also that he finds socioeconomic security and real opportunities to build a decent life. This cannot be resolved only through a political solution and through the implementation of UNSC Resolution 2254. Rather, it requires a political solution that opens the door to a radical and comprehensive change in the structure of the state in the interest of all Syrians and against the interests of the plunderers and the great corruption figures. It also requires a new pattern of international relations for Syria based on equal exchange and not on Western plundering of the country and its resources. In a word, the return of refugees necessarily passes through a comprehensive socioeconomic, political, and cultural reconstruction process in cooperation with the rising world powers, and against the interests of the West, particularly the Zionists.

2. The Socioeconomic Side

   Over the past few decades, Syria has tried two economic models. The first model was wrongly called “socialist transformation”, but it was actually a strong interventionist state capitalism, and depended, in addition to real production, on political profiting. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of oil countries’ aid, the shift towards economic liberalism began, led by the illusion of searching for foreign investments and included extensive “restructuring” operations that brought the Syrian economy to high levels of production decline, which brought the country to historically unprecedented levels of poverty and unemployment, and paved the way for the post-March 2011 events.

   There was an urgent need to formulate an alternative economic model that breaks completely with the notorious economic liberalism and benefits from the advantages and disadvantages of the stage called “socialist transformation”.

   A new model whose primary slogan is “the deepest social justice for the highest economic growth”, meaning that any subsequent growth is no longer possible without a serious redistribution of national wealth in the interest of the productive forces. Currently, wealth (national income) is distributed as follows: 80% for profit makers who do not exceed 10% of the population, and 20% for wage earners who make up about 90% of the population. Breaking and correcting this distribution form to make it as an initial step around 50%-50% needs between 5 and 7 years within a strong, smart, and flexible role for the state, controlled by the highest levels of popular oversight.

    

   The general features of the new economic model, the details of which must be completed, are:

   • Turning East, in the sense of radically modifying economic relations with the colonial West, in the interest of economic relations that preserve the Syrian political position and allow the Syrian economy to develop real production.
   • Solving the old and new problems of poverty and unemployment, in addition to the reconstruction process, requires achieving growth figures of no less than 10% annually. In order to achieve a growth figure of this size, the annual accumulation level in the real productive sectors must be raised to around 30% of the national income, and the level of return to at least 33%.
   • As for the financing of the reconstruction process, it must turn to two main sources: demanding compensation from the countries that played roles in deepening the Syrian crisis, and seizing the wealth plundered by the large corruption. Later comes borrowing from abroad in case of extreme necessity and within the criteria of national sovereignty.
   • The state must: seize private sector companies with high revenues, especially cellular communication companies; dismiss private investments from sovereign sectors such as ports; and seize oil, gas, and all underground resources companies, in terms of production, transportation, and marketing, so that their revenues constitute the main supporter in the reconstruction process and subsequent investment.
   • Linking wages to prices by adopting a real consumption basket that is monitored and based on which wages are adjusted periodically, at a rate of no more than every three months, so that the wage scale begins at the minimum standard of living determined by the price of the consumption basket, and increases are financed from real, non-inflationary sources.

    

   The program to increase the Syrian economy’s return includes:

   • Manufacturing raw materials as much as possible locally, and completely prevent exporting them in their raw form.
   • Mega projects funded and managed by the state.
   • Activating absolute advantages in the Syrian economy and focusing scientific research on new absolute advantages because of their very high return.
   • Protecting the environment and dealing with it as the main resource of all absolute advantages.
   • The hotspots for economic growth in the Syrian desert.
   • Organizing agro-industrial complexes in all parts of the country so everything that comes into and out of them is interconnected.
   • Supporting the agricultural sector in terms of loans and facilitations in terms of fuel, fertilizers, pesticides, seeds, and means of production.
   • Activating wastewater treatment through a large number of small water treatment processors and making public advanced irrigation policies that are subsidized by the state, in order to achieve water security.
   • Based on all of this, drawing up an investment map and providing facilitations to exclusively productive private sector to participate therein.

    

   An economic model that is deeply just and high in growth will allow resolving all the mounting social tasks in the country:

   • Ensuring free education in all its stages for all members of society.
   • Providing free health insurance.
   • Residential reconstruction and expansion in order to solve the old and new housing problem, by zeroing the price of the land, and removing real estate that the state builds from the goods market by completely preventing trading or leasing them. This will reduce the price of real estate by up to 70%, in addition to a broad monopolization of building materials by the state.
   • Reconsidering the costs of electricity and water for those with limited income by zeroing the costs for the lower consumption segments and charging their costs to those with higher consumption.
   • Activating the use of renewable energies suitable for the Syrian investment climate based on the rule of importing knowledge that does not require complex technology, which is achieved by many renewable energy applications with small and medium production volumes.

3. The Democratic Side

   • A presidential-parliamentary system, in which executive powers are distributed between the institution of the presidency on the one hand and the government on the other, and in which parliament is given the right to actually supervise them by giving it the power to give them confidence and withhold it from them partially or completely.
   • Establishing a real separation of powers, overriding Article 3 of the current constitution that derogates Syrians’ citizenship and equality, and developing Article 9 – which considers Syrian diversity a richness – towards consolidating the full cultural rights of all nationalities of the Syrian people, including Syrian Kurds.
   • A new formula for the relationship between centralization and decentralization, which makes them two tools of empowering the people with authority, so that Syrians exercise their authority starting from where they live all the way to choosing the central authorities.
   • A parliamentary election law that is proportional and in which Syria is a single district, which allows for competition based on comprehensive political programs, thus allowing for strengthening the political movement and reinforcing the unifying national identity.
   • Adopting proportionality in all forms of local elections.
   • In parallel, establishing a second chamber within parliament, which is the result of elections in the areas, and is a central extension of the decentralized popular authorities in the areas.
   • Guaranteeing independence of the judiciary from the executive and legislative powers, and especially its independence from the Ministry of Justice.
   • Guaranteeing the freedom of political, union, and labor activity, including the right to protest and strike in its broadest forms, and opening channels of public influence over the state apparatus and placing it under permanent popular oversight.
   • Restructuring the security services by defining the function, the national role, and clear powers, subjecting them to legal and judicial accountability, and giving the government the right to monitor and hold them accountable through the independent judiciary.
   • Guaranteeing the rights of thought and expression, stopping all forms of repression and arbitrary detention, and limiting the conditions for imposing a state of emergency and martial law in only three cases: natural disasters, the state of war, and the war on the big corruption.
   • A media law that guarantees for the various national currents their freedom of expression and guarantees society’s expression of itself with the highest credibility.
   • Completely getting rid of the personal status law dating back to the Ottoman occupation era and drafting a new law that guarantees real equality between men and women, including the right of women to pass citizenship to their children.

4. The Cultural Side

   • The main starting point in the process of building a national cultural project is breaking the imaginary atonement-liberalism dichotomy, within which the “elites” of the retreat phase got lost.
   • As for getting out of atonement, it means reviving the true folklore of Syria as part of a historically and culturally rich region, which is the region of the Great East, with its abundant and rich diversity and its deep communal heritage.
   • Getting out of liberalism means negating the imported modernity theories, breaking imported models and patterns in favor of local theoretical standards and in favor of local national and historical symbols.
   • Enshrine the inclusive national identity and the culture of resistance through educational policies as part of comprehensive cultural policies.
   • Cultivating the child culture through necessitating having cultural production specific for the Syrian child: puppet theater, magazines, a specialized channel.
   • Restoring status of national symbols and symbols of resistance within social awareness, especially among children, and in the educational process.
   • Enhancing the role of culture in overcoming the crisis and its disastrous consequences, especially psychological and social ones.
   • Documenting and publishing Syrian books electronically, re-archiving national libraries electronically, and making the archives available to the public.
   • Dealing with the heritage in its various branches as an absolute advantage as it is a Syrian heritage and protecting and investing in it on this basis.
   • Documenting everything related to heritage on film (audio and visually) to protect it, using modern technology, and establishing a documentary library for this purpose, in addition to websites and electronic forums dedicated for publishing it.

5. The Women’s Issue

   The PWP fights for the liberation of women laborers, who work with their arms and brains, and sees the issue of women as a class issue par excellence, for which female and male comrades struggle side by side.

   The work of many bourgeois feminist organizations in Syria to explain the injustice that befell women, far from its connection to the socioeconomic and capitalist formation that is subordinate with its infrastructure and superstructure, is an attempt to obscure the clear class enemy. Additionally, isolating the issue of women from other issues does not only lead to weakening it, but also to failing to interpret it and thus failing to achieve the just change that it seeks.

   One of the most dangerous things that the neoliberal agenda of the global elites is working on is the fierce attack on all forms of social solidarity, including the family. The forced deprivation of family for the poor and oppressed in general, and the work to promote the concepts of “individualism” and “gender types”, all of this leads to the dismantling and fragmentation of societies and thus closes the paths towards their unification and their organized action against their oppressors.

   In this context, two extreme tendencies emerge in dealing with the issue of women. One of them adopts the neoliberal agenda; while the other, within the framework of reacting – often unconsciously – resorts within the framework of self-defense to extreme forms of conservatism and restriction. The humane and revolutionary trend in dealing with the issue of women is one that seeks to prevent the fragmentation of the family, and to benefit from it as a tool for the cohesion of society in light of the processes of mass subjugation. However, at the same time, it is a trend that does not sanctify the established form of the family and turns a blind eye to the problems of this sort, especially the rightful grievances that still exist for women and children alike.

   In specific Syrian context, the most important points that should be urgently achieved in the issue of women are the following:

   1- As a result of the long years of crisis and emptying the country of its population, the urgent need for all expertise to engage in rebuilding the country is increasing. The criminal ethics towards women in the workplace, which were accumulated during the years of crisis in the absence of law, especially in the private sector, and the spreading of the shadow economy, made exploitation of women multiply to include not only exploiting her labor, but also humiliating her dignity as a female, leaving her with the option of surrendering to the fait accompli and what that entails of psychological pain and human injustice, or reluctance to work and the societal loss that this entails. Therefore, developing labor laws that protect women is a democratic, national, and economic necessity par excellence.

   2- Likewise, while brain drain is a problem linked to modern colonialism affecting both sexes, there are multiple reasons added to all the reasons for the migration of Syrian youth, which increase the forces of rejection of the female labor force in Syria. These reasons include the failure to ensure a healthy work environment free from harassment and dealing with inferiority to women. In this context, there must be laws that are fair to working women in cases of harassment at work and protect them from dismissal, and mechanisms that allow for fair career development.

   3- Reconsidering the entire legal system, including the Constitution and Personal Status Laws, in a way that ensures complete equality between women and men. Giving Syrian women the right to grant citizenship to their children, especially after the waves of immigration and asylum that accompanied the Syrian crisis.

   4- Raising, nurturing, and educating children is a joint responsibility of both men and women and society represented by the state apparatus. This means that providing free childcare and kindergartens, and free education in all its stages, is the responsibility of society-state, and it is a right that should be established constitutionally and in practice.

   5- Just as securing electricity was a pivotal point in the development of the productive forces, securing electricity and the Internet at reasonable prices has become a pivotal point for the state to adopt for the development of the productive forces. In the case of women, this expands the possibility of education, self-learning, and work via the Internet also for women in remote rural areas.

Fourth: The Party

The PWP seeks to become the conscious and organized vanguard of the working class and all other toilers who work with their arms and brains in Syria.

As a party, it works to play its functional-historical role, which means confirming its ability to consciously control the current socioeconomic processes in the country and direct them in the interest of meeting the interests of the popular masses.

The Party constructs its activities based on the principles of democratic centralism, which means the broadest democracy when the decision is discussed before it is taken, and the highest centrality to implement the decision after it is taken.

Centralization and democracy are two sides of one process that is dialectically interconnected, and these two sides do not negate each other, but rather need each other. It is the expansion of party democracy internally that gives the center the ability to lead at the highest levels of discipline and centralization.

The Party is the tool for implementing the political program, and it is not an end in itself. This requires caring for it, building it, preserving it, and continuously developing it so that it can play the role assigned to it.

While the Party is called on to be the vanguard of the popular masses, it is not a substitute for them, as it is the organizer of their struggles, which presents them with an example and model of sacrifice, self-denial, courage, and putting the interests of society above all other interests.

Democratic centralism in the concrete conditions of the Party’s activity in the country means:

• Having one center leading the Party nationwide.
• The minority abiding by the decision of the majority.
• The lower bodies abiding by the decisions of higher bodies.
• Democratic election of leaders at various levels.

The forms of the Party’s organization of its ranks and bodies are flexible, subject to concrete conditions, are determined by the bylaws, and their aim is to secure the highest effectiveness of the Party in society.

The Party will continue to strive to be the true and legitimate heir to all the struggles of the revolutionaries and communists in Syria during the 20th century, and it is a continuation of these struggles carried out by tens of thousands of activists.

The People’s Will Party will draw on all the struggle heritage in the history of the Syrian people and develop it to reach a principled, flexible, strong, and intelligent party that maintains principles and is capable of creating solutions.

 (النسخة العربية)