Updating the manifesto
Recently a group of elders and young activists met at Kōtuku School for Social Change and workshopped the updating of the Communist Manifesto, the thirty page document that changed the world by making the new founded proletariat aware of their position in society. This is a summary of the update.
Whakaaturanga o te iwi noa
The Manifesto of the Commons
A Call to All Who Labour, Create, and Resist in the 21st Century
The time for reform is over.
The time for revolution is now.
We have a world to win.
- A Spectre Haunts the World
A new revolution is stirring. Across the globe, people rise against systems of greed, extraction, and control. Let it be clear: we seek not to repair capitalism but to replace it — with a world grounded in care, cooperation, and justice.
2. The System We Confront
The history of every society is the history of class struggle. Today, that struggle takes new forms— digital, colonial, ecological. Neoliberalism promised freedom and delivered: privatisation of the commons; gig economies and precarity; surveillance disguised as convenience; rising inequality and ecological breakdown. Its collapse gives birth to neo-fascism, feeding on fear and crushing dissent.
3. Who Are We?
We are the multitude. We are workers, creators, carers, teachers, coders. We are indigenous communities defending land and memory. We are women, queer and trans people defying control. We are youth inheriting a planet on fire. We are migrants crossing borders made to cage us. We are artists, healers, and thinkers demanding that knowledge and technology serve life, not profit.
4. What We Want
We struggle for the abolition of systems that extract labour, nature, and spirit — and for a society organised around care, cooperation, and freedom. We demand: universal basic needs as rights; democratic control of the economy; a digital commons; ecological restoration; open borders of belonging; and the defeat of fascism.
5. What Is To Be Done?
Let us unite across borders, identities, and communities. Let us organise in workplaces, neighbourhoods, schools, and online. Let us build new forms of democracy — radical, participatory, rooted in local assemblies and global cooperation. We refuse the dying order of modernity. We work for the rebirth of the commons — where no one is disposable and everyone is free.
6. Transition Strategies for Aotearoa
Restore and extend the commons: land, water, housing, energy, food, culture, health, and technology. Reconcile colonial oppression; honour manawhenua knowledge and leadership. Heal the metabolism between labour and nature. Produce only what is socially useful. Defund the military and invest in communities. Provide manaakitanga to those displaced by global injustice. Accept degrowth. Audit progress collectively. Ensure every transition is just.
7. The Role of the Party / Movement
We, the multitude, call ourselves communists once more — not as dogma, but as praxis. We work in networks: by locality, indigeneity, occupation, gender, sexuality, and climate. We act, not merely resist. We decolonise ourselves, embody our values, and share consciousness openly. We meet, learn, and respond to crises together. We act in solidarity.
8. We Have Only Our Chains to Lose
Join us. Share this vision. Act locally, think globally. From each according to their ability — to each according to their need.
For a copy of the full manifesto email wkcultur@gmail.com