Tasks and Perspectives
Adopted November 2023
1. The epoch of global transition to socialism has seemingly been stalled in the face of the collapse of the 20th Century ‘actually existing socialist’ states, as a result of the mutual reinforcement of their encirclement by the imperialist camp as well as their own bureaucratic degeneration. Those regimes and the formal schools of thought associated with them, though they dramatically changed history, especially in the colonial and semi-colonial world, have ultimately shown to be a dead end to socialism in a similar manner to other failed historical transitions, such as the medieval Italian bourgeois merchant republics acting as dead ends to capitalist society. The result is the fracturing and atomization of the organizations and institutions of the working class and the left globally, opening the present period of confusion, demoralization, and disorganization of the global forces of the working class movement.
2. Capitalism’s counterrevolutionary offensive, symbolized by global US economic, military, and political hegemony, has been catastrophic for humanity and the rest of the biosphere. Ecological collapse, imperialist wars, pandemic diseases, and economic crises are an inevitable result. However, history marches forward and as long as the working class exists, so too does the possibility of socialism.
3. In the United States, the capitalist minority dominates the working class majority through an undemocratic Constitution. The Constitution's various minoritarian checks - including a bicameral legislature with disproportionate representation in the Senate, unelected Supreme Court Justices, the imperial presidency, and an impossible amending process - empower reactionary elements in society and protect private property. The Democratic and Republican parties are united in loyalty to the Constitution. During a growing constitutional crisis in which our nation’s founding document is scrutinized, Marxist Unity Group will develop and expand its political agitation for a democratic constitution and a democratic republic.
Building the Party
4. The historic task of the working class is to form itself into a communist/socialist party with the aim of raising itself to the level of ruling class by winning the battle for democracy and establishing a democratic socialist republic. This must be both a “mass” party and a “vanguard” party to break through the impasses facing our class. These concepts are only regarded as separate because of the historical confusion caused by the 20th century. This party should neither be a party of government seeking to come into office within the current constitutional regime, nor a sectarian ‘combat organization’ unified around strict theoretical lines seeking to be the ‘general staff of the revolution’, but rather an ecumenical revolutionary party of electoral opposition and independence unified around a minimum-maximum program.
5. The maximum program describes the final, communist aims of the party. The minimum program represents the minimum conditions for the party to assume power - and consists of demands for an alternative political system through which the working class can rule as well as economic measures to take upon the assumption of power and measures for the emancipation of women, nationally and racially oppressed peoples, and gender and sexual minorities. The political demands include the unrestricted right of free speech, abolition of the Senate and independent presidency and the concentration of power into a single popular assembly elected by proportional representation, the abolition of the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, the end of the reactionary federalist fragmentation of power through the states, and the replacement of the police and standing army with a people’s army characterized by universal service and training as well as democratic rights of political organization for all its members.
6. This conception of the tasks of the proletariat for the conquest of political power is based on a recognition that the existing oligarchic constitutional regime contains key blocks on the social transformation the working class has a vital need to effect. We do not seek to replicate the experience of the Popular Unity government in Chile, which came to power with a political minority and counted on the center-right “playing by the rules.” Under the economic terrorism of the United States, the pressure on the “moderate” elements of the bourgeoisie to unleash the reserve powers of their class was irresistible. Promising not to touch the bourgeois constitutional structure with its checks on popular democracy or the military and bureaucracy is folly. There are no shortcuts to the problem of a proletariat that is not strong enough to defend the transition to socialism. The only path is to organize its advanced section into a party that builds the strength of the class, measured in its political and economic organization and the growth of its advanced section. The workers’ party must conduct consistent propaganda and agitation for a wholesale constitutional alternative to capitalist class rule well before the assumption of political power. It must win a crushing majority of society and the rank and file of the armed forces to the necessary reordering of social decision-making. In short, we must follow the revolutionary path to democracy in order to take the democratic road to socialism.
7. The path to this kind of “mass vanguard” party runs through a merger of the existing forces of socialism, guided by Marxist politics, with the elemental forces of the workers' movement. This combines the program for working class self-emancipation with the practical organization, militancy, and numbers needed to carry it out. This requires a mutual transformation of both sides of the merger, in recognizing the strengths of each side and the necessity of a merger for both.
8. On the side of the socialist movement, DSA is one of the most significant organizations in the history of the US Left. Though small relative to the population, it is a genuine mass organization, funded by membership dues, with chapters on the ground in nearly every region of the country engaging in the practical work of class struggle. This includes not only trade union and electoral work, but housing struggles, mutual aid, political education, and other areas of activity. It is also a fundamentally open and democratic party with the practical freedom to form factions, despite the as-yet unenforced clause for the exclusion of “democratic centralist” organizations and an inherited culture of avoiding open political debate between factions.
9. While it is likely to be formed out of a process of splits and fusions, there is no other single force on the Left that could form the raw material for the party we need. There is no route to the conquest of political power outside of the existing Left by a small group “appealing directly to the class.” This is an assumption held by those who imagine their small group could merge with the class in a spontaneous uprising by virtue of correct politics, or in a non-revolutionary period, on the basis of pure economic organizing or transitional politics.
10. The remnant of the "official" Communist Party, CPUSA, along with descendants of the dissident communist movement like Party for Socialism and Liberation, Socialist Alternative, International Marxist Tendency, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, and other groups collectively represent a force on the socialist left, but are characterized by the stifling of genuine democratic centralism and an abundance of scandals and abuse that flow from a careerist conception of the monolithic party. To the end of creating a mass communist party in North America, we encourage all militants with similar aims in such sects to openly publish critique and internal debate, even if against existing leadership, to both clarify political differences and educate the broader class. Ultimately, principled and democratic unity in a mass organization like the DSA can combine the advanced working class and increase our forces (a “snowball effect”) towards the goal of merger with the greater working class movement - rather than toiling in the same milieu of grouplets.
Convention and Beyond
11. At the 2023 DSA convention, the initial agenda had minimal debate on important political questions, but delegates overruled it to bring politics to the convention agenda. At all levels of our internal democracy, from chapter meetings to the floor of convention, agendas should be set to give members the chance to debate the most vital and controversial questions of our movement. The path to an organization with real political diversity is not to paper over the major questions that divide us, but to have sharp and politically consequential debate on the burning questions of DSA. We must have these debates in order to democratically decide the path our organization will take in practice, while allowing those in the minority to publicly express their views. Attempting to avoid these debates within the membership and governing by leadership fiat will inevitably result in conflict exploding, as members who have no avenue to fight for their political perspective become disruptive or leave. One of the key tasks for reforming DSA’s internal democracy in the near future is to ensure that membership has democratic rights between conventions.
12. In addition to committing to meaningful debate over rubber-stamping uncontroversial proposals, DSA members should seek to require proportional voting systems for DSA delegate elections. Approval-based voting systems encourage the election of candidates blandly palatable to enough people, rather than encouraging sharp political discussion and representation of multiple tendencies. They also can magnify slight majorities into clean sweeps for full slates. The delegation of a chapter to convention should proportionally represent the range of political views within a chapter. Metro DC (MDC) and LA, two of the largest delegations to convention, had elections conducted with a non-proportional, approval-based voting system. Voting patterns from these chapters were notably less diverse than chapters of similar size that used single transferable voting systems, stifling the diversity in political representation of their membership. Voting systems should not be able to be swapped in and out based on whatever is most advantageous to whoever happens to hold chapter leadership. DSA should commit for the long term to proportional voting methods that support the multi-tendency nature of our organization. While standardizing this nationally will have to come through convention resolutions or bylaws changes, DSA members should work to mandate proportional voting at the chapter level before next convention.
13. DSA’s capacity for democratic deliberation will be enhanced by the convention’s passage of a resolution on expanding DSA’s editorial capacities. Marxist Unity Group (MUG) was the driving force behind this resolution, which passed as one of the most popular resolutions at the 2023 Convention. Energy must now be put into reinvigorating these publications, with the eventual long term goal of Democratic Left becoming a daily news site with millions of views, Socialist Forum becoming an expanded print weekly, and regional, sectoral, and other topical publications becoming part of this constellation of publications. We encourage DSA members of all tendencies to contribute to our expanded party press. Our organization will be strengthened by members from across the political spectrum writing their perspectives down for membership to discuss and debate.
14. To achieve its self-transformation into a mass vanguard party of the class, DSA will have to grow both quantitatively and qualitatively. As instructed by a convention resolution, DSA members should put 1% of their income towards dues. DSA has moderately shrunk, but can regain momentum by effectively intervening in mass struggles when they appear. Two national priority campaigns - the trans rights and bodily autonomy campaign, and the “For Our Rights” campaign - represent a possibility of intervening in these mass struggles. The convention resolutions initiating both indicated a politics of independence from the Democratic Party, which is of crucial importance for avoiding these campaigns’ capture by the liberal-NGO apparatus. However, the framing of “defending democracy through political independence” contains an important error by failing to acknowledge a basic truth, as stated in DSA’s platform: “[t]he nation that holds itself out as the world’s premier democracy is no democracy at all.” To be maximally effective at organizing the class around a minimum-maximum program for the democratic socialist republic, these campaigns must avoid this error in their strategy and messaging, and instead target the undemocratic political system as a key barrier to social emancipation. We encourage all MUG and DSA members to participate in these campaigns and fight to win democracy for all.
15. Despite delegates rejecting a right-wing majority on the National Political Committee (NPC), it is unclear how the current majority will cohere on an agenda for transforming the organization. Two members of Marxist Unity Group were elected to DSA’s NPC, and they will work to “throw open the books,” making information about the organization’s day-to-day decision-making available to the membership. This will help bring transparency and democracy to the organization’s national politics, “putting membership in control” of DSA’s political destiny. They will also seek to put DSA’s political vision in command of all aspects of its work and organization, in contrast to a model that defers to the the preferences of the most well-connected individuals and management-level staff. There is some reason to be optimistic: in the past few years, DSA’s political tendencies have demonstrated a growing sophistication, and there is a burgeoning culture of open political debate.
16. Despite these reasons for optimism on the national level, the “iron tendency of oligarchy” affects DSA, as it does all organizations. The struggle for a democratic, member-led DSA cannot be left just up to a few members of the NPC. Director-level staff, national committees, chapter leadership cliques and other elements of DSA’s bureaucracy have a tendency to defend their fiefdoms as petty proprietors. These defenses take many forms, ranging from opposition to amendments, to the suppression of critical political speech by subsidiary bodies within DSA, and de facto “cone of silence” rules that limit the extent of information available to the general membership about key leadership bodies. This affects tendencies covering the entire political spectrum within DSA, from left, center, to right. DSA members everywhere should seek to make sure membership has information and meaningful control of the organization.
17. Convention delegates overwhelmingly voted to affirm a commitment to acting like an independent party. This is a positive step from previous years, where such ideas have lost. While not yet required, convention enthusiastically approved of recommending that DSA’s electoral program work towards goals past MUG resolutions have put forward like common messaging nationally that emphasizes DSA as an independent political project, an expectation to cross-endorse other DSA candidates, and once in office to organize separately from the Democratic Party and bloc vote together. Convention still shied away from setting standards and expectations that would allow DSA to function as a coherent national organization. Until we take this step, electoral standards set only at the local level will mean DSA contains divergent political projects. Delaying this will only make reconciling these contradictions worse if it happens after our electoral work is more established. MUG will work with all other interested DSA members towards ensuring that standards and expectations for electoral work are democratically set by membership in advance.
18. As recommended by vote of convention, DSA needs to build principled, open and democratic Socialists in Office (SIO) committees at all levels of government. Where there are existing benches in state legislatures and city councils, they must be organized into socialist caucuses that vote as a bloc and wage an uncompromising fight for DSA’s political program, building Democratic Socialist consciousness and bringing more elements of the workers’ movement into DSA in the process. The most difficult task is getting US Congressional socialists to act as a disciplined party fraction and independent opposition to both capitalist parties. The best chance of that is to build up DSA’s independent electoral apparatus while continuing to deepen DSA’s relationship to existing socialists in Congress and planning towards the election of a socialist to Congress who can actively organize the existing electeds into a disciplined socialist caucus. As with labor, MUG has many members involved in DSA electoral work, but we must work to embed ourselves more deeply in DSA’s field apparatus and National Electoral Committee while promoting this political vision of electoral politics.
19. DSA’s strength comes from being a multi-tendency organization with open debate and the freedom to form factions. It unites tendencies from across the left under a single banner, forcing us to work together despite our differences. This gives the left a vehicle to work through disagreements and come to a higher level of unity, even if the process is publicly messier than sects that maintain ideological purity at the cost of mass membership.
20. In examples of DSA at its best, members from different tendencies unite in organizing projects, competing for their political visions while still collaborating on shared work. Members are able to learn about the goals and strategies of different tendencies within the organization and decide between them. DSA is unable to function without collaboration across its political spectrum. Important skills, organizing experience, membership numbers, and practical administration are provided by all parts of the organization. Splits and purges would demobilize DSA as experienced leaders and organizers and the rank and file members who provide the mass power for DSA’s campaigns would be suddenly torn apart across arbitrary lines. In order to function as a multi-tendency organization, we must seek unity in diversity.
21. To find unity in diversity we must decide how to work together towards shared goals, while maintaining the freedom of debate that allows the various tendencies to put forward their visions. In order to maintain our existence as a multi-tendency socialist party, we have to come to some agreement on political work that does not put different sections of the organization at odds with each other. DSA members do not all have to believe the same things or have the same theory of winning socialism, but in order to function as a multi-tendency organization we must democratically make some decisions about what we are doing so that work done in one area does not damage the organizing done by others.
22. One mistaken path to unity in diversity common in DSA is tendencies siloing off into different projects or committees. This is essentially operating as a sect within DSA, nominally being part of the same organization but refusing to collaborate on shared work and sometimes pushing political rivals out. When factions refuse to share the same space in campaigns or committees, they begin to retreat into themselves, making decisions as factions, rather than participating fully in the democratic process of the entire organization.
23. MUG will not seek to establish fiefdoms in any particular committee or field of struggle, but to be fully integrated across DSA. We will work towards winning DSA members away from appeals to localism towards programmatic unity, so DSA members democratically decide together our shared political goals and standards. DSA is a national organization, and the choices made in one chapter or committee impact all of us. The internal strife caused by not coming to agreement on standards ahead of time will only grow as DSA’s organizing becomes more successful and prominent. We have a responsibility to each other and the working class to find ways to work together and to win.
Labor Strategy
24. On the side of the workers’ movement, union labor represents a historically low percentage of the overall workforce. This is a major challenge facing the left; however, within the unionized section of the class, the militant or progressive reform wing is on the rise, and socialists have an outsized presence. DSA has allied itself with this reform wing of the labor movement, and its industrialized part has played a role as one of the driving forces in propelling the reform wings to victory in important unions such as UAW and the Teamsters.
25. Both the UAW and the Teamsters had threatened strikes over the summer of 2023. DSA initiated a national “strike ready” campaign that successfully promoted solidarity work in the UPS practice strikes as well as the UAW “stand up strikes.” Historically, solidarity work on the picket lines is where DSA most stands out in the labor movement.
26. However, DSA generally takes an uncritical attitude towards the reform wing and the progressive union bureaucracy (except for those sections that criticize reformers from the right). Socialists should not be afraid to criticize the progressive bureaucracy when it is warranted, such as when Teamsters leadership went back to the bargaining table after negotiations had initially ceased and the movement was preparing for a monumental strike. While we don’t want to alienate the reform movement by being automatically critical of every tactical calculation, socialists shouldn’t be afraid to admit we want to spread class struggle throughout the widest layers of society and must remember that the immediate goals of the class have to be subordinated to the greater goals. The “rank-and-file strategy” as practiced by DSA contains many useful tools for organizing the workers’ movement, but it lacks a clearly theorized connection to socialists’ long-term political goals. Democratic Socialists must work to unite the labor and socialist movements into a fighting party for the conquest of political power. This means we must seek to direct the militant and reform section of the labor movement in a pro-party direction, against the elements of labor liberalism within the reform wing:
a) We must fight for socialist-oriented democratic unions represented by leaders who are directly elected, recallable, and compensated by the average wage of the members represented.
b) We must fight for uniting various crafts together in wall-to-wall, industrially represented unions.
c) We must fight for membership control, deliberation, and access to information through the whole contract bargaining process.
d) We must fight for unions that only suspend or end strikes by a vote of the striking workers.
27. MUG has many members involved in DSA labor work, but we have not centralized our practical labor work into a coherent effort. MUG members must get involved with the NLC and push for a deeper theorization and politicization of the rank-and-file strategy.
Internationalism
28. DSA must also seek to strengthen the capacity for common action and political struggle of the workers’ movement internationally. For an organization in the process of becoming a principled mass socialist party, this means prioritizing unity with principled forces rather than tailing the largest or most prominent organization in a given country, though relationships with reformist organizations should still be formed. The highest level of unity for the workers’ movement is on political grounds in an international party. For the international workers’ political movement, the struggle against war and the imperialist hierarchy of nations is of utmost importance. Common action across borders in trade union struggles is also a powerful weapon, but concessions to the pro-imperialist politics of the trade union movement in many countries are not permissible.
29. In setting priorities for the international workers’ movement, US imperialism must be recognized as the most reactionary force on the planet. Not only is the United States an enemy of socialism everywhere, but as its capacity to impose itself as hegemon and rule-setter of the capitalist world-economy declines, it has turned to a purely destructive form of power projection.
30. The US can no longer deliver a form of capitalist progress and development to its subordinate allies, as it did to a number of frontline states in the aftermath of World War II, but can only deliver destruction and barbarism to states which attempt to escape its control in one way or another. This can be seen in the economic measures the United States has imposed on Left governments in Latin America, the direct military force exerted in Iraq and Afghanistan and through the NATO intervention in Libya, and the economic effects of the US proxy war in Ukraine on the German and other European economies. These measures lead to mass levels of displacement across borders, and the creation of migrant populations that become easy targets for racist scapegoating and economic exploitation.
31. The most important client state of the US in the Middle East, Israel, practices apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and colonial wars against Palestinians with almost unlimited political and military support from the global hegemon. The gathering of 2 million people in an economically blockaded and regularly bombarded open-air prison in Gaza and the ongoing expropriation and routine police and military terror exercised against the population of the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem inevitably breed justified resistance from those being imprisoned, blockaded, expropriated, displaced, terrorized, and killed. In October of this year, Palestinian resistance forces from Gaza engaged in an act of armed resistance on an unprecedented scale, breaking out of their city-prison and inflicting military defeats on the IDF inside the territory occupied by Israel since 1948. Israel has responded with a barbaric bombing onslaught that has killed thousands and is beginning a land invasion of the Gaza Strip. No communist can find credible the idea that Palestinian self-determination is possible alongside a Zionist Israel, which is constantly working to make it more and more an impossibility. The granting of formal sovereignty to the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem while they remain economically subordinated and riddled with settlements would render them as bantustans offering nothing more than ideological cover for Israeli apartheid.
32. The only progressive political solution for de-Zionization and the end of Israeli colonialism would be a single secular and democratic plurinational state with a right of return for Palestinian refugees and equal rights for all its inhabitants, including integrated democratic trade unions and the right to national self-determination for the Hebrew-speaking people within a broader socialist regional union or federation. This cannot be achieved on the basis of the forces present in former mandate Palestine alone - it will require regional working class unity and the revolutionary transformation of the Arab world, particularly its eastern part. This possibility is shown in embryo by the recent mass demonstrations in support of Palestinians that have occurred in Jordan, Tunisia, Egypt and many other countries in the region, often putting the people in conflict with their US-backed governments, some of which have been on the path to normalizing relations with Israel.
33. In the United States, the duty of internationalists is to join with the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement to combat imperialist support for Israel, particularly US military aid. The ability to stand up against US military support for the genocide of Palestinians is an important test of the socialist movement in this country and should be considered a non-negotiable responsibility of those it has elected to public office and labor leadership. At our best we can be key catalysts of anti-imperialist consciousness and lead the fight against imperialism’s world policy and the crimes committed in pursuit of it. All too often, though, the impulse has been to recoil from mass expressions of solidarity and to fall in line with the imperialist foreign policy consensus while muttering pacifist excuses. The many large demonstrations in support of Palestinians’ freedom and huge sea change in public opinion on the question, especially among young people, coupled with near-lockstep support for Israel from both Democratic and Republican politicians opens up clear space for principled independent working class internationalism to make meaningful headway, contributing to the general achievement of working class political independence.
34. The grand strategy of US imperialism at present centers on its attempt to prevent the rise of a potential peer competitor through the imposition of such destruction, conflict and economic mayhem. In particular, in response to the economic and geopolitical rise of China after its cold transition to capitalism in the last quarter of the 20th century, sections of the US ruling class have adopted a ‘New Cold War’ mentality and direction of policy, which involves aggressive trade policies, military maneuvers, and saber rattling over questions such as the political status of Taiwan. In addition, the United States is funding and arming the Ukrainian government in the present war with the aim of exhausting the Putin regime in Russia, knocking it out as a significant military power, and further subordinating it economically, so that it cannot serve as an ally to a rising China.
35. The war in Ukraine, the onset of which was the result of both the massive eastern expansion of the US-dominated NATO military alliance over the past three decades, and the dominance of far-right pro-Western Ukrainian nationalism in that country’s politics since the 2014 Maidan events and the following civil war between nationalist and regionalist forces, has ground to a brutal stalemate reminiscent of the trench warfare of World War I. The great power politics, cynical manipulation of small countries’ claims to self-determination, and hysterical ideological justifications invoked also have more than a whiff of World War I about them. With a heavily nuclear-armed Russia fighting a hot war against a direct US proxy, however, the danger is even higher, with the possibility of massive nuclear destruction growing by the day. Communists find nothing progressive in the Russian “special military operation,” which, while primarily a strategically defensive response to the actions of the United States and its allies, is also a political extension of the gangsterism of the Putin regime and its aspirations to restore the great power status of Russia and become an imperialist exploiter country. However, the main enemies of revolutionaries in the United States are at home. Those who neglect the struggle against our own ruling class’s militarism and the grand strategy of US imperialism, or support US and NATO arms to Ukraine, whatever the “left” justification, are social imperialist traitors to the working class or pacifist daydreamers.
In Summary
36. The 2024 presidential election will be a centerpiece of US politics for the next few years. The undemocratic political system, “winner take all” electoral college, and dominance of the Democratic and Republican parties create a highly hostile terrain for independent working class politics in the contest. The potential for a repeat of the 2020 race with Joe Biden and Donald Trump as the major party candidates looms, with the added element of escalating constitutional crisis due to the legal charges against Trump and his attempted self-coup to overturn the results of the election on January 6, 2021. Marxist Unity Group advocates for DSA to use the election to expose the anti-democratic nature of the two-party system, the Electoral College, and the presidency itself. Through the For Our Rights and Trans Rights and Bodily Autonomy campaigns mandated by the 2023 Convention, DSA should intervene in public discourse around the election to indict the system itself, building a constituency for mass democratic socialist politics. DSA should organize our elected representatives around shared messaging in opposition to Biden and Trump, carving out a base among non-voters and left-leaning Democrats and independents. DSA should also mobilize against instances of voter repression and intimidation, defending suffrage while openly working toward a new republic. Using intervention around the 2024 election, DSA can build capacity for future elections on the national stage, including running cadre members for Congress and uniting local and state-level electeds around shared messaging.
37. MUG’s continued political consolidation and development remains a priority. In addition to improving our capacity for practical electoral and trade union work, we plan to develop a theoretical and practical approach to the Black freedom struggle and other freedom struggles of oppressed minorities with claims to sovereignty; anti-imperialism in the context of declining U.S. hegemony and a developing international socialist movement; and ecology in the face of an emerging ecological collapse. The ultimate goal of this project is to move beyond our points of unity and develop a draft minimum-maximum program for a Marxist party and to win a majority of DSA to it in the form of a platform revision. After implementing a platform revision, our task is winning DSA to requiring acceptance of this revised platform as a condition for membership.
38. To this end, we shall also commit to the democratization and politicization of DSA, working to build a political culture of discussion and democratic process across chapters and national commissions. This will include building open and democratic publications around these bodies, encouraging maximal political deliberation and a culture of comradely debate, increasing informational transparency, democratizing skills, and resituating these bodies within an accountable and democratic process that links together all parts of DSA. As with all priorities mentioned herein, MUG will seek out collaborators in an aim to ensure our interventions are as refined and widespread as possible.
39. In all our work, MUG members must push for the merger of socialism and the workers’ movement. On the one hand, this means convincing activists outside of DSA about the importance of joining DSA; on the other hand, this means fighting within DSA to make it an organization worth joining for advanced elements of the workers’ movement (i.e., one committed to political independence, organizational democracy, and the minimum-maximum program).