Our comrade Ant gives a view.

Fight for your class, you have no country

Recently we were treated to that rare phenomenon, the political ‘’earthquake’’ on the European political terrain as described by those commentators who were shocked that the parties who had doled out decades of decline to their populations failed to achieve a ringing endorsement from the victims. The UK was a prime example of this rejection of the politics as usual, the usual nonsense choice between Labour and Tory, somewhat akin to choosing between cancer and aids, is losing its ability to mesmerise those who participate in the charade and little UKIP harvested a significant share of the votes, enough to create a media splash. It is hard to believe that anyone who is reading this really needs to reread the details of UKIP’s UK election success. Suffice it to say that the party which sees the root of all evil in what its propaganda portrays as communist Europe (!) which threatens a locust swarm of immigration to this fictitious land of hope and glory gained more votes than any other UK party in the European elections and has a dramatically increased its number of local councillors even if at the moment it has not taken control of any councils. Its surge forward at the polls exceeded most expectations and many commentators see a historic turning point has been reached, British politics have permanently changed. Even so, there are real doubts that UKIP will manage to take a single seat in the forthcoming UK general elections. We will see.

But as initially stated, the phenomenon is far from being purely confined to the UK; we have seen a swing away from the mainstream parties offering more of the same to those parties considered far right or left according to the dominant mythology in several European countries where the grim reality of economic misery, huge levels of unemployment and attacks on every aspect of working class conditions, has translated into disaffection for those traditionally dominant parties held responsible.

No, there is little point in regurgitating the percentages and swings which can be found in every media outlet. What we have to consider is how we interpret and react to the sequence of events which either disprove or confirm our perspectives.

So, has anything changed for us? The short answer is not really. We don’t expect the working class to become class conscious easily. The fact that masses of workers show little interest in the political process or that approximately a third of the third of the electorate who actually cast a vote (i.e just over 10%) chose a party characterised by hard right policies represents no new development for us. The fact that a recent poll indicates that about a third of the UK population is openly racist to a greater or lesser extent does not mean we retire to a dark corner of the pub to cry into our pints, or abandon all hope of a real change and engage in the ‘’realistic’’ process of getting a Labour party elected as the best that can be achieved. No, we have deeper principles, longer perspectives and a few more brain cells than that.

Unlike the opportunists of all stripe, whatever political label they wear, we don’t have to ruminate on the success of UKIP, flash in the pan or otherwise, and decide to what extent we are going to embrace xenophobia and racism, how far we are going to turn the screws on the unemployed, how much to charge for a visit to the doctor, how we can prevent the movement of workers between one state and another. We have one solution only to the incremental decline of working class conditions and that is proletarian revolution.

Our perspective is effectively the following;

• Capitalism is in a crisis of accumulation. It cannot avoid the intensification of class antagonism as its inner contradictions mean that the interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat are diametrically opposed.
• Unless capitalism destroys a mass of capital on the scale of a generalised imperialist war, time will only allow for the deterioration of the working class condition as long as capitalism survives.
• The working class will generally follow the various ideological constructs of the ruling class so long as there is no effective presence of a revolutionary organisation to express an alternative.
• The growth of such a revolutionary organisation into an ‘’effective presence’’ will be the fruit of class struggles which are precipitated by the need for capital to shore up its profit rates at the expense of the proletariat.

Whatever barbaric political concoctions the ruling class can foist upon us, the communist internationalists remain steadfast defenders of an invariant position – Against the exploitation, barbarity and poverty of capitalism we need class struggle and a class party. That won’t change this side of revolution, regardless of Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and whatever other flag waving, national anthem singing apologists of class domination capitalism spawns. We don’t need to take pride in geographical entities, national or otherwise, the stomping grounds of this or that fraction of the exploiting class who love to see us divided by nationalism, racism or any other such poison. We have nothing to defend in this system.

Ant