The EU Referendum and the Capitalist Left

Counterfire, The SWP, the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist Leninist), the Socialist Party and George Galloway’s Respect Party have all come out in favour of voting against Britain staying in the European Union.

Why?

Why do they want to join with a band of right-wing mavericks, racists and free traders underpinned by business largesse from a section of the capitalist class who do have an interest in leaving? What is in it for them?

When the Respect Party leader was questioned about his unlikely relationship with the right-wing UKIP leader over Twitter, Mr Galloway said: “We are not pals. We are allies in one cause. Like Churchill and Stalin…” (INDEPENDENT 21st February 2016)

One of the best answers goes something like this:

* The No vote is successful
* The evil Tories are split into warring factions
* David Cameron is forced out as Prime Minister
* The Capitalist Right take over the Tory Party
* A General Election is called
* Corbyn’s Labour Party wins
* Corbyn opens up a popularist “left agenda”
* On the back of this agenda the capitalist left prosper and grow in influence
* The People’s Assembly becomes a 21st century Soviet
* The capitalist left takes control of the Assemblies
* Parliament becomes marginalised
* “All power to the people’s assemblies” and “no more war and austerity” are the slogans of the moment
* Political power flows to the assemblies
* One of the left-factions takes control
* The leader of one of the left factions takes control
* Socialists are imprisoned
* The statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square is replaced with one of Lenin
* All in time for the October 2017 celebrations

Is there a better answer?

"The first as tragedy, then as farce", (Marx, THE 18TH BRUMAIRE OF NAPOLEON BONAPARTE)

Object and Declaration of Principles

Object

The establishment of a system of society based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of the whole community.

Declaration of Principles

THE SOCIALIST PARTY OF GREAT BRITAIN HOLDS:

1. That society as at present constituted is based upon the ownership of the means of living (ie land, factories, railways, etc.) by the capitalist or master class, and the consequent enslavement of the working class, by whose labour alone wealth is produced.

2. That in society, therefore, there is an antagonism of interests, manifesting itself as a class struggle, between those who possess but do not produce and those who produce but do not possess.

3.That this antagonism can be abolished only by the emancipation of the working class from the domination of the master class, by the conversion into common property of society of the means of production and distribution, and their democratic control by the whole people.

4. That as in the order of social evolution the working class is the last class to achieve its freedom, the emancipation of the working class will involve the emancipation of all mankind without distinction of race or sex.

5. That this emancipation must be the work of the working class itself.

6. That as the machinery of government, including the armed forces of the nation, exists only to conserve the monopoly by the capitalist class of the wealth taken from the workers, the working class must organise consciously and politically for the conquest of the powers of government, national and local, in order that this machinery, including these forces, may be converted from an instrument of oppression into the agent of emancipation and the overthrow of privilege, aristocratic and plutocratic.

7. That as all political parties are but the expression of class interests, and as the interest of the working class is diametrically opposed to the interests of all sections of the master class, the party seeking working class emancipation must be hostile to every other party.

8. The Socialist Party of Great Britain, therefore, enters the field of political action determined to wage war against all other political parties, whether alleged labour or avowedly capitalist, and calls upon the members of the working class of this country to muster under its banner to the end that a speedy termination may be wrought to the system which deprives them of the fruits of their labour, and that poverty may give place to comfort, privilege to equality, and slavery to freedom.