The party of Le Pen had not yet consummated its triumph in the European elections when President Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly and the calling of legislative elections in its wake. Rumours of a dissolution had been circulating for several weeks, but the news did not fail to worry European chancelleries against a backdrop of rising populism in Europe and around the world. After Orbán in Hungary and Meloni in Italy, with the far right at its height in Germany and the clown Farage poised to torpedo the Conservative Party in the UK, Macron, like a poker player, has thrown down his cards, offering the Rassemblement National (RN) an opportunity to come to power in France.
The Rassemblement National, a pure product of the crisis of capitalism
With the prospect of a populist government looming, the RN has been quick to shelve its "social" rhetoric and its most radical positions on Europe in an attempt to reassure the state apparatus, employers and "European partners". But Bardella's government will not waver in its attacks on our living conditions!
But that won't be enough to ward off the crass amateurism of the RN cadres, the racist and ultra-reactionary outrages of this party founded by the dregs of the far right, the risk of outbreaks of violence once the result is known[1], and the political instability that will take hold of the country for a long time to come. All the more so as the populist factions of the bourgeoisie have not only repeatedly proved themselves incapable of effectively defending national capital (like Trump in the United States or the Brexit supporters in Great Britain), but are also particularly unsuited to skilfully driving through "reforms" against the working class. For the bourgeoisie, the RN in power will represent a considerable acceleration of social chaos and a shock wave weakening France, and consequently Europe, in the global arena.
The surge in populism around the world is not therefore the product of well-orchestrated manoeuvres by the bourgeoisie against the working class,[2] even if the left-wing parties repeatedly claim that the "bourgeois bloc" would rather throw itself into the arms of the far right than allow the left to come to power. In reality, in the United States as in Europe, populism is above all a pure product of the profound decomposition of capitalist society.
The contradictions of the system have reached such an inextricable point that the bourgeoisie is now incapable of coping with the crisis and the growing chaos: widespread insecurity and mass unemployment, war on every continent, repeated environmental and industrial disasters, millions of migrants thrown onto the roads, the collapse of health and education systems, the continuing deterioration of working conditions, despair, fear of the future... In the eyes of everyone, the ruling class no longer has the slightest prospect to offer society, apart from trying to "save the furniture" from day to day. It is in this context of crisis and "save what you can” that populism has thrived, promoting its nauseating and irrational ideology, singling out scapegoats and encouraging a retreat into national and racial “identities”[3].
The 'radical' or 'moderate' left is still the bourgeoisie
So the question arises: should we go out and vote to block the way to the RN's shameless racism, its outspoken authoritarianism and its promises of all-out attacks on the working class, particularly proletarians from immigrant backgrounds? Whether Macron succeeds in his gamble, whether the RN or the "New Popular Front" (NFP) win the elections, or whether no majority emerges, the crisis of capitalism will not go away. Whichever bourgeois clique is in power, left or right, radical or moderate, it will only accentuate the attacks on our living conditions. The proletariat has nothing to defend and nothing to gain by taking part in the electoral circus!
The NFP claims to have a programme for a "break with the past", but this coalition will do what the left has always done for a century and in every country: defend the interests of national capital and make the exploited pay for the crisis. The left, even when it claims to be "radical", has always been the wing of the bourgeoisie whose role is to control and mystify the working class. In Greece, Tsípras and his “radical left” government pursued the worst austerity policies for over three years. The Spanish "radical" left, hand in hand with the PSOE, has relentlessly attacked the living conditions of workers, the unemployed, pensioners... Mélenchon, the former apparatchik of the Socialist Party, and his clique of repentant Stalinists, are no exception to the rule. What's more, the NFP has already promised to contribute to the massacre in Ukraine by sending billions of euros worth of arms and munitions. Like Macron or Léon Blum's Front Populaire, tomorrow they will be demanding "sacrifices" to finance the war and France's sordid imperialist interests!
There should also be no illusions about the fate of refugees with the left in power: they will mercilessly hunt down migrants and leave them to languish in detention camps or drown by the thousands in the Mediterranean, as they have always done! If the Greek navy is now at the cutting edge of ignominy, it owes it in particular to the work of the "radical" Tsípras (him again!), who did not hesitate to sign despicable migration agreements with Turkey and was a zealous architect of the veritable "death camp" that was Mória. Do we still need to document the anti-refugee hysteria of the Socialist Party in France or the thinly veiled xenophobia of the French Communist Party under Marchais or Roussel? Is it necessary to recall the abominable 'migration policy' of the left in Spain? Racism and xenophobia, anti-migrant barbed wire and detention camps are far from being the prerogative of the far right alone!
"Anti-fascism", a weapon of war against the working class
As in Germany with the recent demonstrations against the AfD, the French left and trade unions have tried to replay the democratic mobilisations of 2002, when the FN made it to the second round of the presidential election. Then we were also told that we had no choice but to mobilise, not as workers in struggle, but at the ballot box, as "citizens", to defend "democracy" and block the road to "fascism"[4].
The tearful evocation of the 1936 "Popular Front" is fully in line with this propaganda campaign. Because the Popular Front, today as in the past, is the very negation of the proletariat. After the defeat of the revolutionary wave that began in Russia in 1917, the proletariat as a whole was defeated. In Germany, the revolution of 1918-1919 was crushed in bloodshed. The Stalinist counter-revolution mowed down the revolutionaries and totally disorientated the working class. It was on the ashes of defeat that the French bourgeoisie pushed Léon Blum and his coalition to power with the aim of preparing for war. And it was in the name of defending democracy that the Popular Front (which was already locking up Spanish refugees in open-air concentration camps) chained millions of proletarians to the flag of anti-fascism, militarising factories and preparing minds for massacre. Its "work" led millions of workers to their graves during the Second World War for a cause - the defence of the nation - that was not their own[5].
The historical situation has changed a lot since then: the proletariat is not defeated and is not ready to get its skin punctured in defence of the national flag. Quite the contrary! Faced with the "sacrifices" demanded by the war economy and international competition, the proletariat is raising its head. For two years, massive struggles have been multiplying: in the United Kingdom, France, the United States, Germany, Canada, Finland... Everywhere, the proletariat is fighting back and beginning to rediscover its fighting spirit, its reflexes of solidarity, its class identity.
Today, the threat posed to the proletariat by anti-fascist propaganda is not mass recruitment into the war, but the loss of its reborn class identity, which is the precondition for its unity and its ability to rediscover the road to revolution, to the destruction of the bourgeois state, whether "democratic" or "authoritarian".
It's for this reason that the bourgeoisie has been quick to discredit "the workers", allegedly reactionary and xenophobic, who are supposed to vote massively for the RN[6]. This odious lie has no other objective than to divide the proletariat and hammer home the idea that the working class has no future.
But the bourgeoisie can also count on its new instrument of mystification, the New Popular Front, to sow illusions about "democracy" and elections, about the "redistribution of wealth", about a capitalism that is more "ecological", more "inclusive", more "just"... Under the windows of the offices where the bosses of the NFP were meeting to divide up the constituencies, demonstrators, still a little suspicious of these fine promises, chanted: "Don't betray us! The only thing that this so-called Popular Front will not betray is their class: the bourgeoisie!
The future of society will not be decided at the ballot box, but through the struggle of the proletariat. The only way to fight populism and the far right is to fight against capitalism, against the bourgeois state and its democracy, against all governments. Right or left, "authoritarian" or "democratic", "retrograde" or "humanist", the bourgeoisie has only one programme: ever more misery and insecurity, war and barbarism!
EG, 21 June 2024
[1] The intelligence services fear not only riots in the suburbs and outbursts at "anti-fascist" demonstrations, but also racist violence by ultra-right-wing groups that could feel their wings grow with Bardella's arrival in power.
[2] Even if parties on both the right and the left were able, for a time, to exploit the former Front National. It is worth remembering that it was the Socialist Party, a member of the "New Popular Front", that contributed to the emergence of the Front National in the 1980s. At the time, President Mitterrand orchestrated the media coverage of Jean-Marie Le Pen's party to put obstacles in the way of the Right (see "Au RN, un autre anniversaire : celui du coup de pouce de Mitterrand", Libération, 5 October 2022)
[3] On the roots of the rise of populism, see How the bourgeoisie organises itself [1], International Review 172
[4] The rise of populism is not the same as the rise of fascism: Hitler and Mussolini came to power because, faced with a defeated and crushed proletariat, they represented the best option for German and Italian capital to prepare for world war, the bourgeoisie's only "solution" to the crisis. Today, even if the illusions about the democratic state have been shattered, the bourgeoisie still needs this mystification to confront the working class.
[5] Here again, it's worth remembering that: 1. it was democracy which provided the breeding ground for fascism; 2. while Hitler's regime demonstrated appalling and unparalleled barbarity, the Allies were not to be outdone and, during the war, showed an indifference to the fate of the Jews which sometimes turned into outright complicity.
[6] Unsurprisingly, the learned analyses of the bourgeoisie are a gross lie. First of all, the working class cannot be reduced to the socio-professional category of industrial workers: unlike a "clerk" in a shop or a midwife ("intermediate profession"), a "team leader" on a production line is not part of the working class. What's more, even if we take only the "blue-collar" category into account, abstention still comes out well ahead!
ICC Introduction
We are publishing two letters sent to us by close sympathisers who took part in an ICC meeting with US contacts, focused on the upcoming US elections and the growing divisions within the US ruling class. We fully endorse what the comrades say regarding
However, we should also be aware that populism is essentially an expression of the profound irrationality that is being aggravated by the decomposition of capitalism. It is the principal factor in undermining the bourgeoisie’s control over its own political apparatus, since populism embodies most clearly the bourgeoisie’s inability to develop a perspective for the future of its system and is incapable of grasping the overall needs of the national capital. This is abundantly clear at the level of foreign policy. Even though Trump has some understanding of the threat posed by China, his “business-like” attitude to Russia runs directly counter to the current policy of the US state, which has attempted to use the war in Ukraine as a means of weakening Russia and thus, in the longer term, of depriving China of its most important military ally. His threats to vandalise the NATO alliance and to allow Israel free rein in the Middle East would be equally destructive to US imperialist plans.
Finally, on Russia: we agree with B that the elimination of the Prigozhin clique has strengthened Putin's position both domestically and abroad (integration of Wagner Group into more controllable military structures, especially in Africa) but Putin's policy of systematic elimination of his political opponents is not a permanent cure to the underlying tendency towards disintegration, leading to a possible collapse of the Russian Federation, which would be yet another factor in the spread of global chaos.
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Letter from B
The comrades at the meeting were rightly concerned with the coming election and the possibility of a Trump return to the Presidency and what the consequences of this would be. But it was important to state that the election of either Trump or Biden – neither of them exactly inspiring candidates – is not going to alter the fundamental perspectives of capitalism’s descent into decomposition a great deal. In fact apart from some secondary elements it’s unlikely to affect that already engaged dynamic hardly at all.
As for Trump launching a campaign against democracy, it could be argued that Trump has done more to bolster democracy in the USA (and beyond) than anyone else. About a decade or two ago – and the ICC noted it several times in its publications – there was some fatigue among western populations, and the workers in particular, over the democratic process with the idea that politician were “in it for themselves” or that there was “no real difference between them”. Although basically correct, this mostly expressed a cynicism that in the circumstances of the period (last two decades say) was entirely negative for any development of class consciousness. This cynicism was a reflection of the passivity and impotence of the class in the face of increasing attacks. In the US and beyond, the first Trump candidacy fed on and responded to that cynicism and regenerated the democratic circus with some vigour, mobilising massive meetings and generating a political enthusiasm while drawing many disgruntled workers into supporting his campaign. On the other hand, it also bolstered “the oppositional forces” which also mobilised many workers in the defence against the “Trump menace”.
Trump can be broadly described as an expression of populism – a phenomenon which has affected the majority of western democracies. Trump’s a populist but democracy (elections, voting, the citizen, etc) is an essential and vital part of populism and populism is part of the democratic system. Trump is not against democracy but on the contrary embraces and uses it to good effect. In this way Trump continues to deliver for the bourgeoisie animating the electoral circus, mobilising the Left and campaigns around identity “issues”. In this circus some anti-Trump performers are now accusing Trump of wanting to be a dictator, of wanting to let Russia invade Europe and of being “authoritarian” (as if a Trump-less America would be any the less authoritarian); a useful mobilisation for anti-Trump forces in the democratic process.
However, while no faction of the ruling class can stop the descent of capitalism into its decomposition, the policies of the Trump faction present particular difficulties for US imperialism both “at home” and abroad. This faction represents the dangers of what the ICC’s “Theses on Decomposition” explains as the “loss of control” of the bourgeoisie over the political game and the expression of “every man for himself” (see points 8 and 9). Within the historical weakening of the US, this represents a further weakening and while the first Trump administration was largely (and with some difficulty) held in check by the US state a further Trump term threatens all sort of problems not least in relation to Russia and the war in Ukraine and in relation to Israel in the growing chaos in the Middle East. And while Trump’s insistence that its allies “pay up” to the Godfather for their defence is fundamentally in the interest of the US, the main factions of the ruling class would prefer this procedure to be accomplished through the established diplomatic channels that Trump largely abuses and threatens. This breakdown of diplomacy and protocols is becoming more and more of a global problem, inviting further chaos and loss of control and could be particularly damaging with a second Trump term.
Trump felt hard done that he didn’t win the 2020 election (“I just need 17,000 votes”) and his whipping up of his supporters to attack the Capitol in early 2021 was in continuity with his agenda and general belligerence, marking a particular expression of decomposition in the “beacon of democracy”. But, in this context, twenty years earlier, with hardly a peep from the Democrats, the election was “stolen” from them, when George W. Bush was announced as winner of a very close election by the Republican Governor of Florida – his brother.
The meeting raised the question of Russia and it was briefly mentioned that the success of bringing the Russian state to its knees was now open to some question. So briefly on this, it looks like Putin has reconfigured the war economy and despite heavy losses of men has, through a policy of providing work and widespread repression, succeeded in keeping the working class quiet. The main clique around Putin has certainly succeeded in strengthening its position since the 2023 Mickey Mouse March on Moscow (cheered on by the West and greatly inflated as a real threat to the regime) by Prigozhin and his clique. The elimination of this clique greatly strengthened Putin’s position as well as pulling Belarus back into line and firming up the support of the Chechens. The vast majority of the Wagner Group has now been re-integrated into the Russian war machine; they are mercenaries after all.
In reference to the situation of the working class in Russia at the moment: there have been some small demonstrations and expressions of protest against the war but none of these have taken place on a class basis and the working class here has been severely weakened. This can only emphasise the importance of the proletariat in the west in the longer term.
B. 21.6.24
Letter from K
Dear comrades,
I was very pleased to participate in the meeting. Arising from it, here are some brief thoughts on orienting future articles on the US.
As in all ‘democracies’, but arguably more than in most, the working class in the US is being bombarded with ceaseless campaigns around electoralism, the nomination of party candidates the Presidential election process itself, etc, etc.
The bitter and deepening divisions within the US ruling class are being presented back to the proletariat as the only ‘choices’ to be made in determining the future – for Biden and the ‘caring, inclusive, supportive’ Democrats or for Trumpist Republicanism, the American isolationist revival and freedom from big government. Augmenting the mainstream, conspiracy theorists, religious fundamentalists and the identarian leftists present their own false alternatives which, more often than not, feed back into support for the main parties when they don’t head off into nihilism and individualist, survivalist or insurrectionist fantasies.
The ICC is well equipped, it seems to me, to follow and frame these events internationally and historically (the reality of decomposing capitalism) and understand the implications going forward of an increase in chaos and further attacks on the producer class whichever faction of the US ruling class heads the next government. How to hone this understanding to the immediate and middle-term needs of intervention?
Rosa Luxembourg said the most revolutionary act was to tell the truth – in American parlance, tell it like it is.
There are deep divisions and differences within and between the ruling class – particularly on how best to cling on to America’s military and economic dominance over their international rivals. These paralysing, competing visions can only contribute to further domestic decay and chaos at a level not seen before. But within this destructive whirlwind, these capitalist factions have interest in common.
All factions will fully participate in dying capitalism’s burgeoning ‘forever wars’ – in Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Africa and closer to home by the strengthening of US borders with Mexico and even Canada. Biden and Trump, Republican and Democrat, disagree over the quantity of immediate aid to Ukraine or who should pay for the upkeep of NATO (and surely Trump’s insistence that the ‘Europeans’ should fund more of their own defence is entirely in line with US interests, even if his attitude toward Russia is not?). But from Obama, through Trump, to Biden and whoever comes next, there’s an implacable will to confront and contain China. This is not in dispute: these rival capitalist factions all want to bleed the proletariat dry to defend the national capital.
This implied and real hike in (global) military spending – and wherever it disbursed – can only be paid for by the working class in increased exploitation, reduced income and services, the decay of infrastructure and by embedding inflation into the global economy.
The Social Democratic propaganda of state spending to cohere and protect ‘citizens’ has foundered on the reality of the demands of imperialism, global, national and individual debt and inflation. Trump’s apparent and impossible dream of pulling up the US drawbridge and letting the rest of the world rot solves none of this and ignores two centuries of growing capitalist inter-dependence in trade and production, not to mention its more recent dance of death that is economic competition-turned permanent inter-imperialist confrontation.
So: for the working class in America, the elections, the politicians’ promises, bluffs and bluster are not the solution – they are part of the problem, and one which will remain after the electoral circus has left town, in preparation for the next show.
The only viable future lies in the hands of the workers themselves, their willingness to organise and struggle to oppose (and eventually to overthrow) the crushing rule of capital as workers in the US and throughout the world have begun again to do in the last two years.
In short, I am arguing for an orientation which, while recognizing the serious divisions within the US ruling class, its lack of control over its own political game, nonetheless ‘goes back to basics’ to demonstrate that whoever wins, it’s the working class which pays and which truly holds the future in its hands.
Fraternally, K
In Britain, as in France, the EU and soon in the USA, the electoral circus is again in full swing. We will be publishing various articles analysing the implications of these and other elections as expressions of the bourgeoise’s growing loss of control over its political machinery. But first we want to reaffirm the basic class position developed in particular by the Communist Left since capitalism entered its epoch of decline in the early years of the 20th century: that contrary to the propaganda of the ruling class, neither elections nor parliament can prevent the headlong rush of this system towards economic crisis, war and self-destruction.
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The bourgeoisie wants us to vote
The arguments put forward by political parties or candidates to convince voters to give them their vote generally boil down to this: elections are a time when citizens are faced with a choice on which the development of society and, consequently, their future living conditions depend. "All men are born free and equal in rights", proclaims the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Thanks to democracy, we are told, every citizen has the same opportunity to participate in major social choices. In reality, however, this is not the case, since society is divided into social classes with antagonistic interests. One of them, the bourgeoisie, exercises its domination over society as a whole through its possession of wealth and, thanks to its state, over the whole democratic apparatus, the media, etc. It can thus impose its order, its ideas and its propaganda on the working class and all the oppressed. The working class, on the other hand, is the only class which, through its struggle, is capable of challenging the hegemony of the bourgeoisie and its system of exploitation.
Under these conditions, it is completely illusory to think that it is possible to transform the state, including its the democratic institutions, to put them at the service of the great majority of society. That's why all the parties which seek the votes of the exploited, claiming to defend their interests, help to maintain this illusion. In the same way, the "left-right" alternative is really just a false choice designed to hide the fact that, behind the electoral and parliamentary chatter, only the bourgeoisie really has the power of decision. The differences between left-wing and right-wing parties are nothing compared to what they have in common: the defence of national capital. In the service of this objective, they are able to work very closely together, especially behind the closed doors of parliamentary committees and at the highest levels of the state apparatus. In fact, public debates in parliament are only a small and often insignificant part of bourgeois debates.
It is precisely because any change in the living conditions of the exploited class is impossible through the ballot box that the bourgeoisie is so keen to convince us otherwise by hammering home the message: "yes, another policy is possible... provided you vote well".
Does the outcome of the elections have any influence on whether the situation of the exploited worsens or improves?
Even if it is not possible to use the ballot box to establish a society in which human needs can really be satisfied, is it not possible to obtain some improvements in living conditions through elections? More modestly still, wouldn't a particular electoral choice make it possible to limit future attacks?
If, for almost a century, no election has ever led to real social progress, it's because social choices are no longer determined by the outcome of elections. The deterioration in the living conditions of the working class is determined first and foremost by the depth of the crisis of capitalism and by the ability of each national bourgeoisie to make the exploited pay for it, in order to defend the competitiveness of national capital in the international arena. This is why only the eruption of class struggle is capable of hampering the attacks of the bourgeoisie and asserting the interests of the proletariat.
This is also why it is always the bourgeoisie that wins elections and the proletarians have nothing, absolutely nothing, to expect from this masquerade. No parliamentary struggle, in whatever form, is capable, in the present phase of the life of capitalism, of improving the situation of the working class. The illusions entertained on this subject by all sectors of the bourgeoisie are based on a reality of capitalism that is now obsolete:
“In the ascendant period of capitalism, parliament was the most appropriate form for the organisation of the bourgeoisie. As a specifically bourgeois institution, it was never a primary arena for the activity of the working class and the proletariat’s participation in parliamentary activity and electoral campaigns contained a number of real dangers, against which revolutionaries of the last century always alerted the class. However, in a period when the revolution was not yet on the agenda and when the proletariat could wrest reforms from within the system, participation in parliament allowed the class to use it to press for reforms, to use electoral campaigns as a means for propaganda and agitation for the proletarian programme, and to use parliament as a tribune for denouncing the ignominy of bourgeois politics. This is why the struggle for universal suffrage was throughout the nineteenth century in many countries one of the most important issues around which the proletariat organised.
As the capitalist system entered its decadent phase, parliament ceased to be an instrument for reforms. As the Communist International said at its Second Congress: ‘The centre of gravity of political life has now been completely and finally removed beyond the confines of parliament’. The only role parliament could play from then on, the only thing that keeps it alive, is its role as an instrument of mystification. Thus ended any possibility for the proletariat to use parliament in any way. The class cannot gain impossible reforms from an organ which has lost any real political function. At a time when its basic task is to destroy all institutions of the bourgeois state and thus parliament; when it must set up its own dictatorship on the ruins of universal suffrage and other vestiges of bourgeois society, participation in parliamentary and electoral institutions can only lead to these moribund bodies being given a semblance of life, no matter what the intentions of those who advocate this kind of activity”. (Platform of the ICC)
How should we fight? Atomised in the polling booths or through a united, collective and massive struggle?
The bourgeoisie knows full well that it has nothing to fear from workers' consciousness when they are passive spectators at electoral jousts featuring real political professionals who have nothing to do with the interests of the working class. Nor does it have anything to fear from their action when they are divided into so many atomised citizens in the polling booths. On the other hand, it knows that it has everything to fear from their collective strength and united action, expressed through discussion and the organisation of the struggle in the workplace, in general assemblies and in the streets. It is only in this way, and not by passively consuming electoral speeches and marking your ballot paper, isolated in the polling booths, that the life of the working class can be truly expressed.
In the general assemblies of struggle, the floor is shared, debates are open and fraternal and, above all, the elected delegates are revocable. The revocability of delegates is the means through which the assembly retains control of the struggle - particularly in the face of attempts to take this away from them by the "professionals of the struggle", the trade unions. The election and revocability of delegates can ensure that those who will represent the base assemblies are permanently the emanation of their struggle. Experiences of massive mobilisations of the working class, such as in 1905 in Russia, in the years 1917-23 in many countries on the European and American continents, and more recently during the struggle in Poland in August 1980, are the best illustrations of the fact that the weapon of the working class is collective action and not the ballot paper.
It is therefore the capacity of the working class to mobilise on its class terrain with its own methods of struggle, in defence of its interests, against the attacks of capital, which will determine its capacity to resist the attacks, and not the fact of voting massively for this or that party or candidate on the occasion of this or that election.
The working class has nothing to gain by taking part in the elections, except illusions!
Not only are elections not a means of struggle for the working class, but they also allow the bourgeoisie to turn the workers into citizen electors, to dilute them in the mass of the population by isolating them from each other and, ultimately, to make them more vulnerable to its brainwashing.
And it's precisely because electoral and democratic mystification is a prime ideological weapon that the bourgeoisie does everything in its power to maintain and renew its effectiveness through various stratagems:
Today in Britain, a recent poll by the Office for National Statistics[1] has shown that many young people will not be voting in the coming election because there is a growing disillusionment with the existing political parties. The same poll also shows that mere apathy is not the main issue here: many of those interviewed expressed real concern for their future and the future of the planet but had severe doubts whether casting their votes for any of the parties would change anything. This is an important “beginning of wisdom”, although we are continually seeing the rise of “new” parties who promise truly radical measures, seeking to recuperate and distort such initial steps in consciousness. What is indispensable is the development of a clear understanding that the problem faced by the working class is not just the venality of politicians or the hypocrisy of their parties, but the existence of an entire system of production which has become a barrier to the progress of humanity.
WR