Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line

Communist Unity Association (Marxist-Leninist)

Imperialism and the Struggle for a Revolutionary Party


Imperialism and the Triumph of Opportunism in the Working Class – The Workingclass of Britain Has No Party

In imperialist Britain the working class is oppressed and exploited.

The creators of all wealth, workers; obtain in wages only the minimum necessary to live and raise children so that capitalism has a steady supply of labour-power. All means of production, whether factories, machines or mines, are owned by the monopoly capitalist class. Workers possess only their own labour-power which they must sell in order to live. The system of capitalist relations of production is in sharp contradiction with the highly-developed means of production leading to ever-more acute economic crises, bringing the miseries of unemployment and falling wages on the working class.

The class interest of the proletariat is to eliminate capitalism entirely and to build a socialist society. The basis for transformation – into communism.’ the classless society free from exploitation and from racial, sexual and all other forms of inequality. The class interests of the British proletariat lie also in the greatest unity in proletarian internationalist brotherhood with all the exploited and oppressed of the world. The capitalist exploiters of the British workers are part of the world system of imperialism which subordinates and exploits the whole economies of the colonial countries and reaps super-profits from their people’s misery.

To overthrow imperialism and establish socialism the working class must rise in revolution and smash the monopoly capitalist -state; they must physically disperse and eliminate as organised forces its army, police and bureaucracy. The whole history of class struggle in Britain and, the world teaches that no ruling class peacefully or voluntarily relinquishes power. The Capitalist class win use all the means of violence at its disposal to maintain its rule. The working class must defeat reactionary violence and military force with its own military force. It must replace the dictatorship of the exploiters with the dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of the majority which will deprive capitalists of the freedom to re-establish exploitation.

Today, the economic crisis of imperialism is growing more acute.

The capitalist class continuously tries to make the working class carry the burden of this crisis. The necessity of more repressive legislation to facilities this, together with the increasing spontaneous struggle of the workers against the attacks on their living standards, make it harder for the capitalists to rule in the old ’democratic’ way. Thus the economic crisis has its reflection in the political superstructure and increases the likelihood, as the contradictions develop, of British imperialism resorting to open, violent dictatorship as it has already done in Ulster.

The ideological groundwork for this has, over the years, been well prepared amongst the working class and other strata. Today, the National Front, the Monday Club and other open fascists are intensifying their racist, chauvinist propaganda. The Labour Party, far from opposing this trend, is putting increasing emphasis on class collaboration in the ’national, interest’, and’ on anti-communism.

Racism, great-nation chauvinism and the myth of the ’national interest’ must all be continually and consciously struggled against.

Fascism must be firmly opposed. The working class and other strata must be warned and mobilised against the threat of monopoly capital resorting to fascist rule. Compromise with fascism in words and deeds by the Labour Party must be exposed.

These are the real class interests of the working class. The need for a correct vanguard party to give concrete expression to these class interests is increasingly urgent and increasingly apparent today. No force represents the class interests of the working class unless it strives to awaken the workers to a revolutionary po1itical consciousness and to lead them to class power. The only force that can do this effectively is a revolutionary communist party. There is no such party in Britain today.

Various political parties and trends claim to represent workers and working class interests. They attempt to win support among workers but their political ideas and aims are bourgeois. It is objectively their role to represent capitalism among the workers, not to lead the workers against capitalism.