No choice but Labour

THE GENERAL election campaign has kicked off with the usual rubbish from all the bourgeois parties in the mass media. The pollsters put the Tories and Labour neck-and-neck amid speculation of another hung parliament and king-maker roles for the Scottish Nationalists, Liberal-Democrats and the others from Wales and northern Ireland.

But on the street there is little enthusiasm for any of the mainstream parties. We’re told that half of young adults have not yet registered to vote and over half of those who have can’t be bothered to troop out to the ballot booths in May.

This is not surprising. Labour’s promises amount to little beyond scrapping the bedroom tax, and a few minor concessions to the unions on employment laws while the Tory campaign is simply to get the faithful out on the day to stave off the challenge from their far-right rivals in UKIP.

David Cameron promises more of the same which means more tax breaks for the rich and a buoyant housing market for the middle strata. Ed Miliband’s answer is merely the “austerity- lite” of Labour’s last year in office — a handful of reforms that are not intended to reverse austerity but merely slow-down the assault on the living standards of workers.

Labour’s affiliated unions — the vast majority of the TUC who fund most of Labour’s efforts — will be urging their members to give Labour another vote of confidence in May.

The NCP supports them. This is not because we support Miliband & Co, or because we think a Labour government can solve the problems of working people. That isn’t possible in a capitalist “democracy”. It is simply the best possible outcome in the current circumstances.

All bourgeois elections are the manipulation of the largest number of votes by the smallest number of people. Working people can never achieve state power through bourgeois elections. Bourgeois elections are democratic only for the ruling class and their instruments, a tool to mask their real dictatorship.

We reject the “parliamentary road” and electoral politics. The old Communist Party of Great Britain abandoned the revolutionary road long ago when it adopted the British Road to Socialism. Today its successors continue this essentially social-democratic and revisionist policy. Other left electoral platforms, like the Socialist Labour Party and TUSC, follow the same path.

Their paltry votes reflect the futility of trying to compete with Labour in bourgeois elections. They call for social-democratic reforms while campaigning against the only mass force capable of implementing them. They foster the illusion that there is a left electoral alternative to Labour when the reality is that the only alternative, in the current situation, to the Conservatives is Labour.

All of them end up attacking Labour, rather than the ruling class, as the main enemy of the working class. Objectively they end up in the camp of the class enemy.

But the masses are often much wiser than those who claim to lead them and this is why these parties remain isolated amongst the working class, despite all their pretensions.

The Labour Party is not the enemy of the working class nor is it a barrier to communist advance. A Labour government, with its links with the trade unions and the co-operative movement, offers the best option for the working class in the era of bourgeois parliamentary democracy. Our strategy is for working class unity and our campaigns are focused on defeating the right-wing within the movement and strengthening the left within the labour movement as a whole.

Day-to-day demands to make the rich pay for progressive taxation, state welfare, free education and a health service and public sector dedicated to meet the people’s needs are winnable under capitalism, particularly in a rich country like Britain today.

Though Labour is dominated by the class-collaborating right wing the possibility of their defeat exists as long as Labour retains its organisational links with the trade unions that fund it.

Our Party’s strategy is the only way to fight for the communist alternative within the working class of England, Scotland and Wales. We want day-to-day reforms and they can only be achieved by the major social democratic party in Britain, the Labour Party. But revolution can only be achieved through the leadership of the communist party.