The following resolution was passed unanimously by the tenth party congress of the CPGB-ML.
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Congress notes that we live in a class society, under a dictatorship of capital, controlled by a handful of extraordinary wealthy monopoly capitalists. In essence, we live in a democracy that exists only for the rich. This congress recognises that we are living through the final and highest phase of the capitalist system: namely that of capitalist-imperialism. The imperialist system finds itself in perpetual crisis facing the looming prospect of its disintegration. The crisis affects all aspects of capitalism, both economic and political.
On the economic front, imperialism is seeing the centre of the world economy shifting towards China and Russia and other developing economies such as India and South Africa. More and more countries are breaking out of imperialist domination and are taking the path of sovereignty and independence.
On the political front, there is growing instability in the centres of imperialism. The social peace at home, ensured by imperialist plunder of the rest of the world, can no longer be maintained. Year on year, working people in the imperialist core are finding their material conditions getting worse, resulting in huge dissatisfaction and the potential for social unrest. These two maturing crises of imperialism are intertwined and are bound, ultimately, to bring about a revolutionary crisis.
Monopoly capitalism has the very simple aim of maintaining its system of exploitation at home and abroad. Having no way out of this crisis, imperialism will look for its salvation by increasing its repressive tendencies, attempting to capture new markets abroad by force and increasing repression at home to try to crush the resistance of the masses.
The dictatorship of capital has two possible forms: bourgeois democracy and fascism. Today in Britain, we are still living (just) in conditions of a bourgeois democracy. Under these conditions we have the formal equality of all citizens before the law, we can participate in elections, voting for our preferred bourgeois representative, and have the freedom to ‘choose’ our own method of exploitation.
This sham democracy gives the masses of people the illusion that they are participants and stakeholders in the capitalist system. But these freedoms do not alter the essential fact that capitalist democracy is a democracy only for the rich and that capitalist democracy is a veiled dictatorship of the exploiters, whose system creates ever widening material and economic inequality between the class of wage-workers (proletarians) and the class of capitalists (bourgeois).
Finding itself in crisis because of the contradictions that are inherent to the capitalist mode of anarchic production for profit, the ruling class is heading towards the point where bourgeois democracy will no longer be able to maintain social peace and the exploitative relations in the imperialist core. Bourgeois democracy is experiencing a crisis of legitimacyKeir Starmer, who is universally loathed, was handed a massive parliamentary majority last year despite a comparatively low proportion of the popular vote. In fact, non-voters made up the largest share of the voting electorate. The illusion of democracy is slipping and many workers are realising that they have no real stake in the system; that their ‘democratic rights’ are merely an illusion.
Bourgeois democracy is capitalism’s preferred method of dictatorship in the imperialist heartlands. The ignorance of working people regarding their oppression is a valuable tool for the maintenance of social peace. However, as contradictions in the capitalist system intensify and the crisis of overproduction deepens, the dictatorship of capital needs to find new ways of maintaining the system while increasing the level of exploitation at home and abroad through evermore coercive and authoritarian measures. Since the masses are already restive, this inevitably means a turn towards a more openly terroristic dictatorship, in the form of fascism.
Fascism has two main features:
- In the imperialist core: the suppression of civil liberties for the masses and the intensification of their exploitation.
- Abroad: wars of spoilation and conquest. The abandonment of any illusion of moral principle, and the quest for the total enslavement of any and all sovereign nations, regardless of the price in blood.
Although it would be incorrect to say that we are living today under conditions of fascist dictatorship, we can see clearly that the seeds are being planted and the current trajectory is towards a growing authoritarianism.
As Comrade Georgi Dimitrov stated: “The development of fascism, and the fascist dictatorship itself, assume different forms in different countries, according to historical, social and economic conditions and to the national peculiarities, and the international position of the given country.” (The Fascist Offensive and the Tasks of the Communist International in the Struggle of the Working Class against Fascism, 2 August 1935)
In Britain today we can see the gradual implementation of the first feature of fascism. The velvet glove is being replaced by the iron fist; the suppression of our right to protest and our freedom of expression are advancing along with the intensification of exploitation.
The most obvious example is the state’s response to the widespread revulsion and horror of the British people towards the genocide of the Palestinians. Imperialism seeks to control the middle east and its precious natural resources, viewing it as part of its life-and-death struggle to maintain the global imperialist system of exploitation. The Palestine movement having engaged the broad masses of working people in a way not seen since the Iraq war threatens this aim. The ruling class’s primary concern is that the working class may succeed in putting up effective resistance to its genocidal war machine. The second, broader concern, is regarding the ramifications of a well-organised and class-conscious working class asserting its power in Britain.
These concerns have led to a frenzied crackdown against the Palestine movement. If you happen to be effective at providing a concrete and instructive education to the masses, you now face the risk of arrest, prosecution and criminal conviction. When the bourgeoisie find that their laws are not yet strong enough to achieve a criminal conviction, they satisfy themselves with the destruction of the targeted individual’s life instead. Doxing and harassment, loss of employment, loss of reputation and threats to family life are increasingly being used as tools by the state and its semi-detached zionist political police.
Our own comrades have been on the receiving end of such treatment, along with tens of high-profile academics, journalists and activists, and many less-known individuals, who have all found themselves facing the wrath of the state. The heroic activists of Palestine Action have found themselves languishing in prison for months on end under the harshest of conditions whilst they await trial. The fate of the previously velvet-gloved environmental direct activists of Just Stop Oil was a showcase for the kind of harsh sentences for mild acts of civil disobedience that the government wants to direct towards the rest of the working class.
The clear message is that if you resist, you will be destroyed. The bourgeoisie wants those who are already radicalised off the streets, and they want to intimidate anyone who may be thinking of participating in some form of struggle to stop before they even start.
The other element of this crackdown has been intensification of racism and chauvinism through the state and its unofficial channels in the media to sow division amongst the working class. It is no coincidence that during a period when large numbers of the working class found a common ground around the Palestine movement, there was an attempt to characterise the protests as “supporting terror” and “hate marches”.
The ruling class and its Labour government are ramping up efforts to create mass contempt and hatred within the white working class towards people with different skin colour, ethnic background or religion, and one result of their endless provocations were last summer’s riots, during which racist thugs called on the poor white working class to target minorities and specifically asylum seekers.
The second feature of fascism can also be seen to be maturing and intensifying, the most obvious example being the proxy war currently being waged by Nato against Russia in Ukraine. The imperialist powers are determined to fight their war to the last Ukrainian, no matter what the cost to the people they claim to be “standing with”.
Besides this, in the past year alone we have seen the frenzied prosecution of a genocidal war against the Palestinians and its extension into Lebanon and Yemen; the overthrow of the secular and sovereign Syrian Arab Republic by imperialist-backed islamic fundamentalists, and a string of heinous provocations against Iran. Not to mention continued brazen interference in the internal affairs of many of the countries in eastern Europe, including Romania, Georgia and Moldova, and endless provocations against China in Taiwan and the DPRK in south Korea.
Despite the fact that the war against Russia that our party signposted a decade ago seems to be coming to a close, the imperialists are still desperate to destroy Russia, and just as desperate to find a way to bring down China, too. The intensification of trade wars, the arming of Taiwan are all contributing to reaching that point. Alongside Russia and China, imperialism has also set its sights firmly on course for conflict with Iran, and of course the DPRK. In other words, the most reliable bulwarks against imperialism now find themselves in a life-or-death struggle, the outcome of which will determine the fate of the whole world.
In these conditions of deepening economic and political turmoil, this congress declares that now is not the time to fall into despondency or cynicism. Congress therefore resolves that the correct response to the present situation is to:
- Redouble our efforts to bring a Marxist analysis to the working class, which alone can explain both the root causes of society’s problems and the only real way out.
- Imbue all our work with revolutionary optimism, understanding that the turmoil we are experiencing is the sign that conditions for a revolutionary upheaval are ripening fast.
- Work harder than ever to find and train advanced workers, building our party and firmly connecting it to the masses, so that when the revolutionary situation finally matures, the British working class has the theoretical and organisational ability to succeed in its mission of overthrowing the dictatorship of capital and establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat.
