In 2024, we saw the most recent general election in Britain. This election saw the defeat of the Conservative Party and their removal from power for the first time in fourteen years. Labour had finally took power, and the majority of the British public were happy about this turn of events. However, as time has gone on we have seen the Labour administration continually worsen the standard of living and continually dismantle their image as a left-wing party.
However, Labour never was a left-wing party. To be considered “left-wing” you must expect at the bare minimum a party acts in the class interests of the proletariat or fights for revolutionary change. Labour are nothing more than a bourgeois party who spent the 2010s and indeed the former half of the 2020s presenting as a party to bring about change, but now that they are in government we see their lack of change.
More hardline socialists within the Labour party should like to claim that Starmer doesn’t represent what their party truly values, but it is then we must ask what do they think Labour values? Many of them will say they are Democratic Socialists, but that is nothing more than a term to say you engage in Neo-Lassallean tendencies and you are a reformist. Labour is a reformist party, and we must see Starmer is not a departure from what Labour traditionally support at all but rather his bourgeois socialism is the logical conclusion of a mass party that allows all to join under the pretence of socialism.
Since Labour gained power, they have been introducing policies based upon surveillance and economic class collaboration without any working-class focus. This surveillance we predict will become a removal of democratic processes over the following years. We predict this not because it may happen but because it is the natural conclusion of Labours policies to become something resembling fascism. As a capitalist nation enters crisis, which, with the current state of global relations and the economy, it likely will, the response of the bourgeoisie is to naturally defend their position by promoting the rhetoric of national palingenesis under a strong (bourgeois) leadership. The rhetoric of national palingenesis is bourgeois because it claims to rebirth the nation without changing the class relations building it, thus changing a capitalist nation from one with the guise of bourgeois democracy to one without the mask of democracy but with the same class relations.
The Starmer government are opportunists, and they work with whatever should benefit them rather than even standing on their own party platform. But the Labour leadership are not the only ones at fault. Bourgeois democracy relies on government and opposition to create the illusion of choice, an illusion which works well enough for most people, even to the point there are self-proclaimed communists who work in parliamentary politics. The opposition are at fault for a national descent into fascism as much as the government are. We see the opposition, mainly those who proclaim themselves reformers, protest the government through populism and fascistic rhetoric. The reformers are more openly capitalist than Labour and support the free market more openly, but they serve the same purpose of furthering the prevalence of capital during a time of crisis.
It may be noted that, if they stick to anything, the Labour government seem to stick to socially progressive policies. This does not hinder them from being fascist. A common misconception about fascism is that it must rely on social traditionalism. Whilst it often does to further the idea of a national rebirth, it does not necessarily have to, because fascism is not a unique evil but rather it is a response by capital to periods of crisis. When fascism first came about in the 1910s and rose in the 1920s it was during a time of crisis following the disastrous events of the first world war. It is also interesting to note that fascism at its earliest point in the 1910s came from Futurism and Syndicalism and held many progressive viewpoints, only switching to traditionalism later in order to appeal to the masses of Italy who were catholic. Fascism can come in many forms, but it is essentially just the preservation of capitalist relations without the mask of bourgeois democracy.
It is now important that communists must build their movement around anti-capitalism. Anti-fascism and united fronts are not necessary because fascism is inherently capitalist, and our actions against fascism is because they are capitalists and cannot be viewed in the lens of a unique evil. Still however, we stand against fascism.
Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!