Party conference season is over. New Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, all staunch backers of the rich, capitalist classes have finished debating how to formulate the policies that best allow the ruling classes to exploit the workers.
It's easy to look at the often identical politics of these parties and their stranglehold on mainstream politics in this country and become incredibly disillusioned.
But politics isn't about picking the less-bad option out of three bollocks parties. Politics is about changing the world. Once you've decided something's wrong, and you want to change it, you've got to figure out how. Bolshy is a Marxist organisation; we believe that the working class is the agent of social change. We believe in revolution - but we also believe that standing in elections and fighting for reforms can help the workers' movement develop to a point where it is capable of making revolution. We believe in class politics.
All your TV politicians will say they represent 'the people.' In fact you can't represent all the people all of the time. You can't represent both the boss and worker, both the millionaire and the minimum wage earner. Standing up for workers' interests and rights, and fighting for a society where the workers who produce the wealth also control it - that is what we mean by socialism.
The Socialist Alliance (SA) which united all major revolutionary groups in Britain, was a big step forward, but it's been dogged by problems. Now some in the SA want to sink it into a non-socialist electoral coalition.
Bolshy believes socialists should unite, but that we should use this unity to fight within the wider working class movement. The unions may seem stodgy and dull, but they are the only way for workers to act collectively on their most day-to-day concerns. They can get up to some pretty radical stuff when they get moving. And they do have seven million members.
We need independent socialist candidates to stand in elections, but we also need to fight for the unions to demand proper political representation for the whole working class. The three 'mainstream' parties don't even want to provide that representation.
Bolshy believes trade unions locally should organise Labour Representation Committees to discuss the crisis of working class representation. Some hope this will allow workers to 'reclaim' the Labour Party. Personally, I think it will most likely split the Party. If that leads to the unions forming a new workers' party, it looks good to me.
One thing is for certain, though. In our world where the people who hog our column inches, cover our TV screens, go to war in our name and claim to represent us all blatantly speak for the rich, we need a workers' voice. We need to fight for class politics!
By Daniel Randall,
Editor.