The communist answer

The death of the Queen’s consort, Philip, has inevitably been the major news focus of the bourgeois media over the past few days. The solemn bands of devout monarchists who gathered outside Buckingham Palace to pay their last respects tell a story.
    The fact that over a 100,000 viewers complained to the BBC about the programme rescheduling, including dropping of the MasterChef final, to make way for tributes to the Duke of Edinburgh, tells another.
    Though the “divine right” of kings ended with an axe in 1649 the cult of the modern monarchy that began with the House of Orange and the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 continues unabated.
     Many myths are fostered by the ruling class about the Royal Family. We are told that while the Crown is the traditional guarantee of our unwritten bourgeois constitution the monarchy has no powers at all these days. But while the reserve powers of the monarch, heavily curtailed by the 1689 Bill of Rights and later Parliamentary reforms, are essentially those of the ruling class as a whole it is ludicrous to suggest that one of the richest families in the world has no power or influence in the country.
     The Crown, like the House of Lords, ultimately represents the interests of all the other great land-owners by upholding the principle of inherited wealth. As such it remains the pivot of the capitalist class as a whole.
    We must never forget that the capitalist system is bankrupt, corrupt and viciously opposed to the trade unions and the whole working class movement. The current austerity policies reduce living standards and this exacerbates the deepening crisis by undermining any possibility of creating an expanding economy.
    It is the historic role of the working class, united and led by the revolutionary party to replace capitalism. There is no future for the working class in seeking a crisis-free capitalism. The working class now has the freedom of necessity to ensure a social revolution takes place. The alternative would be an increasingly authoritarian, brutalised and ruthless capitalist class keeping the working class down.
    Bourgeois democracy is democracy for the exploiters and dictatorship for the exploited. Bourgeois elections, when they are held, are used so that the smallest number of people can manipulate the maximum number of votes. Parliament no more makes the real decisions for the country than do the councils in the localities.
    All the major political parties in Britain seek to perpetuate capitalism. Communists, however, believe that socialism is essential to eliminate exploitation, unemployment, poverty, economic crisis and war.
    New technologies have allowed some capitalist enterprises to rise to become monopolies and become giant global powers. The state machine has been reinforced along with this rise. Alongside this there has been a relentless ideological campaign to popularise capitalism, using religion, praising the monarchy and making the armed forces part of the coercive legal system.
    At the same time the bourgeoisie have taken advantage of the divisions in the labour movement. Reformism, which means limiting working class struggle to gaining improvements within the capitalist system, remains the dominant theoretical trend within the working class. Sadly we still have a long way to go…