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Extract: This raises the issue of the contradictory nature of Labour parties as “bourgeois workers’ parties”, parties which have a capitalist programme and orientation and a working class base of support. In particular, it raises the issue that these kinds of dialectical contradictions cannot be sustained indefinitely. We know from dialectics that specific sets of contradictions cannot be permanently sustained. Quantitative change eventually produces a rupture amounting to a qualitative change. It could be argued, in particular, that once Labour-type parties get into government the contradiction between their capitalist programmes and working class social base is resolved through the triumph of the pro-capitalist aspects of these parties over the working class aspects. The internal contradiction, summed up in the “bourgeois workers’ party” formulation, is resolved, giving rise to a new, external contradiction – between Labour as a capitalist party and the working class. Once they begin administering the capitalist system, they became purely bourgeois parties, no matter what links they maintain to trade unions or what votes they may still be able to get sections of workers to give them. Over time, this tends to lead to changes in the membership and political identity of these parties, too. For instance, workers drop out, middle class people join and unions increasingly fall away. That has been the trajectory of the Labour Party in New Zealand from its earliest days. The overall significance of the Labour Party in relation to the working class has been neatly summed up by Shane Hanley: “Labour’s role has been to suck in, contain and suppress working class political elements within the framework of a bourgeois political party. The only real danger for the Labour Party is that the working class should become politically organised outside its ranks.”[78] Although this work is ssentially about the NZLP it also deals a bit with th British LP and Lenin's analysis of it: Full at: https://rdln.wordpress.com/2011/12/02/the-truth-about-labour-a-bosses-party/ _________________________________________________________ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
