Below is an excerpt from the political resolution adopted at the Dec. 16-17 Communist League congress. It is from the section titled, “The rulers’ deepening political crisis.”
The post-World War II imperialist relations and structures are becoming unstable and undependable; all of the consequences of U.S. imperialism and its closest allies losing the Cold War are deepening. Profit rates have continued their tendency to decline over four decades, resulting in a worldwide slowdown and stagnation of production, of trade, and above all of the rate of increase in productive employment.
The relationship of forces between capitalist states has been, and is being, transformed. Washington is the only imperialist power able to use sustained military power anywhere in the world. In comparison to any other single capitalist power, U.S. imperialism continues to grow relatively stronger, and it continues to consolidate its dominant place among the imperialist powers, all of whom are dependent upon U.S. military might. Russia and China are seen today less as new markets for investment, trade and capital growth, and more as aggressive capitalist competitors — changing the relative position in world politics of Washington, Moscow, and Beijing.
The European Union is being torn at its seams, but with the rival bourgeoisies’ fear of the new continuing to weigh more heavily than their hatred of the old. Nation states in Europe whose borders encompass more than one substantial nationality also tend toward becoming unstuck, but the resistance of the central bourgeoisies and their states is hardening.
It’s this world that underlies the “Brexit debate.” The propertied rulers in the U.K. face the differential decline of British capitalism. One wing of the capitalist rulers reacts against what they see as the straightjacket of an EU “ever-greater union” but knows nothing about what they favor. Another wing clings to yesterday’s world, hoping to keep the Brexit “transition period” going for as long as possible; including some who have in their sights ultimately calling a statute of limitations on the June 2016 referendum result itself. This is an ongoing conflict. It runs through all parties and the government. Within bourgeois confines, there is nothing for the working class in this debate. Our task is to point a proletarian way forward in face of the deepening world capitalist crisis.
The propertied rulers have no solution other than to make working people pay.