For workers, the June 23 Brexit referendum—for Great Britain to leave the European Union—was a lose-lose scenario, a fight between two camps of rapacious, racist capitalist bosses. At the same time, the anti-EU vote reflects workers’ disaffection with the decaying profit system, a big setback for U.S. rulers in their inter-imperialist competition with Russia and China—and another step toward global instability and World War III.
Formally established in 1993, the EU grew out of the post-World War II order imposed by U.S. capitalism in its Cold War against the Soviet Union. Alongside institutions like NATO, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, the EU allied with U.S. imperialism and helped project U.S. economic power. More recently, U.S. rulers’ efforts to impose their will on the world—and preserve their control over cheaply extracted oil in the Middle East—have led to grossly mismatched wars against small-power regimes in Iraq and Libya.
In wars hot and cold, Great Britain (also known as the United Kingdom, or UK) has been U.S. imperialism’s most faithful ally. For more than two decades, the UK has played a vital role for the U.S. ruling class in convincing other EU members to support wars in the Middle East and beyond. It has sent troops to support NATO missions in Africa and Eastern Europe (Foreign Policy, 6/16), and is a reliable partner in the U.S. bosses’ intelligence and surveillance operations.
Russia Gains at U.S. Expense
While the Brexit vote may not alter the commitment of key British ruling-class forces to continue to play that role (forbes.com 6/24), it removes the most reliable ally of U.S. imperialism from a position of influence inside the European Union. Before the Brexit vote, Great Britain was one of the most persistent voices pushing the EU to lay sanctions on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, despite sizable Russian holdings of London real estate and a presence in the London financial sector (openeurope.org).
In short, Brexit weakens the EU and emboldens Russia. According to a Twitter post by Michael McFaul, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia, “Putin benefits from a weaker Europe. UK vote makes EU weaker. It’s just that simple” (@McFaul, 6/24).
Even if the UK ruling class succeeds in ignoring the referendum or declaring it null and void for constitutional reasons (New York Times, 6/27), Europe may be beginning to fracture. The bailout of Greece and the Syrian refugee crisis have put a number of national ruling classes in survival mode. Border fences go up while Germany tries to hold it all together.
Most of the City, London’s Wall Street, sided with the “Remain” camp—including leading members of the Rothschild family, the British financier equivalent of the Rockefellers. But it appears that a lesser wing of the British ruling class – with Russian backing –has organized a movement around the opposite view. Russia’s English-language media outlets have mocked the EU as chaotic and restrictive for its member states, rhetoric that fed the “Leave” forces. Leaders of the Britain National Party and Britain First, far-right elements of the Leave campaign, have attended neo-Nazi meetings in St. Petersburg (Daily Beast, 6/8/15).
Leave Capitalism!
Over the past two generations, as capitalists have shut down industry after industry while stalking the globe for ever-lower labor costs, the working people of Great Britain have seen their standard of living decline under both Labour and Conservative Party rule (New Yorker 6/16). Over the same period, immigration of Eastern European, Asian, Middle Eastern and African workers into the UK has allowed rulers to super-exploit the newcomers and drive down wages of jobs that remain. The Brexit vote won’t reverse that process.
The Leave campaign, led by Conservative Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage of the gutter-racist, arch-nationalist UK Independent Party, carried the day by scapegoating immigrants for the failures of capitalism in Britain. But the Remain forces—like Hillary Clinton liberals in the U.S.—are an even greater danger. A coalition of mainstream Conservative, Labourites, and Liberal Democrats, these are the same bosses who have thrown millions out of work, eroded workers’ standard of living, and shredded the National Health Service.
On the eve of World War I, leaders of many communist parties were convinced the capitalists were too inter-dependent to go to war. Once war arrived, they forgot the essential Marxist slogan, “Workers of the World Unite,” and led the workers of each imperialist country to side with “their” national bosses. The Russian Bolsheviks’ answer to imperialist war—communist revolution—remains the greatest lesson in the history of the international working class.
The reality is that racism is deadly for all workers, including white workers. The 17 million workers who voted to leave the EU acted against their own interests—not in their rejection of 21st-century capitalism and imperialism, but in their turn toward nationalism and racism. Lacking communist leadership, they are being led down the path to rising fascism by both of the British bosses’ camps. Only communism, a system run by workers in the interests of workers, can solve the unceasing attacks of inequality, poverty, unemployment, and racism that led many workers to vote Leave.
A Class-Conscious Alternative
Amid the furor of Brexit, a few hundred UK rail workers are demonstrating the kind of class consciousness that—if coupled with revolutionary communist politics—represents the only true alternative for the working class. In Scotland, greedy rail bosses want to replace conductors (who safely open and shut train doors) with ticket-takers (who guarantee the bosses’ revenue and profit). These workers are striking not mainly to protect their pay, benefits and jobs but rather to protect their fellow-worker passengers from injury.
Workers of the world need an exit from capitalism. Voting in lose-lose bosses’ elections won’t get us there. We need hundreds and thousands of class struggles like the ScotRail strike, like the Ferguson rebellion, linked by communist politics. The Progressive Labor Party fights for international working-class unity by making anti-racism and anti-sexism primary in all of our local work. In a communist world, workers will be free to live and work wherever our class’s need is greatest. A communist world will put an end to imperialist war. We won’t win that world until we overcome the divisions the bosses work overtime to sow between us. Join us!