
IF the world turned upside down by recent events — encompassing the never-ending wars of imperialism, the 2008 financial crash, Labour’s complete degeneration and the cataclysmic split in the US ruling class — has taught us one thing it is that elaborate programmatic schemes inevitably come to grief on the rocks of a reality that is impossible to predict with any certainty.
In the Manifesto of the Communist Party drawn up in 1848 for the First International, its authors argued that the formulation “Workers of all lands unite” should replace the motto adopted by the utopian League of the Just: “All men are brothers.”
This recognised that in the actually existing capitalist society, every moral and political issue means something different to different classes.



