Right2Water Campaign is a Bourgeois Campaign!

national | bin tax / household tax / water tax | opinion/analysis

Friday October 31, 2014 20:10

by Paddy Hackett

One issue campaigns are bourgeois.

The anti-water charges campaign is a populist campaign driven by the opportunist politics of the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party and other organisations including the UNITE trade union. The Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party merely view the campaign as a means to enhance their popularity within the working class while opportunistically impeding the development of communist consciousness among the working class.

The campaign against the imposition of water charges is nothing but a populist bourgeois campaign that will do nothing to improve the living standards of the working class. This is because it creates and sustains illusions in capitalism. It suggests that capitalism can solve the problems of the working class. However the fact is that capitalism is incapable, with the best will in the world, of solving the problems of the working class. This why a communist revolution is a historical necessity.

Even if the popular anti-water charges campaign succeeds in forcing the government to capitulate and back off the imposition of water charges it does not follow that it has succeeded in defending the living standards of the working class.This is because the state can still deduct the same revenue from the working class by other means. One issue campaigns, such as the anti-water charges campaign, are bourgeois in character and do nothing to challenge the existing social system.

The anti-water charges campaign is a populist campaign driven by the opportunist politics of the Socialist Party, the Socialist Workers Party and other organisations including the UNITE trade union. The Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party merely view the campaign as a means to enhance their popularity within the working class while opportunistically impeding the development of communist consciousness among the working class. The latter can only be accomplished by advancing demands among the working class that challenge capitalism as opposed to fortifying illusions as to capitalism's nature.

Within this one issue campaign there exists a diverse range of political currents. Yet as a one issue campaign the facilitation of criticism is discouraged if not suppressed.This absence of critcism cannot assist in the development of class consciousness. Instead of raising the consciousness of the working class the leadership of the anti-water charge movement bows to its bourgeois consciousness.