The Champions of Labour! (1929)

From the January 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

After continually telling us recently that the Labour Party is a third Capitalist Party, we are somewhat amused to find the Communists in the new edition of “Communism is Commonsense” giving us the following:

   Originally we claimed the right to belong to and work in the Labour Party merely because we were a part of the working-class movement, and the Labour Party, formed as it was mainly from the trade unions on a free federal basis, was intended by its founders as a common organisation for the whole workers’ movement. But to-day we demand affiliation to the Labour Party, and our members in the trade unions try to get their union to support Communist affiliation, for a wider political reason, viz., that only the Communists can effectively lead the workers against the reactionary leadership of the Labour Party. The workers in the Labour Party need our Party to champion their cause against MacDonald and Co. (p. 23).

“Only Communists can lead the workers” ! ! considering the brilliant array of leaders of Communism pushed into jobs and afterwards denounced for being worse than the other leaders.

What the workers want is knowledge, not leaders. What the Communists in the Labour Party want is the leaders’ jobs.