UNEMPLOYMENT, homelessness, poverty and economic stagnation. It’s no wonder Labour’s standing is at an all-time low. The Faragists and the Tories blame the immigrants and asylum seekers for all our woes while the Remainers crawl out of the woodwork to blame it all on Brexit. None of the bourgeois parties ever blame themselves for the state we are in today or talk about the real problem – which is capitalism itself.

None of us should be surprised at this as these parties and their weak and loathsome leaders defend the Establishment and the ruling class that uses them to maintain the power and privilege of the ruling class through the charade of parliamentary democracy.

On the other side of the fence we’ve seen a Liberal-Democrat come-back and a surge of support for the Greens and Jeremy Corbyn’s Independent Alliance who all stand on opposition platforms that, at least on paper, offer a better alternative to what we’ve put up with in recent years.

On the left front some now talk about building a “new popular front” like we see in France to take on the racists and challenge the Blairites, Tories and Faragists at the next election.

Not a bad idea as it stands. These liberal and left-social-democratic trends reflect the anger on the street at the gross inequalities in British society as well as the mass movement that has mobilised in solidarity with the Palestinian Arabs over the past two years. The bourgeois consensus over Israel has been broken and Zionism has been unmasked, at least on the street, as just another tool of imperialist oppression. But that’s as far it goes at the moment.

Some of these “left” leaders actually support Nato aggression in Ukraine. Others are openly anti-communist while their alternative programmes actually reinforce the legitimacy of the Westminster parliament that creates the illusion of the bourgeois “democracy” that we live in today.

While we will naturally work with them, and all anti-war campaigners, for Palestinian rights and an end to the arms race we must also put the communist answer to the crisis back on the agenda.

Great mass movements are again sweeping the continents. Working people are demanding social justice, democratic rights and an end to exploitation. It’s capitalism that’s finished — not us.

Capitalism cannot solve the problems of the economy and indeed that is not its intention. It is merely a system that ensures that a tiny minority of landowners, industrialists, speculators and parasites can enjoy the life of Roman emperors by living off the backs of working people. While millions of people scrabble to earn a living just to keep a roof over their heads a tiny elite live lives beyond the reach and often beyond the imagination of most workers. Only socialism can end this. Only through socialism can the will of the masses, the overwhelming majority of the people, be carried out. Only socialism and mass democracy – not the sham democracy of the bourgeoisie or the myths of the social democrats, end the class system and free working people from their slavery.