Why, if we have a such strong critique of Labourism and we’re lowercase labour transformed, do we say that a political revival of the working class needs partly to go through the Labour Party?

A quick explainer.

Labour is not and has never been a socialist party, even if it’s always contained socialists—mostly at its base and scarcely in the PLP.

Despite claims to care about electability, the Party right fight democratisation tooth and nail to stop socialists acquiring meaningful power.

Labourist to the core, the Party substitutes tepid accommodation “in the nationalist interest” for genuine class struggle. There’s active hostility to the kind of initiatives essential to develop a broad, socialist, working-class movement—from political education to left media.

There’s antipathy to mass participation and democracy, subordinating everything to winning elections. And even on those terms, Labour has been fairly unsuccessful: when in power, it’s often paved the way for attacks on organised labour and the working classes.

Often, Labour’s platform has amounted to little more than offering to manage British capitalism more efficiently and slightly more fairly than the Tories.

And the structural the British state and the parliamentary system remain hostile terrain for socialists.

So, why bother with the Labour Party when it’s all so arduous and dispiriting?

To spur a massive growth in collective working-class political activity, we have to change the conditions in which we’re organising.

Neoliberal capitalism has worked to fragment the working classes, crush trade union actions, and disperse social-movement energy. The problems are structural. To address the massive imbalance of power between capital and labour, we have no choice but to fight on that terrain.

Changes are needed at the level of the state:

- Repeal laws restricting working-class activity
- Meet basic needs by improving public provision of essential goods & services
- Democratise the constitution
- Open up the Westminster party system
- Devolve power away from Whitehall

The working class needs to seize hold of the state to create the conditions necessary for its abolition.

To do that, we need to work through Labour because the electoral system precludes any mass electoral party of the working class in Britain besides Labour.

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