Whilst asset prices rose astronomically from 1980 onwards, conservative social-democrats, be it Clinton in the US, or Blair in Britain, offered nothing to workers as even crumbs from the table. In the US, it led to the defeat of Gore in 2000, and the installation of a right-wing Bush Presidency, followed by a right-wing Obama Presidency that continued the same conservative-social democratic policies of Clinton and Bush, the same bailing out of speculators, and printing of money tokens to inflate asset prices.
To be fair, Obama did try to use the power of the US economy to introduce fiscal stimulus after 2008, but was beaten back by right-wing Republicans in state legislatures, who imposed fiscal austerity, showing the weakness of federal states, as against unitary states, and also by Tea Party Republicans who won control in Washington, illustrating the problem of Presidential as against parliamentary system. But, the Democrats failed to mobilise anything other than verbal opposition to these Republican wrecking tactics, despite having control of the Presidency.
Obama's failure to provide any real solutions for US workers led to the election of Trump. In Britain, the failure of the Blair/Brown government to meet workers needs had seen its support continually fall since 2001, and as Brown/Darling bailed out the bankers and speculators, in 2010, again providing no answers for workers, they too were kicked out, and replaced by a Cameron Tory Party, itself moving to the right under pressure from its petty-bourgeois base, in coalition with an Orange Book Liberals, themselves moving rapidly rightwards in search of support from the petty-bourgeoisie.
The US Democrats and UK Labour Party are already, effectively Popular Fronts, contained within one party. In relation to Labour, it is basically the meaning of Lenin's characterisation of it as a bourgeois workers party. That is a party based upon the working-class and its organisations, the party that they look to to represent their interests, but whose ideology is itself bourgeois, itself reflecting the bourgeois nature of the trades unions, of bargaining within the system, rather than seeking to overthrow it. But, that description applies equally to the US Democrats, as it does to the German SPD, and so on. It is always only a question of the degree to which these parties reflect the alternating strength of conservative as against progressive social-democracy, which itself is a reflection of the comparative strength of real socialised capital, as against fictitious capital.
Given the weakness of Marxists, they have been left with no real alternative but to operate within these bourgeois workers parties, as recognised by Trotsky, in the French Turn of the 1930's. This amounts to nothing more than the position that Marx and Engels pursued in 1848, when, again, given the reality of the tiny size of Marxist forces, they joined the German Democrats, which was an overtly bourgeois party, in order, in Engels' words, to “gain the ear of the workers”. There is, however, a difference between this tactical operation of revolutionaries, forced upon them by their numerical weakness, in operating inside bourgeois parties, and the joining of revolutionary parties, or centrist and reformist parties with openly bourgeois parties, in a formal or even informal alliance.
The revolutionaries, in adopting the “entryist” tactic do not abandon their criticism of the reformists and centrists, let alone that of the overtly pro-capitalist elements within those parties, today represented by Starmer and Reeves, in Labour, Biden and Harris in the Democrats, and so on. Nor, do they give up their own independent organisation, and programme within those parties, around which they seek to mobilise additional forces. As Engels put it, in relation to this tactic adopted inside the German Democrats,
“When we returned to Germany, in spring 1848, we joined the Democratic Party as the only possible means of getting the ear of the working class; we were the most advanced wing of that party, but still a wing of it. ... I think that all our practice has shown that it is possible to work along with the general movement of the working class at every one of its stages without giving up or hiding our own distinct position and even organisation, and I am afraid that if the German Americans choose a different line they will commit a great mistake.”
If the revolutionaries do have to hide their own independent organisation, as they have had to do, from time to time, as the bourgeois leaders of the parties have conducted witch hunts against them, they do so, in order to continue the tactic, all the while, arguing the case for turning these parties into united fronts of parties representing the workers interests, and, thereby, expelling the pro-capitalist elements that constitute them as popular fronts instead. It is a version of Lenin's demand, in April 1917, directed at the Provisional Government, of “Down With The Capitalist Ministers”.
Applying the tactic, particularly, in conditions of working-class advance, does not prevent Marxists from becoming MP's, Councillors or other such elected representatives in parliaments, because that enables them to use these positions as more elevated platforms from which to argue the revolutionary case against the official programme of the reformists, centrists and pro-capitalist elements, thereby, gaining the ear of an even wider number of workers. What it does mean is that Marxists cannot join the government and shadow cabinets of any such parties, which would make them equally responsible for the inevitably anti-working class measures such parties implement and advocate. In short, the entryist tactic is one forced on us by material conditions, whilst our aim is to break up these parties as Popular Fronts, and to build a mass revolutionary party.
Even the United Front, as a combination between workers parties is a compromise we enter into given existing material conditions in which the revolutionary party does not have a clear majority. As Trotsky set out in his speech on The United Front, if the revolutionary party had a clear majority of support from the working-class, it would not propose a united front with the reformists and centrists, ploughing its own course, and forcing those minority parties to support it, or else become even more irrelevant. We are clearly, a very, long way from any such condition, today.
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