An unbridgeable gulf separates the Socialist Equality Party from these rightward careening forces. They articulate the efforts of a wealthy layer of the middle class to protect their privileged existence through class collaboration and a return to the nation as a supposed shield against the forces of globalization.
The SEP bases itself on a struggle for the unity of the European and international working class against globally organised capitalism. It refuses to lend the slightest support to either faction of the ruling class in the referendum campaign. We call for an active boycott as a means of establishing the political independence of the working class.
The Brexit referendum is a product of the deepening antagonisms produced by the drive of the rival imperialist powers to dominate the world's markets and strategic resources. It is this conflict that has fatally undermined all efforts to unify the continent economically and politically on the basis of capitalism. Unless the working class intervenes, this will end in the Balkanisation of Europe and a rapid descent into the conditions that gave rise to two world wars.
The crisis facing the bourgeoisie drives it to launch ever more brutal attacks on jobs, wages and social conditions, to move towards authoritarian forms of rule, and to engage in wars of colonial conquest that are opposed by millions. As is being proved in the eruption of opposition in Greece, Belgium and France, this creates the objective conditions for the emergence of a continent-wide social and political struggle against capitalism.
The task placed before workers and young people is not to build new borders, but to tear them down; to replace the bosses' EU with the rule of the working class in a United Socialist States of Europe. For this reason, the stand taken by the SEP is of historic significance. It points a way forward not only for workers in the UK, but throughout Europe.
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