Danger of Prince Willialm Wales playing a future Bonapartist role

It is obvious British Capitalism is at the crossroads. Reading the Far Left press in the last couple of days shows how the ruling class is attacking the working and middle class on every level in both private and public spheres of Britain's economy. There are divisions within the ruling class over different competing interests where for example the Liberal Bourgeoisie could sacrifice the Monarchy to save money. On top of this the ruling class are split from top to bottom over strategy and tactics towards the middle and working class. The more asture elements of the ruling class realise this cannot carry on for any length of time without mass upheavals which if it moves out of control could lead to a pre-Revolutionary criss.


Each section of the ruling class is manouvering to protect their sectional intersts but will subordinate this to their general intersts particulary if threatened by the working class. The Aristocracy fearing Liberal Bourgeois elements may use Prince William Wales to demagogically adapt to a growing radicalisation of the middle and working class. It is interesting in that regard that News 24 reports this morning that he is growing a beard. Anti-war elements particulary sections of Britain's Muslim community may not be coned by his demagogy after Harry Wales was used by Brown to build up support to an unpopular war in Afghnistan. This was a point made in the Liberal Bourgeois press that being used in Afghanistan would alienate such layers and weaken the Monarchy further.


Those Ultra-Lefts who dismissed the democratic demands for a republic in 2000 when the Guardian called for it to be established shows how they did not understood how a Monarch could be used to contain a radicalisation and stop a revolution. This danger is shown by the Queen trying to identify with the masses suffering with a possible Depression. She maybe laying the basis to abdicate and handing over kingship to Willliam Wales.


An organisation called the Revolutionary Democratic Group go the other extreme by just calling for a republic in the abstract without relating it to Transitional demands which wins the masses to a programme of Socialist revolution. If William Wales could contain the radicalisation the Liberal Bourgeoise would compromise with the Aristocrats and keep the Monarchy. Revolutionary Marxists have understood since Marx argued in 1848 that faced with the threat of a workers upheaval the Liberal Bourgeoisie does not hesitate to compromise with rennants of Feudalism so the ruling class unites against a possible revolutionary threat.


Another possibility is the masses are not sufficently coned by William Wales. The ruling class may to stop a revolution to ask Left Wing Social Democrats to form a government. Trotsky in the History of the Russian Revolution showed how the Russian Ruling Class was vacillating between keeping attacking the masses or make reforms to stop an inevitable revolitionary upheaval. One wing won out which kept attacking the masses because they felt any upheaval could be contained later on. Their failure to recognise the extent of the upheaval led to the February 1917 Revolution. William Wales could be used as king to hire and fire governments from Social Democracy right upto Conservative Bourgeois governemnts. There are grave dangers of him being used for such a Bonapartist role.


This threat can only be countered by building the confidence in workers' fighting as a combative class for its intersts. Building a left wing in the Labour Party and possible split which leads to a bigger left formation Trotskyists should orientate to because workers out of this process will form their political struggles as a class which will lead to an eventual mass revolutionary being formed by breaking them from the Social Democratic Bureaucracy. That is the only sure way Willam Wales as Bonapartist figure can be defeated.