There's something bizarre about this week's European election. One brand of candidates tells us that the EU is a good thing - if not the best thing ever invented - while the other tells us that the EU is a bad thing - when not busy claiming that it's the source of all evils.
But they all have something in common - their arguments stop short of showing any concern for the problems faced by the working class. All they want is our endorsement for them against their rivals.
Why, then, should they get our votes? So that they can claim that we gave them a mandate which we never wanted to give them in the first place? This is a good reason for not voting for any of them - in short, to cast a NOTA vote (None Of The Above), like six million voters did in the recent Indian election. Whichever way we vote otherwise, will be interpreted by the main parties as a blank cheque for all their policies - especially those policies most opposed to our interests.
Fighting our real enemies
Over the last few weeks, the anti-EU bandwagon has become increasingly aggressive in its anti-migrant, xenophobic rhetoric. The Tories and Ukip have long been blaming every problem on migrant workers - whether it is the housing shortage, unemployment, falling wages or worsening conditions. But, last week, Miliband joined them by insisting that "immigration concern" is legitimate and not a matter of "prejudices".
Cameron and Farage are lying through their teeth with the inflated immigration figures they use to back up their scare stories. But Miliband's story is just as hypocritical. What he called "immigration concern" is, indeed, a matter of "prejudices". But these prejudices do not come out of nowhere. They are deliberately whipped up by politicians like him, Cameron and Farage, who use migrant workers as scapegoats to cover up their own failings and the failings of their capitalist system.
If so many workers are unemployed or forced into under-employment, it is not due to foreign workers. It is due to the fact that British capitalists refuse to invest in productive activity, preferring instead to sit on their mountains of cash because speculation provides higher profits than production. And since we live in a society in which these capitalists can do as they please without being accountable for it, they get away with their criminal, anti-social behaviour.
Likewise, if low-pay is increasingly widespread in the working class, it is not due to foreign workers undercutting British workers - but to bosses using every trick in the book in order to cut wages. And what this calls for is the joining of ranks of all workers, British or otherwise, in order to force the bosses to concede hefty wage increases to all!
But don't expect these politicians who are all loyal trustees of the City to say any of this!
Choosing our true allies
Workers cannot defend their interests by opposing the EU - it would be scoring an own goal.
The EU may well have been a purely capitalist construction designed to suit the needs of big European companies. But the fact that it creates multiple ties between the European working classes and allows circulation across borders which have long ceased to be of any use, is actually in the interests of all workers.
Despite and against the will of the capitalist classes, the EU is laying the basis for an increasingly integrated European working class, which will be far stronger than the sum of its components - if it chooses to take advantage of this opportunity.
But this is precisely what the City and their politicians, from Cameron and Miliband to Farage, hate most - the idea that workers might join forces across Europe in order to fight the austerity policies that each European government is imposing on its own working class.
Instead these politicians want to play their usual divide and rule game, by claiming that British workers have to agree to lower wages, worse conditions, etc., so that the British economy can be more "competitive" than its European rivals.
Our interests cannot be to play along with this game, nor to fall for their crass "national interest". Our only interests are our class interests - against those of the bosses - and our best allies are the workers of Europe and beyond who share these interests. Politicians would want us to treat migrant workers as aliens - when they are our brothers and sisters in exploitation. For us, the only aliens are the capitalists who exploit our labour and it is from their capitalist system that we need to withdraw, by overthrowing it!