The electoral trick – over and over again

In the last few years our rulers have laid on 2 Referendums, elections for Regional Mayors and Police and Crime Commissioners, elections for at least three levels of local Councils and elections for "national" Assemblies/Parliament in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. To crown it all the last General Election elected a Government bound by a Law which was said to spare us the spectacle of a further such pantomime until 2020.

In reality, the law about a 5 year Parliament was not worth the paper it was written on. The Tory Party passed it to keep the Lib Dems trapped in the coalition arrangement from 2010-15. The ruling Tories since 2015 have not needed that little trick so when it suited their party political purposes they overturned their own law with a vote in the House of Commons which could only have passed with support from the Labour Party.

Principled parliamentary politics?

Of course, the Parliamentary Labour Party chose to play the game of having an extra electoral circus as they could not envisage the possibility of acting otherwise. Divided as they are, the right expect to get rid of Corbyn and his crew after the coming expected electoral shambles whilst the left who mainly occupy safe seats expect to extend their grip over the rump of the Party.

Theresa May promised when she got the job as Prime Minister that there would be no early election so why the U-turn? The answer is short-term expediency. Far from being the strong leader as her election campaign makes out May has only a small majority. Currently the right wing of the Party could scupper any Brexit deal that looks too soft on Europe. Better to have an election now when Labour is in disarray and post-Brexit Ukip have become irrelevant. Playing the same nationalist, anti-immigrant card that won Brexit she can boost her majority. But most of all it means there will be three years after Brexit actually happens in 2019 before another election is due. Enough time, the Tories hope, for any economic damage that will do to be managed.

Since the election was called the parties have produced no surprises. The Labourists have called for a return to a "kinder capitalism" at a time when the world-wide system continues to be beset by the most severe and insoluble crisis. Their insistence that they will “balance the books” does not promise much in the way of relief for those suffering from that crisis. Outside England, the nationalists continue to peddle their core illusions while the Lib Dems and Greens hold on to the image of a capitalist Britain remaining in the capitalist European Union.

Election spectacles – reality versus illusion

As Marxists, we start from reality rather than the distorted ideological myths peddled by, and on behalf of, the minority who own and control the means of production. That minority – the bosses' class or bourgeoisie – like other ruling classes before them control the ideas which dominate society. In the 21st century that set of ideas is endlessly strengthened and reproduced by the digital and other media which penetrates into the majority of homes throughout Britain and other parts of the world.

The current prevailing myth peddled in North and South America, Europe, Australasia, India and many parts of Africa is that elections allow those who vote to have control. That story is the preferred narrative for the bourgeoisie maintaining control in the majority of states. As we know, it is readily ditched when national ruling classes can better maintain their position by other means. In what passes for normality in Britain – housing and health service becoming increasingly unavailable, employment becoming scarcer, lower paid and more precarious, benefits being cut and more people relying on charities and food banks - our bosses are still smug enough to wheel out their election roadshows.

Their continuing use of elections continues unabated even in circumstances where it is clear that most people feel no wish to be involved. For example, in the various local elections at the start of May many areas had turnouts well below 40%. Nevertheless , without a hint of shame, the media machine continues to roll out the tripe about democratic choices for the next round in June. Let there be no doubt, in modern times the democratic exercise to choose Candidate A or Candidate B is no more than a hoax. Whatever the composition of the Parliaments, Councils or Mayoral Offices the real decision-making lies elsewhere.

It is the increasingly opaque world of capitalist investment or disinvestment that dominates the conditions in which workers live. Whether they understand it or not the choices in the gist of the elected representatives are entirely choices within the boundaries of the capital system - a system based on production aimed at profit not meeting people's needs. Currently the decisions are driven by the need to try to maintain or even increase profit levels - an insoluble problem caused by the very nature of capitalist production, competition and the need to accumulate. For further explanation of the tendency of the rate of profit to decline see leftcom.org

Their socialism and ours

During the run up to the election much will be made of Labour being a "Socialist" alternative. We reject the idea that the Labour Party is either socialist or an alternative.

Since the First World War, Labour politicians have participated in or controlled numerous governments in Britain. In common with all the other parties their role has to been to maintain the capitalist order. The platform which the Corbynite Labour Party presents is entirely within that framework. The concept of nationalisation or state intervention have been prominent at many times in the pasts and merely serve to develop "state capitalist" solutions where the capitalist state and capitalist enterprises become increasingly intertwined. They have nothing in common with the self-emancipation of the working class - the real centre of the socialist path.

Likewise the promises about the level of the minimum wage or altering the laws about contracts of employment may or may not be feasible. What is beyond doubt is that all such proposals are about maintaining capitalist relationships between the owners and us wage-slaves. In contrast to the Labourist advocates of ongoing alienation and oppression we stick with the revolutionary slogan "Abolish the Wages System".

Another gang of advocates for a vote for Labour will be those who believed that the Soviet Union and its empire was "real existing socialism". These present an equally bogus interpretation of Socialism. Again they mislead their followers confusing state capitalism and socialism. The significant difference is that state capitalism in the Soviet bloc, alongside China and other imitators, emerged from the defeat of the Workers Revolution which started in 1917. The state capitalist system that developed in the first half of the 1920s continued to cause misunderstanding as the hollowed out and defeated Soviets (Russian for Councils) were replaced with repressive and reactionary agents of the state while keeping the same title. Adding to the problems of those trying to argue for a genuinely Marxist approach is the history of the revolutionary Bolshevik/Communist Party which helped to make the revolution in Russia and supported the worldwide proletarian revolution. In the historic tragedy the Party, with so many of its best elements slaughtered in the Civil War, retained the name Communist but became the core of the ruling class in the imperialist state that was one of the two "great powers".

Their Democracy and ours

The June election is another cynical sham to con people that they have a "stake" in the system. Whatever rosettes the 650 MPs wear, the reality for the working class will be increasing misery as the capitalist crisis continues and deepens.

When we understand that the electoral machine changes nothing then we grasp the real nature of the world we live in. The reality is that elections, referendums and the rest of the democratic rigmarole is no more than smoke and mirrors. Democracy within capitalism is designed specifically to be unable to alter the fundamental class relationships. Behind the facade, the minority class dominates society in its own interests to maintain their own power, wealth and control. The reality is that the democratic circuses merely obscure the reality of class rule – a dictatorship by the bourgeoisie.

The working class has already discovered our alternative to the bosses' political structures. Instead of Parliaments we need a system based on structures such as Workers Councils where recallable representatives are directly accountable to their fellow producers. Where struggles take place we encourage Assemblies outside the control the capitalist parties and structures to agree and fight for their own demands again with any representatives being recallable and accountable.

Many millions who can see no point in the bosses' political games will not be conned into the voting booths. Amongst them will be the class conscious minority of workers who want to see a future based on satisfying human need for all.

Alongside that minority we appeal to workers:

Don't vote!

Begin the fightback in our own communities and workplaces!

Work to grow the seeds to overthrow this system – a future for all humanity is possible!

KT

May 10 2017