After fourteen years of Conservative rule, with five different prime ministers who have spent their time floundering from one crisis to another, a new Labour government has been formed, on the promise that they will change Britain. Although Labour has won this election with the largest majority since Tony Blair’s 1997 election victory, and in an election which has seen the all-time largest change in parliamentary seats, it’s a mistake to think this has come from any real excitement for a Labour government. The turnout for the election was 60% of those registered to vote, the lowest since 2001, and when you include those adults who haven’t registered, we see the lowest election turnout since the introduction of universal suffrage, at only 52% of the adult population. Labour’s share of the vote at 33.87% means this new government has the support of 17.5% of the electorate!

It’s not surprising that only one in two adults voted in this election, as confidence in our politicians and parliament is at an all-time low, with only 12% of adults saying they trust political parties, and it’s easy to see why. Public services have been decimated in the face of austerity to pay for bailing out the banks in 2008, during which time wages adjusted for inflation have fallen between 8-10% for the average worker, all while British politicians have been implicated in scandal after scandal. While at the same time the capitalist class have enriched themselves and the inequality in society increases. Figures for 2021 show the bottom 50% of society own less than 5% of the wealth while the top 1% own 23%!

For many, the idea that casting a vote will improve our lives has become nothing but a fantasy, and they are right. It doesn’t make any essential difference which political party controls the state. This is because we live in a class society and in all class societies the state is the tool of the ruling class. In capitalism it is the instrument of the capitalist class and used to enforce its dictatorship over capitalist society. This is why it will always act to protect the interests of the capitalist class and oppress the working class no matter whether it’s controlled by Tories or Labour. For the capitalist class, so-called democracy and the parliamentary system are the ideal camouflage, the fig leaf, which conceals the naked dictatorship under which we live. It allows the capitalist class to claim that elections ensure the state is acting in the interests of the majority while in reality it acts in the interests of the minority. Initially the capitalist class fought tooth and nail against giving the vote to workers and only finally did this in Britain in 1928. Only when it realised that its control of the dominant ideology in society, via the education system and the mass media, the church, etc., enabled it to control the consciousness of the working class, did it give workers the vote. Democracy and parliament are today weapons used against the working class. Today where universal suffrage results in a mere 17.5% of the electorate supporting the new regime, this regime can set about attacking our wages and living standards in the name of the majority. Immediately after the new government was formed, we were told that UK capitalism has a massive £22 billion spending deficit, so we must prepare for tax rises, accept sacrifices and all put our shoulders to the wheel!

Already the new Labour government has announced multiple policies which go against the interests of the working class. They are clamping down on low-level shoplifting; rather than dealing with its cause, poverty, they are attacking those who have no other option. This is while they strengthen the state, with thousands of new police officers, ready to be used directly against the working class. They plan to set up a “Council for Economic Growth”, giving business, i.e. the capitalist class, a direct voice in economic policy making. And they have scrapped winter fuel payments for pensioners not already on benefits.

Capitalism offers nothing for the working class but an ever-worsening standard of living. The idea that this can be changed by electing a majority of workers to parliament is utopian nonsense. It completely ignores the key material relations which uphold capitalist society. The only solution is for the working class to take power. It means the overthrow of our rotten capitalist system by revolutionary struggle, and with it the suppression of parliament and all organs of capitalist power. This doesn’t mean democracy goes out the window — it means the creation of organs of workers’ power, such as workers’ councils, made up of directly recallable delegates, to replace the “democracy of the moneybags” we currently have.

This is no easy task, as it requires the international working class, which is at present a sleeping giant, to awaken and realise its historical task. Despite decades of low levels of class struggle, with the recent strike wave we have seen a promising start, but only if workers can learn the lessons of this wave of struggle and gain a political vision beyond capitalism.

But first and foremost, we need our own international party, which can promote the real interests of workers both here and abroad: a new world without the exploitation of wage labour, where production exists not to enrich a tiny minority but to meet the needs and wants of everyone. To get there workers must learn to take control of their own struggles, by forming their own strike committees and assemblies to take the fight forwards. By organising their own autonomous struggle — a struggle which can’t be held back by the institutional parties and trade unions which keep capitalism safe. The foundations of an international movement of the working class must be built in the here and now. There is no better future for the working class within capitalism’s parliamentary charades.

The above article is taken from the current edition (No. 68) of Aurora, bulletin of the Communist Workers’ Organisation.

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Image: UK Parliament / Maria Unger (CC BY 3.0), commons.wikimedia.org