General Election – Fast Forward to the Past

In many areas affecting their lives people realise that there is no real choice, only an illusion of choice, a choice between unwanted and unwelcomed options presented as the only alternatives. Throughout the ages humanity has sought and achieved advancement motivated by desire, passion and a will to produce something better, to succeed in their aspirations. Lack of meaningful choice in national elections and the realization that politicians of all persuasions are failing to represent voters has resulted in steadily declining numbers presenting themselves at polling booths. In the present electoral system not voting is both making a choice and not making a choice. It's clear that the reason voters are not turning out is because they think it's pointless. This is an inherent flaw of representative democracy: voters are infrequently called upon to cast a vote, which seems to be far removed from any action or result; there is no immediate reward for the vote. The voters thus feel, correctly, that their influence is slight. If the alternatives on offer are unacceptable then no valid choice has been offered and the process can only be perceived as a sham. Voters, non-voters and reluctant voters all require different alternatives from those on offer.

In all elections there are three options. The first one is to continue to vote for one of the numerous parties whose policies are limited by the narrow parameters of capitalism, the very system responsible for the vast majority of society’s problems. Secondly is the tactic favoured by the anarchistic and that is not to vote at all and to become politically apathetic, which contributes to the continuation of capitalism. Lastly in contrast to the above two, to support The Socialist Party which proposes the genuine, democratic sharing of resources amongst all the people, with production of goods and services for human need. In such a society, each individual would be of equal value and status, and would be able to make their own contribution, voluntarily towards producing the wealth of the new society. The people would then have free access to goods and services. In real socialism, since profit making and money will be abolished, it is all the people and the environment which will come first. The job of The Socialist Party is to bring the class struggle to an end, not to try and accommodate themselves with the system.

The Labour Party has failed, so let’s start a new one. That’s what some trade unionists and left-wingers are saying. That would be to repeat a mistake. It is not possible either to reform capitalism into socialism by means of a series of reforms enacted by parliament or to make capitalism work in the interest of the majority class. Once the political structure is unable, as now, to accommodate any semblance of reforms so as to offer aspirations, then have to resort to trying to scare the electorate into supporting them, into fooling them into voting for them. They know that to keep the system functioning, they have to persuade people to turn up, and give their support for it. That is the politicians' job; since they cannot actually make or change events, they have to work hard to pretend that they can. Their function is to win and maintain public confidence. At the end of the day they are merely actors, and our modern media-driven politics could be easily called a thespocracy, rule by actors, as we witness from the importance of television appearances and performances, strong emphasis upon presentation but woefully low on content.

Instead of the Labour Party gradually changing capitalism, the opposite happened. Capitalism gradually changed the Labour Party into an ordinary run-of-the-mill mainstream party taking its turn to manage the affairs of British capitalism. What is required is not a new Labour party but a party with socialism as its explicit aim and a policy of doing all it can to bring this into being. If the mistakes of the 20th century are not to be repeated this century the last thing that is needed today is a non-socialist, trade-union based “Labour” party. We’ve already been there, and it doesn’t work. Leftists no longer have any justification whatsoever for asking us to follow Labour and those who think themselves to be socialists have had their illusions thrown back in their faces with a rude wake-up call.