Shouldn't elections be about real choice

By now some of you will have grown weary of listening to the mainstream candidates in this General Election. They have waffled on and on about public spending, public services, jobs, crime, and how things will get better, if only we put them into power. They all talk about money – spend more, spend less, tax it, borrow it, lend it, find it - but they never talk about where it comes from. They never talk about the basic rules by which it is used. They just assume that money is being made, and that they can adapt their policies to the rules of the money-making game. That is, they assume capitalism. They defend a society in which the majority of the population must sell their capacity to work to the tiny handful who own most of the wealth. They defend a society in which things can only happen if there is a profit to be made. In short, they subscribe to the law of no profit, no production. The Socialist Party is the only party whose sole object is the replacement of the present social, economic and political system (capitalism) with a fundamentally different system (socialism). Politics today involves the mass of the electorate choosing at periodic intervals professional politicians as representatives who will govern them for the next few years. At election times it often suits politicians to make sympathetic noises about issues, but after the elections are over the same politicians can usually find "practical considerations" that make them have "re-appraisals" of previous "policy statements". This cynical manipulation is rife throughout the capitalist world.

Elections are ultimately about which class is to control political power. Capitalist political control is essential to the continuation of capitalism as, while this does not give them control over how the capitalist economy works, it does give them control over what laws are made and over the deployment of the armed forces. As long as society is divided into owners and non-owners of the means of producing life, different sectors of the capitalist class will support different types of governments, including right-wing ones, left-wing ones, centrist ones, or whatever, depending upon their needs for more or less governmental intervention. Corruption among sections of their class, wishful thinking that a stronger state may guide the economy out of serious recession, friendlier taxation policies, or the needs for improved state subsidies, are just a few of many variables influencing the owning class to at times support leftwing brands of government. The capitalist class are not able to sustain any form of government to operate their plundering ventures in the money trick that gives some those rations called wages and others those riches called profits, not even dictatorships, without the support of the wealth-producing working class. Besides producing socially necessary wealth, the working class operates the administration of the state, carries its guns, and provides at times its direct support in the form of votes in open elections. Workers therefore need to be hoodwinked.

While there are historical reasons for the existence of the separate parties into which these career politicians are organised, the differences between them are superficial and often sham. All of them stand for capitalism, its wages system and its production for profit. The capitalist class are not particularly concerned over which of them wins as long as one of them does (even if they don’t like one party to stay in power too long in case the politicians involved overdo the cronyism and the corruption). It doesn’t matter to workers either, even if many are tempted to choose the “lesser evil” – Tweedledum in preference to Tweedledumber – generally perceived by critics of capitalism to be the Labour Party despite its dancing to the tune of capitalism every time it has been in office.

One thing is certain, whichever candidate or party wins will bring about no significant changes to the way things are. And in between elections we will have little or no say in the important decisions, the 'real issues' that concern us. Because of the way things are organised at present, none of us are allowed to take part in the really important decisions that affect us – the ones about our schools, about health and housing, peace and pollution, and the distribution of wealth.

The Socialist Party seeks an alternative to this insane set-up and calls for a truly democratic society in which people take all of the decisions that affect them. This means a society without rich and poor, without owners and workers, without governments and governed, a society without leaders or the led. Socialist society would consequently mean the ending of buying, selling and exchange, an end to borders and frontiers, an end to force and coercion, waste and want and war. Today we have the technology, the resources and the know-how to satisfy everyone's needs. That fact is well established. Fellow workers, replace the lies of the politicians with the trust in your own power. Unite with the workers of all lands to take over the planet for all. Is it not high time that we took back control of our destiny from the profit-mongers and the masters of war?