The case , not the face

In 1997, Blair , the new PM , said to Labour MPs “You are not here to enjoy the trappings of power but to do a job and to uphold the highest standards in public life. You are all ambassadors for New Labour and ambassadors for the Government.” . After which we had Derek Draper selling his influence , Bernie Eccleston buying access to Number 10, the purchase of peerages , 'yo-yo-he-is-in-he-is-out' Mandelson accepting suspicious loans , the gravy train expense claims scandal of sitting MPs , Tony Blair's own nefarious business dealings and now ex-ministers whoring their influence out to whoever can pay .
We have also witnessed capitalism becoming a dirty word again because of the recession and banking collapses and the credit crisis and simple out and out company fraud .

Yet even if every politician were up-standing , honest and genuinely interested in improving the lives of ordinary people rather than in furthering their own careers , filling in their inflated expenses claims and enlarging their bank balance , this would not make any difference. The problems we face doesn’t arise from governments being composed of dishonest or self-serving politicians. What a government can do depends, not on the honesty or determination or competence of its members, but on the way the capitalist system works and on what, as a profit-making system, it requires any government – even one composed of selfless saints – to do. Capitalism just cannot be made to work in our interest.

What’s wrong with capitalism is that it is based on class privilege and exploitation.What’s wrong with capitalism is that its competitive struggle for profits leads to speed-up, stress and insecurity at work, to damage to the environment, to wars .Capitalism simply cannot be reformed to work in the interest of the majority of workers. In regards of the candidates in this election , whether perfectly sincere or not , it’s not a question of what they want to do, but of what they can do – or rather cannot do – within the framework of the profit system. Politicians are constrained to operate within parameters set by the economic system for which they stand. Politicians are merely the errand boys and girls of the rich and powerful .Based upon minority ownership of the means of living, capitalism can only ever operate in the interests of the capitalist minority, not the electorate as a whole.

Politicians have long been attempting to cope with this anarchic market volatility since the beginning of the modern day industrial state two hundred years ago and havent yet succeeded. Their job is to manage the day to day chaos of capitalism little more. It makes not an iota of difference whether they are honest, clever, stupid, or educated. Nor does it matter if they are well meaning. If good intentions or any of these other things were all that were required to fix capitalism there would be no problem.The forces of the economy are beyond the management of the politicians. Changes in world market conditions and the natural booms and busts of the capitalist commercial cycle brings them back to the grim reality of business.

The Socialist Party are not interested in upholding capitalist economics. We are not asking anyone to vote for us who does not understand and want socialism. We are not in the business of providing reformist promises to patch the system back together. We are asking you to study the case for socialism so that when you do vote for socialism, you will, in effect, be voting for yourself for your own interests. Rather than dither in a futile panic between one bunch of hopeless corrupt careerists and another, why not use the vote properly and effectively and opt for a real alternative?

Vote for the case not the face.