The Election Post-Mortem

The early pollsters had Labour doing dismal but what this election demonstrates is that it is possible for people’s political views to change in a relatively short period of time. What is public opinion? Clearly, for anyone concerned to see a huge shift in human consciousness, this is an important area for ourselves to study.  This election which produced no clear winner did, however, produce losers. The Stock Exchange, traders, and bankers are twitching nervously; this was not the popular Tory victory that was predicted. The present Conservative government appears to have run out of steam. However, under capitalism, it is the people who must always be the losers.

Governments don’t control the economy, the economy controls governments. No government can solve capitalism's problems because their permanent solution lies only in the abolition of capitalism and the wages system. Economic laws that politicians are powerless to change and leave little room for manoeuvre determine what politicians do and how they must react. It is not the deceitfulness of politicians that is the problem but rather the economic structure of society. When the money-men says ‘Jump’, it is always the working class who are for the high jump. It is with some sadness that we predict that the poor will always pay the bill. All governments are really coalitions of capitalist class interests against the working class, so if workers want something better than pain and oppression for themselves then they had better stop voting for its continuation.

Were the Socialist Party ever to be in a parliamentary minority and faced with the dilemma of a hung parliament, there’s no question what we would say: A plague on all your houses, you’ll get no concessions from us or any compromise. The choices before us are not between “socialism” and “capitalism', but between better or worse forms of government and their policies.

Many voters believe politicians are dishonest or have become cynical about elections, reasoning that “60-seconds of democracy” is small recompense for five years of neglect and policies that rarely express their preferences. Political parties must always try to combat voter disillusionment and like chameleons, they must keep changing their hue to camouflage their image and give the appearance that this time they are different. 

Capitalism is a splintered society; divided not just by sectional ownership of the means of production but by the economic rivalry of independent states striving to exercise authority over given geographical areas. Conventional political parties endorse the framework of capitalism and compete to win control over the state and to administer the economic system within its boundaries, which necessarily means perpetuating the wages system and the persistent hardship for wage and salary earners. Trading one group of careerist politicians for another can never be the answer, changing society’s economic structure is the only answer.

It is the Socialist Party's job to arm our fellow-workers with knowledge and be a voice to counter the refrain of the obscurant media who offer mind-candy sound-bites as the modern opiate for the masses.