At the next general election most voters in England are likely to have a choice between candidates representing six different parties: Labour, Tory, LibDem, Green, Reform UK, and the new Corbyn party. In Scotland and Wales, with the nationalists, it will be seven. This appears to extend democracy by offering voters a wider choice. But does it?
What, on paper, is on offer? Labour is in office nationally and has pledged to bring about economic growth and to improve education, housing and social amenities funded by the increased tax income that will be a by-product. The Tories are also promising growth but by being even more in favour than Labour of giving private capitalist enterprises free rein. The LibDems advocate something. The Greens promise to pursue reforms to benefit the environment. Reform UK says that cutting back on immigration will improve things for the rest of us. The new Corbyn party wants to return to what Labour promised in the 1970s by redistributing wealth and income more evenly.
Labour and the Tories — the Ins and Outs of British politics — have had many chances to implement their policies and have both consistently failed. It is tempting to conclude that it’s because their leading members are bungling incompetents, corrupt or nasty people, or, in the case of Labour, sell-outs. Some of them undoubtedly will be but that’s not why they fail. Even if they were all competent, well-meaning and honest it wouldn’t have made any difference. Replacing them in office by the members of some third party such as the LibDems or some new protest party such as Farage’s wouldn’t make any difference either.
The reason Labour and the Tories fail, and why the others would too, is because they all accept capitalism and believe that the government can make its economy work for everyone. But it can’t. Capitalism is based on the resources needed to produce wealth being in the hands of a minority and used to produce goods and services for sale with a view to making a profit. This is what drives the economy and is what all governments have to respect and implement. Governments don’t control the way the capitalist economy works. It’s the other way round. The coercive economic laws of capitalism impose on governments what they can — and can’t — do. Governments can’t conjure up growth, can’t give priority to the environment, and can’t redistribute wealth and power.
In this way conventional politics is based on an illusion. Governments are assumed to be able to do what those elected to office say they will. And so elections are seen as being about voters choosing what policies they would like to see pursued or what reforms they would like to see enacted by voting for the candidates of one or other political party that they consider would best do this.
There is a choice at elections but it is a choice of which grouping of politicians is to carry out what the workings of the capitalist economy demand. It’s a choice as to which of them is to preside over capitalism’s operation and implement its priorities.
Faced with this limited choice, socialists, opposed as we are to capitalism and all of its works, say ‘we are not voting for any of you’. What is needed is a change of system not a change of politicians in office.
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