Back to Front - Fraudulent and phoney
WORKERS, NOV 2007 ISSUE
So Gordon Brown promised us a new type of politics. No spin, more inclusiveness and honesty. Any illusions that British workers may have had about a break with the past were rudely dismissed by events in September.
As an early election was hyped up during the Labour Party Conference, crucial announcements were brought forward to persuade the British electorate to vote Labour in a November poll. An increase in the National Minimum Wage, the Comprehensive Spending Review and a visit to Iraq during the Tory Party Conference with the false announcement that 1000 British troops would be home by Christmas were all part of Brown's attempts to deceive British workers.
But he was forced to back off when people saw through his deception and spin and Labour consequently spiralled out of control in the polls. We were then treated to the bizarre spectacle of the Labour Party stealing policies from the Tories, and even complaints from the Liberal Democrats that the Tories had stolen them from their party – though since no one really knows what the Liberal Democrat policies are, that's hard to prove.
Certainly the pre-Budget announcement by Brown's poodle, Alistair Darling, showed that Labour is second to none when it comes to transferring wealth from the poor to the rich. And the idler the rich, the greater the transfer.
Any of the myriad of buy-to-let scum now infesting our cities who sells a house at a profit of £100,000 this year will pay £34,000 in tax. But wait until April when the budget comes into force, and the tax bill goes down to £18,000. Basic rate taxpayers – many of them struggling to get a foot on the housing ladder – are now to subsidise those who produce nothing.
After the unedifying tax handout, Brown went further. He called on the EU to be even more "liberal" in its market economics, calling for more privatisation, while saying that there was no need for a referendum on the new EU Constitutional Reform Treaty which institutionalises just this "liberalism".
British workers have been exposed to the real nature of the phoney democracy that is bourgeois democracy. It does not represent the will of the people. It is simply a mechanism for maintaining capitalist control. There is no difference between the parties because they all represent capitalism. They really are the same. Are we to be faced with an election costing millions that would only give us the choice of exactly what level Inheritance Tax will kick in?
Working class democracy is about involving workers in decision making at all levels in mass organisations, such as our trade unions, and in developing policies to advance the interests of workers. It is incompatible with the interests of capitalism and does not rely on phoney competition and rivalry between political parties.
We could make a small start on the road to working class democracy by not playing the game of Brown's capitalist democracy. We could boycott the next general election as a positive act. Not just by not voting, but as a voters strike, because to stand a chance of moving to working class democracy we must first deny the legitimacy of this fraudulent and phoney democracy.