As predicted in the June edition of the Socialist Standard, Maduro has ‘won’ the presidential election just held in Venezuela.
Of course he has not won. It is clear from all the evidence available that, though he banned his chief opponents from standing, far more people voted for his opponent than for him. Maduro had stated he would win ‘by hook or by crook’ and that is what he has done. With the country in a piteous economic state, it is thought that many more people than the 7.8 million who have already gone will now attempt to leave.
What we have here is another example among many of state capitalist countries with tyrannical regimes (e.g. Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam North Korea) falsely calling themselves socialist.
‘Big deal’, socialists say, even if whoever replaces him has a better chance of defeating Trump in the carnivalesque event called an election.
Will its result make any difference? Of course not, since both Democrats and Republicans are parties of the status quo – capitalism, a system in which 712 million people throughout the world suffer from extreme poverty, and in the US the three wealthiest people have a higher net worth than the bottom half of society.
Instead of supporting parties whose purpose is to perpetuate capitalism, workers in the US and elsewhere need to organise to establish a truly democratic society of free access to all goods and services, based on production for need not profit – socialism.
Outpourings of condemnation from world leaders at the ‘horrific and heinous’ assassination attempt on Donald Trump, while Biden with dazzling political acumen called it ‘not appropriate’. In truth a lot of people must have privately wished the attempt had succeeded. Trump is an abject and repulsive metaphor for capitalism’s screw-you ideology. But the rich naively love Trump and dismiss concerns about his MAGAlomania as Trump Derangement Syndrome. And many poor Americans think he’s their friend, like turkeys welcoming Thanksgiving.
The shooter, barely out of his teens, wasted his life for a separate delusion. Politicians, even ones like Trump, can’t change how capitalism fundamentally works, so shooting him wouldn’t make any difference. If the collective misery of the 99% is ever to end, capitalism itself needs putting down.
In a sensible society, would any aircraft builder conspire to defraud a supervisory body, thereby putting human life at risk? This is just what Boeing has admitted to recently in relation to its 737 Max aeroplane, resulting in the deaths of 346 passengers and crew.
And of course Boeing’s fraudulent behaviour isn’t a one-off. Think Volkswagen, with its falsified pollution figures. Think Arconic (and others), which knowingly supplied dangerously combustible cladding for Grenfell Tower. Or the decades-long conspiracy of silence/denial around cancer by the entire tobacco industry.
Plainly, these are ‘outliers’, abnormal occurrences of a system driven by the need to maximise profits, yet they are one more reason for working to end that system.
Many people will be relieved that the ‘far-right’ National Rally party did less well than expected in the French elections. And many will be pleased that instead some form of ‘left-wing’ government may be set up. But will it make any difference? Such a government will still be forced to try to ‘make capitalism work’ and will not have anywhere on its agenda the moneyless, wageless, classless alternative to capitalism that socialism represents.
In fact no government can simultaneously try to mend capitalism and end capitalism. Administering not ending capitalism is what any new French left-wing government will be aiming to do, which of course will not take that country anywhere different from where it is right now.
Well, a Labour government has been elected, with a really sizeable majority, and the Tories have suffered a big setback, losing well over two hundred MPs. But the real and crucial result was a foregone conclusion, that capitalism would win. It doesn’t matter which capitalist party is in office (Labour, Tories, LibDems, Reform, Greens, SNP, Plaid, and so on), because the wages–prices–profits system will continue until workers see the need for a revolutionary change.
Tory MP Robert Jenrick (who retained his seat) said before the election that a Labour landslide would make Britain ‘unrecognisable’. In fact it will be totally and recognisably business as usual, capitalist business: inequality, poverty, unemployment.
Voting for any of the established parties in the forthcoming election will just mean more of the same. But you do have the opportunity to register your opposition to the existing system of society by writing “WORLD SOCIALISM” across your ballot paper.
When thousands of us are prepared to take this democratic action, there already exists, with modern communications and technology, the means to give everyone on the planet a comfortable life in a society of voluntary cooperation and planned abundance.
We could create a society of free access to all goods and services, without buying and selling, without markets, without leaders, without frontiers – a society where people cooperate freely and produce what is necessary to satisfy everyone’s needs.
Recently a Daily Mail headline warned: ‘A Tory Wipeout Risks One-Party Socialist State’. Two things to be said here.
Firstly reference to the Labour Party in any of the forms it has taken in the 100-odd years of its existence as ‘Socialist’ is a complete misnomer. Labour’s purpose has always been to manage the profit-making system called capitalism, even if sometimes in a marginally different way from the Tories. In other words Tweedledum alternates with Tweedledee.
Secondly a ‘Socialist State’ is a contradiction in terms – socialism is by definition a world society without states, a moneyless, wageless system of voluntary cooperation and production for use not profit.
If you want to vote for socialism write “WORLD SOCIALISM” across your ballot paper.
You might remember a Simpsons episode where both presidential candidates are actually alien lizards. When the successful candidate subsequently starts oppressing everyone, Homer says “Don’t blame me, I voted for the other lizard.”
The candidates in next month’s UK General Election are not lizards, but they do stand for capitalist inequality, so you’ll get the same result whoever wins. If you’re in the constituencies where we are standing, take the advice of Eugene Debs who said “It’s better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don’t want, and get it.”
Otherwise, write “WORLD SOCIALISM” across your ballot paper. Capitalism may win, but it doesn’t have to be with your approval.
At every UK election brainless lefties have advised workers to “vote Labour, but rely on your own struggles” or some such drivel. No surprise then that the Weekly Worker now tells us “Vote left where you can (and that includes the few left Labourites who are being allowed to stand), vote Labour where you must (ie, mainstream Labour)”.
That means urging most workers to vote for the Party of Business, in other words, to collude in their subjugation to the capitalist system.
So what should you do if you live outside the two constituencies with an SPGB candidate? If you want socialism, the only way you can express your view is by writing “WORLD SOCIALISM” across your ballot paper.
