[The following election talk was given at GLW Dinner on September 5, 1998 by John Percy, Democratic Socialist candidate for the Sydney electorate in the 1998 federal election.]
There’s an air of unreality and fakery about this election:
- The stage-managed walks through malls;
- The packaged releases of TV bites for the evening news;
- The refusal of [Kim] Beasley to really fight on the GST;
- The incompetence and repellent characters of all the main players.
This is over and above the normal bullshit and lies and posturing in all bourgeois elections.
The rituals reach their extremes in the staged elections in that citadel of democracy, the USA. Money talks. And people have to choose between two packages, both bought by and beholden to big business.
But we’re getting there. Labor might make its pitch a bit more to “the less well off”, but the experience of 13 years in power showed once again that their real masters are also the wealthy elite.
This approach to elections is part of the ruling class’s process of de-classing, de-politicising society, making it more governable, reliable for the ruling classes of the rich countries of the world.
A whole new language is imposed on us. A whole layer of toadies in the media, in academia, in government play their part in the farce.
The purpose is to disguise their dictatorship, to con the majority into willing submission.
The middle-class myth
Central to this process is the “middle-class myth”, their effort to disguise the real class divisions in this society, the fact that a tiny wealthy elite not only owns and expropriates the bulk of the wealth produced in this society, but also pulls the strings, and makes the fundamental decisions.
We’re all supposed to be middle class now, basically equal in opportunities and our rights. OK, there might be some recognition of some especially disadvantaged – the unemployed youth, the single mothers, most Aborigines…
But the rest of us, are OK, normal, in the same boat, “middle class”. This myth is designed to cover up the real wealth, and disguise the real power in this society.
They’d like to keep us drugged and ignorant, so we don’t rock the boat, just stick to the beer and circuses.
But firstly, this narrow outlook leaves out of consideration the majority of the world. It leaves out the North-South divide, the harsh division between the wealthy imperialist countries, and the poverty stricken, exploited countries of the Third World.
The majority of the people of this planet live at a level of poverty we can’t comprehend, and we in the rich countries rarely give a thought to them. In Indonesia, for example, the latest figure has two thirds of the population now living below the poverty line, something like a dollar a day. This is the first yawning gap they want us to ignore.
But in the imperialist countries themselves there’s also a massive gap, the small elite, the wealthy ruling class, is on a level so far above us that we rarely think about it, or can comprehend it. That’s how they want it too. Their obscene wealth is mostly kept behind high walls.
There’s a little conspicuous consumption to divert and titillate, leaked to the gossip columns for the rest of us.
But don’t get mesmerised by the expensive toys they sometimes flaunt; think of the immense wealth they actually have under their control. Every now and then a figure lobs into the pages of the newspapers, and you can do some quick calculations.
When Wall Street suffered its record 6% plus fall last Monday, they informed us that US$3 trillion had been wiped off the value of stocks. Work it out, that’s $500 for every man, woman and child on the planet. In Indonesia, India, most of Africa, that’s more than the yearly income for most people!
The following day, Tuesday, “investors” (i.e., capitalists) were extra jittery, and turnover on Wall Street rose to $80 trillion… $15,000 for everyone in the world!
That’s only a fraction of their total wealth anyway – What about all the other stock markets, and all their property investments, their bonds, and all the other riches they’ve accumulated. The size of these accumulated fortunes is absolutely obscene.
While half the globe starves. Grain rots in silos, because people have no money to buy. And the gap between rich and poor in the world’s richest countries continues to widen.
And yet 90% of the population in the USA think they’re “middle class”. And in Australia it’s headed that way.
Most of the time, they have most of us so well conned.
And their toadies like John Howard can act ever more arrogant.
Politics of Envy?
Faced with Labor’s tax package targetted more at lower income groups, Howard had the hide to blast this as “the politics of envy”.
Deputy PM Fischer also played the theme, he acknowledged they favoured the already rich – “we’re not communists”, he sneered.
Greed is Good became the mantra of Wall Street. But to Howard’s and Fischer’s sneers we have to counterpose the Politics of Anger, against the Politics of Greed!
We have to reassert class politics, socialist politics, to expose the myths they try to con us with, to tear apart the new language they try to impose, the mealy mouthed terms for modern day pirates and robber barons they use – “investors” and “entrepreneurs”. To sneer back at their “reforms” which mean attacks on our hard-won rights and conditions.
Class politics has been abandoned by Labor to the extent it ever had it. In their rush for approval as good managers for big business, even the mild social reformism of past years has been abandoned, and they rushed even ahead of the capitalists to be seen as the best deregulators. (Carr still wants to privatise the electricity, even after the water disaster.)
Global economic crisis
Now with the Asian economic crisis clearly recognised as a global economic crisis, the deregulators are getting nervous.
When the New York stock market closed on Aug. 31, four days of losses totalling more than 1070 points left Wall Street’s Dow Jones Industrial Average at 19% below its July high point.
Is there going to be a global meltdown? Is another Great Depression like the 1930s coming down the line? They don’t know. Certainly many of the capitalist commentators and economists are very anxious, and talking more about the possibility.
At the very least, it’s put paid to the pompous posturing of the “End of History” apologists for capitalism. No longer are the Asian Tigers pointed to as the way of the future. No longer can they con the Third World (“Emerging Markets”, the new description,) that they can catch up with the imperialist countries.
Certainly the aspiring capitalists in the collapsing economies in Asia, Latin America, the former Soviet Union have less pompous faith in the virtues of the system. Certainly the majority of the populations in those countries are experiencing first-hand the fearsome results of capitalist “miracles”.
- Capitalist instability is now the norm.
- Capitalist permanence is not so certain.
- Marx and Engels are not so outdated!
Marx was Right! was the headline in a feature in the Australian after the Asian economic turmoil.
Engels described the capitalist boom-and-bust cycle in his 1877 pamphlet “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”:
“The extension of markets cannot keep pace with the extension of production. The collision becomes inevitable, and as this cannot produce any real solution so long as it does not break in pieces the capitalist mode of production, the collisions become periodic.
“Commerce is at a standstill, the markets are glutted, products accumulate, as multitudinous as they are unsaleable, hard cash disappears, credit vanishes, factories are closed, the mass of the workers are in want of the means of subsistence, because they have produced too much of the means of subsistence.”
Socialism is not so irrelevant after all, contrary to the trumpetings of the capitalist apologists in recent years.
And socialism will be the theme of our election campaign, the content of more of our propaganda. Our message will fall on increasingly receptive ears. People want to know, want to understand, as they’re shocked into awareness by the brutal instability of the capitalist economy, and the brutal barbarism and racism of its proponents.
A Unique election campaign
This election may feel unreal, and the campaign seems full of the usual lies and hypocrisy, but it’s a unique election campaign for us, and can be an important one.
The worldwide capitalist economic crisis can help shake up all the false myths and a lot of the fake certainty and faith in the dominance of capitalism, and no longer just allow answers only within the capitalist framework.
Our socialist analysis is able to explain the crisis of capitalism, in Australia, in Asia, worldwide. Our election campaign, and our ongoing campaigning and propaganda, can put forward the need for a real alternative, the need for socialism.
The rise of One Nation, Hansonism, has meant that racism will be a central issue in these elections. It’s a result of the increasing instability of capitalism and the visible failure of economic rationalist policies. Hanson’s bigotry and scapegoating threatens to send society back to the dark ages. Her mad thrashing around for voodoo economic non-solutions is laughable, but then, so are many of the non-solutions of respectable official capitalist economics.
The Democrats try to pose as the alternative to Hanson, but they’re purely in a parliamentary framework. Where have they been on the streets, nowhere to be seen. No demos, no actions, they’re also part of the problem.
This election is unique for us also in that it’s the biggest Democratic Socialists campaign for a long time. In all states, we’re fielding Senate teams, and many Lower House candidates as well. In Sydney, we’re standing in Grayndler, Reid and Sydney; in both seats in Canberra; in Cunningham in Wollongong; in Newcastle and Paterson in the Newcastle area, and in Page in the Lismore area.
The election is unique and important for us in its timing also. It follows the most extensive media coverage that Resistance and the DSP have ever received, after the fantastic high school national walkouts against racism, 14000 on July 24-28, and 8000 on August 28.
There have been numerous TV interviews with our comrades; half or full-page features on Resistance, on our high-school activists, on the demonstrations. Nearly every city has had excellent media coverage. Resistance’s name is almost a household word. We’re getting letters, emails, phone calls for Resistance or the DSP, wanting to join, wanting information, wanting help with projects, wishing us well. Some letters have generous donations enclosed!
What sort of campaign?
So this unique opportunity means we will be running a unique type of campaign. It will be a campaign that raises to the fore again the fundamental class issues, the fundamental ideas and goals and vision of socialism.
It will be a campaign where we want to bring together all our supporters, the socialist activists of previous years, from other campaigns, and the new activists of today, the high-school recruits to Resistance from the anti-Hanson anti-racism campaigns.
We want to use the election campaign to mobilise and reorganise our supporters, and build a network of socialists old and new.
How you can help
How can you help?
Stalls in suburban streets will be central to our campaign. From these we’ll talk to people, distribute election leaflets, sell Green Left Weekly, have donation buckets for the election campaign, and anti-racist actions, distribute posters for your area, your workplace.
Marches and protest actions will also be an essential part of our campaign. On September 19, we’ll hold a community march against racism through Glebe, assembling at Minogue Park (opposite Badde Manors), at the Broadway end of Glebe Point Rd, and marching to a rally and festival in Foley Park.
On September 30, we’ll be backing the Resistance called, “Vote With Your Feet,” high-school rally, in the City, assembling at 1pm at the Town Hall.
On Polling Day we want all our supporters out helping with handing out How to Votes on the day.
Put your name down at the stall down the back, to help us out with any of our election activities.
Our socialist campaign
Now more than ever we need to be up front about our socialist policies, clear in presenting a real alternative to all the other parties, and real solutions to all the problems facing working people.
A working class program,
An anti-racist campaign,
An internationalist perspective,
With socialist solutions and visions.
Join us!