Posted by John, July 28th, 2010 - under Uncategorised.

Tags: Election 2010

This is the Coke and Pepsi election. There is no substance; there are no substantial differences.

There is a lot of mindless advertising to persuade us to choose one brand over the other, and puerile attempts at differentiation, but the end result is the same – fizzy and sugary no matter what the choice and of no nutritional value to the body politic whatsoever.

In fact the consumption of either of the two brands will be positively harmful to our economic and political health.

On war, on refugees, on tax, on the economy, on education, on public health, on climate change, on same sex marriage, on the racism of the Northern Territory intervention – what stands out is not the differences but the essential similarities.

This election is the culmination of the final degeneration of the ALP into a thoroughly bourgeois capitalist party with union bureaucrat and middle class professional linkages, personnel and influence.

The managerial class of capitalism has taken over the Labor Party and rules in its interests and with its world view. It is the Party of symbolic reform, of grand gestures that cost little but give the impression of action.

It is the Party of the Kyoto Concerned and the Stolen Apologists who sell the image of care while delivering the knife of reaction.

It is the Party now of ruling for sectional interests of capital, not for capital as a whole.

It rules for the polluters, the big miners, the car companies and for the big banks, for Telstra and Woolies and Coles. It rules in fear of Murdoch.

The tension in the ALP between the two roles is resolving itself in favour of particular interests of capital at the expense of the general interests of capital.

The historic function of Labor as the party of capital’s interests is coming to an end. The links with the unions now provide a steady flow of sometimes talented, often talentless, bureaucrats to warm the benches of Parliament.

These links have become the conduit for the imposition of the latest pro-capitalist reform dressed up as some benefit for working people.

They are one way streets of Labor diktats to the working class through the agency of a spineless cowering and cowardly union leadership on the gravy train of Labor patronage or its possibilities.

Julia Gillard’s triumph over Kevin Rudd gave the last rites to that dead body of reformist politics known as the Australian Labor Party.

May it rest not in peace but in torment as a ghost of principles past, watching from its twilight after-life the rise of a vibrant, lively left wing challenge to its rule, one that dares to dream life to humanity, one that dares to scream life to humanity.