Election coverage has become a dominant part of the entertainment/propaganda sector that passes for news coverage in Ireland and the rest of the capitalist world. The soap opera that is the US Presidential election has become prime-time viewing with its twists and turns, the latest being the attempted assasination of Trump just before the Republican Convention, followed quickly by the dumping of Biden as US capitalists turned off the money tap until he withdrew as the Democrat candidate. The section of the ruling class which opposed Trump organised a “coup” and removed their up-to-then chosen candidate. It should be remembered that those who removed Biden were the same forces which made sure that he faced no real challenge in the primaries. Such is how US “democracy” is policed!
We have been treated to politics as spectacle, devoid of anything but the most superficial political analysis. The divisions within the US ruling class as to the best strategy to maintain the hegemony of US imperialism are played out in cartoonish soundbites on US TV and echoed by the Irish media. The dominant narrative in the Irish media maintains that the election offers a fascist future under the Republican party or a democratic, freedom supporting nirvana under the Democrats.
Both parties represent the interests of US monopoly capitalism. Both parties support increased military spending and eventual war against the People’s Republic of China. Both parties support the on-going blockade against Cuba, and both support the continuing Israeli genocide against the Palestinian people. Both parties support the existing international architecture under which the US and its surrogates can flout international law with impunity and can attack any country which challenges, however mildly, US control over economic or political policy.
In Britain the media hyped the “overwhelming” Labour victory as a return to “grown-up politics” and a rejection of the right-wing Tories and the “extreme left” Corbyn. The reality is that Labour under Starmer gained over one million fewer votes than under Corbyn and won just 33% of those who voted. Take into account those who refused to vote, and the “landslide” is based on 29% of eligible voters.
This is democracy, capitalist style. If the process by which Biden was initially chosen as candidate and his subsequent removal, happened in a country opposed by the US it would be castigated as undemocratic, and the US would call for protests. If in a country with a socialist economy, the government won almost two thirds of the seats on the votes of 29% of the electorate, there would be universal condemnation by the NATO/EU bloc.
Democracy under capitalism is extremely limited and well policed. It is reduced to a vote every 4 or 5 years. Apologists for bourgeois democracy maintain that the vote is the end product of a campaign in which there was a free exchange of ideas and the informed electorate voted for the candidates whose policies they preferred. Except that the free exchange is not so free. The media spins the election and can either ignore parties or candidates or else distort their policies. We saw that in the EU Parliament elections as the Irish Times lied about Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. In the US, it takes millions to run for election. In one recent primary to select the Democrat Party candidate to contest a seat in Congress, Zionists spent over $20 million to unseat the sitting member because he was perceived to be too pro-Palestinian!
Democracy is much more than voting once every few years for candidates approved by the wealthy. Democracy means having a real say in how society is run. It means community involvement and bottom-up decision making. Democracy means workers having a say in how their companies are run. It means people organising within their communities, workplaces, tenants or residents’ associations to build a better society. Democracy is not about electing others and hoping they will act to improve our lives. Real democracy is about the working class, urban and rural and family farmers organising as a class and taking control of society.
