Well, as socialists are now groaning and rolling up their sleeves for years of struggle as the Tories and the Liberals prepare to attack living standards and services, and with Labour and the SNP mouthing opposition but doing nothing to stop them (and passing them on through local parliaments and councils), there is another aspect which adds to the farce which is the current state of politics and society in this country.

That is, the wishes of the population, including which type of coalition government, which type of electoral system, and which type of policies people want to see have barely had a look-in in our ‘democracy’ since our election in an already crap electoral system. Rather, we all seem to be slaves to the will of this omniscient presence called ‘the market’.

Now I am no economist, but the way the political elites and journalists have been discussing the needs of ‘the market’ in terms of the desirable form of government (i.e. a Tory-Liberal coalition) that needed to come from this election, makes our financial system sound like some kind of all-powerful supernatural presence. Indeed, so encapsulating and overwhelming is ‘the market’, that we have no choice but to bow down and prostrate ourselves to its will, which right now is that ‘it’ (or he or she, who knows?) wants a strong government to push through brutal cuts. Anyone that thinks otherwise just isn’t a properly trained economist, like all those ones who astutely spotted the financial crisis way before if happened (whoops!) and pushed the deregulation of the financial markets which led to the crisis in the first place.

Thus, ‘the market’ demanded a strong coalition government that could ‘tackle the deficit’ i.e. make the poor pay for capitalism’s crisis, rather than city financiers losing money because shares may go down a little due to uncertainty over the next government. However, hearing the coverage of the hung parliament, you’d have thought we’d all be cast back into the stone age if the desired Tory-Liberal coalition wasn’t agreed sharpish, as you can see in this BBC coverage here.

This is just another reminder of why capitalism, most of all deregulated finance capitalism, can fuck off as far as I’m concerned. The market is not our god, and its servants -- Labour, Tories, Liberals and the SNP -- are not our rulers. Their attempts to make us pay for the current crisis in capitalism may give them a sharp wake-up call on that count.

If humanity is to have a future, we need real participatory democracy, and for political and economic power to be in the hands of the population, not ‘the market’, ‘the city’, or any other representations of the shitty, ailing capitalist system that politicians are desperately trying to prop up. In other words, we need socialism.

Rant over. For now.

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