Comments on the Election Circus So Far

By a commentator for Tjen Folket Media.

Communists characterize the bourgeois elections as an election circus. Under this year’s election campaign, even bourgeois commentators have more or less agreed with this. The government crisis over tolls, right in the middle of local election campaigns and in an international context where the Amazon Rainforest is burning and millions of youth protest in the streets of Europe, have again shown clearly that bourgeois politics are morally bankrupt.

To struggle against tolls is no petty issue for the poorest among the people. In a household budget that barely keeps the wheels turning, tolls are devastating for people’s economy. There is nothing wrong about struggle against increased burdens on the masses. But the political game around tolls and collective costs does not have anything to do with alleviating these burdens. It is a circus designed to soften voices and make the crisis-laden FrP and Left more interesting.

We have seen it before!

In today’s context, where the Conservative government has broken its record for the longest time as sitting government, everything points to Labour taking over next time. Thereby, we will have a reprise of the earlier election campaigns, even if most have already forgotten about it. The form that the election campaign takes, with a “left-side” on the offensive against a rightist government on the defensive is something we have seen leading up to several elections in the last thirty years. The opposition is on the offensive, the small government parties are bled, and the large government partners desperately attempt to keep the peace. This is how it was for Stoltenberg six years ago as well. But then it was SV that saw crisis figures in the opinion polls, instead of FrP.

Leading up to the 2005 election campaign, it was the “red-greens” who were by contrast on the offensive, just as it is today. They told of the end of blue governments, an end to privatization, and so on. The “peace” party, SV, was to sit in government and radical youth had high hopes. Two periods later, all the air leaked out of that project. Socialist Youth, which had enormous growth around 2000, made a dramatic turn and lost many local chapters all over the country. SV had yet to participate in the administration that occupied Afghanistan, bombed Libya in 2011, and under which Afghan refugees were routinely deported from the country. There was no end to privatization or liberalization, or at the very least, the slow-down was only very limited and short-lived.

There is no reason to vote!

There is absolutely no hope for new politics with the old politicians – or within the old state entirely. This is a municipal election campaign, but it is the same parties and the same state. The municipalities are a part of the state apparatus. They manage the old state’s politics within the framework established by it and the capitalist system. It will make no difference for the world or the poorest people in this country if one switches between the old bourgeois parties and politicians.

The election circus mostly resembles social media and phone games. They press people’s buttons, appeal to their anger and irritation, administer short-acting doses of cortisol or dopamine. But afterwards, reality feels even emptier than before. Politicians depend on short memory spans and a lack in the ability to see what is happening. We know with 100% certainty that red-green politicians are just as bourgeois as the blue ones.

Poverty, war, and environmental destruction continue – and can only be stopped with revolution. These are not minor issues, but even the minor issues cannot be resolved within the system for the good of the masses. The system is the problem, and the solution is socialist revolution. Everything that is not for the socialist revolution is for capitalism. All political work that does not serve the revolution serves reaction. Built into all charity is the fact that it nonetheless unfortunately does not inconvenience the system and thereby becomes an activity that can continue “indefinitely” without removing poverty. It slows down suffering, which is worthy on the individual level, but on the whole it is not a solution.

Revolution is the solution. Building the structures, the tools, the struggle organizations that the masses need to take power, is today’s most important demand. To advance the popular struggles, the masses’ struggle, district rebellions, environmental protests, opposition to cuts in welfare, and so on. And boycotting the rotten, old election circus goes hand in hand with this.