In this time of great unrest and violence around the world, it is a scary thought to think that we are becoming less interested in politics as a nation. As the percentage of people voting informal continues to rise by the election and the number of people not involved in a political party at an all-time low, the world’s problems continue to increase, with wars in Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Ukraine, a civil war in South Sudan and Afghanistan. There are two major contributing factors in my view to this. Firstly, the media is every single day brainwashing people into thinking that this is the lucky country, and that we have no problems, and that we don’t need to worry other issues because we’re OK. This leads to what can be called “middle class apathy”, a problem which rises as a person’s status in the world improves and means that you don’t think about problems in the world, you just think about maintaining your status and maintaining that status quo. Many a poor person has voted Liberal because they have been brainwashed by Mr Murdoch and his henchmen at News Corp.
The second major issue (or a positive, as I’ll come to in a second), is that people don’t feel like the political system but continue to vote for one of the parties or donkey-voting. This is a problem because these people are contributing to the mess we have, be giving their vote to these capitalist, neoliberal parties, both Liberal and Labor and not helping to find a way to change the system so that it might help them. The reason this can be a positive is that, if we as socialists can find a way to get in the public eye and sell our message to a greater number of people, then just maybe we can gain to support we need to further messages of socialism and equality. Working class people want living wages, they want reasonable work days and good conditions, but due to government privatisation and decisions by governments both Labor and Liberals, they are being ripped off and exploited for their labour.
Socialist groups and trade unions have a proud history in this country and around the world in helping the working and oppressed people of Australia. It was this combination that got rid of the anti-worker WorkChoices by Howard and it was this combination that helped the Aboriginal people in the fight for independence and land rights. We need to continue this fight, and we need to continue to spread our message to a wider world of people, because revolutions start small with big dreams, but one day when we take our message to the masses and show them how the system has failed them and how neither party will save it, maybe then we can destroyed this fascist and totalitarian system they call Western capitalist democracy.
The Paddy File 