With a General Election just six weeks away, the Middle Aged Revolutionary looks at the smorgasbord of options presented to voters.

https://middleagedrevolutionaryblog.com/2024/05/23/the-general-election-a-smorgasbord-of-options/

The revolution of parliamentarism was fundamentally a bourgeois revolution. The emerging capitalist class, the bourgeoisie, mobilised the serfs and peasants to fight against the crown and the remnants of feudal authority. Promising liberation and rights, they enlisted the support of the lower classes in their struggle for power. However, once the old feudal structures were dismantled, the bourgeoisie imposed a new form of exploitation.
The serfs and peasants, who had hoped for genuine freedom, found themselves bound to the capitalist system, enslaved to a wage labour system that benefited the new ruling class.

This fundamental dynamic has remained unchanged. Parliament has forever been predominantly controlled by wealthy landowners and capitalists. It is within these halls that the interests of the bourgeoisie are served and perpetuated. Even as political systems have evolved, the essence of parliamentary power remains tied to economic control. Those who enter parliament, regardless of their origins, are often assimilated into the bourgeois class, adopting its interests and perpetuating its dominance.

The promises of democracy and representation are thus compromised by the underlying economic realities. The parliamentary system, while appearing inclusive and participatory, functions to maintain the status quo of capitalist exploitation. The power of wealth and property continues to dictate the decisions made within these institutions, ensuring that the interests of the working class are subordinate to those of the bourgeoisie.

Austerity is anti-worker and further increases the burden on the masses.

By cutting funding to vital services, austerity measures disproportionately harm the working class, exacerbating their exploitation and oppression.

Such reductions in public spending undermine the social safety net, leading to increased hardship and instability for workers. This, in turn, intensifies the contradictions within capitalism, as the state's retreat from providing essential services shifts the burden onto workers, deepening inequality and social stratification.

Ultimately, austerity measures serve to protect capitalist interests at the expense of the proletariat, further entrenching the power dynamics that we must seek to dismantle.

Tory Lord Cameron escalates tensions with Russia in Ukraine | The Communists
https://thecommunists.org/2024/05/14/news/tory-lord-cameron-escalates-tensions-with-russia-in-ukraine/

On this day, 24 May 1910, German shipyard worker August Landmesser was born. He is best known as probably being the worker defiantly refusing to perform a Nazi salute at a ship launch. Falling in love with a Jewish woman, he fell foul of Nazi race laws. Refusing to end the relationship, he was jailed and connoscripted to a penal battalion where he was killed. His partner was sent to a women's concentration camp and killed.

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The Great “What If?” – Class Consciousness Project
https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/05/18/the-great-what-if/comment-page-1/#comments

Join us at 18:00 on Wednesday of this week where the comrades will be talking about the general election and the miserable "choices" on offer from the ruling class.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xx7Edc5-pfM

Outsourced cleaners at the Department for Education in London are preparing to strike for liveable wages and union recognition. 🔥

https://youtu.be/AZWRsEI-eY8?feature=shared

Rishi Sunak's idea of a national service that includes civil service jobs, like nursing or firefighting, isn't necessarily bad. The problem is that it's poorly planned and seems designed to fill positions without improving wages and working conditions. Some of the civil service roles are actually not even including a wage.

In a planned economy, being run by the workers and for the workers, this type of national service could be excellent. It would be implemented with proper training, fair wages, and good benefits. It could fill menial roles, free up time for fully trained workers, and give young people valuable exposure to these jobs.

However, under reactionary governments in a capitalist system, whether Tory or Labour, this would likely be used to enforce work, undermine union power, and further promote a bourgeois ideology.

On May 4th 1970, the National Guard shot and killed four students and injured nine others at Kent State University, Ohio.

The students were protesting the Vietnam war and the approval of invading Cambodia, which was passed on 30th April 1970.

The four students killed were: Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder and Sandra Scheuer.

In 1979 the Ohio National Guard agreed to pay $675,000 to those injured.

The same nations telling the world that we must risk World War 3 with Russia🇷🇺 and China🇨🇳 to protect freedom around the world are the same nations arming and enabling a genocidal slaughter against the people of Gaza for the sole crime of being Palestinian.

RAFAH HOLOCAUST: After the ICJ ordered Israel to stop its Rafah offensive, Israel relentlessly bombed Rafah, burning Palestinians alive and beheading children from the air using US-UK-EU weapons

Israel and its backers know the ‘rules-based order’ was never meant to target them

Here's an interesting podcast about the trials and tribulations of a working class lad in football. As a fan and a player.

Disclaimer

Karl Colley discusses his past involvement in football-related fights. We do not condone football violence, nor are we naive enough to pretend it doesn't exist. The vast majority of football fans are not violent, despite what Thatcher claimed. While hooliganism was indeed prominent in the 1980s, the Tory government's attacks on football were not just about hooliganism; they were as much an assault on working-class culture as their attacks on trade unionism.

Violence is a part of working-class life, whether it comes from above or beside. It is pervasive. We should direct that energy toward our resistance of the ruling class's violence.

Labour’s Rachel Reeves says she wants to lead the most “pro-business treasury our country has ever seen”, while pledging not to increase corporation tax.

Not too far off good old Labour leader Ramsay Macdonald, who said in 1924 that the aim of the first-ever Labour government was to demonstrate to the ruling class that ”the empire was safe in our hands”.

Is there really anybody left who thinks the Labour party is the party of the working class? (Apart from the state agents leading the Trotskyite SWP and the revisionist cretins leading the CPB, I mean ...)

The Enemy Is Labour – Class Consciousness Project
https://classconsciousnessproject.blog/2023/12/12/the-enemy-is-labour/