Fed up with 14 years of Conservative Party rule, the United Kingdom voted the Labor Party into power. This kind of political balancing act is possible only in a genuine two-party system. When a conservative party representing the interests of the owning class is in power too long, voters elect the progressive other party whose philosophy and program of government they know favor the working class.
Classic was the Conservative Party’s loss to the Labor Party in 1945. It was not that the British people were ungrateful to Winston Churchill, who led them to victory in World War II. They were simply mature enough to discern that the Labor Party’s socio-economic philosophy would rehabilitate England’s devastated economy with a distinct bias for the ordinary men and women who fought the war and suffered the most from it.
This system, as one easily sees, needs a principled electorate that puts in office not individuals and their empty promises but the party with the philosophy and program of government most fittingly capable of coping with the socio-economic challenges of the times.
Unfortunately, this is not the electorate we have. With our authoritarian political, economic, cultural and religious systems, the working class is so dominated by society’s privileged class that ordinary workers, to survive, have to depend on the condescending generosity (ayuda?) of the owning, employing and ruling class, equality being a myth in this country.
The reason our society has been moving sideways, not forward, is we’ve been ruled ever since by a conservative party. There is no (peace-loving) progressive party to speak of. Thus, policies and programs invariably favor the owners of land and business. We have been slaving under a trickle-effect economic system since we’ve never been ruled by a party whose socio-economic philosophy expressly treats the working class as having equal rights as the owning class.
Our political parties are exclusive clubs for the big boys. They are fluid and change membership with just every election. They are organized and reorganized solely for the purpose of winning a conservative group’s turn at the seat of power. Thus, the government always prioritizes the interests of the owning class, leaving non-owners (tenants, employees, professionals) to scramble for what overflows, usually a trickle, from the latter’s tables.
Unfortunately, like a dog chasing its own tail, we are far from likely to acquire a balanced two-party system. The ruling elite, for obvious reasons, is not changing the system. Labor groups, for reasons I can’t seem to figure out, are not uniting into one solid labor party. Communists, for ideological reasons, are not abandoning armed revolution. And the Catholic Church, blindsided by fear of losing privileges, is not actively helping dismantle unjust systems, unseeing it as an integral part of its mission to establish God’s kingdom of justice, love and peace on earth.