Today's European and local elections are set to attract one of the lowest turnout ever. And how could it be otherwise, when politicians look like rats scrambling to leave their sinking ship and when the economic system exposes its total bankruptcy?

Putting a paper in the ballot box has never achieved much for the rest of us. But when the jobs and wages of millions are threatened by a crisis caused by the profiteering of the capitalist sharks, the niceties of the ballot box belong, more than ever, to a world of fantasy, tailor-made for the wealthy and their political stooges.

The irrelevance of their system

It was not for lack of checks and balances that the world economy was pushed onto its knees. Right across the planet, armies of government economists, watchdogs and regulators were meant to oversee the system and ensure that it would never go into free fall. Except that, at the same time, they were meant, primarily, to facilitate profiteering and their credo was that the markets would eventually fix themselves without them having to read the riot act to the profit sharks.

This could not work and it did not. Once again the profit bubble imploded and the same economists, watchdogs and regulators rushed to minimise the losses of the profiteers - on our backs. Government bailouts were cobbled up, using workers' taxes, to protect the wealthy. But nothing was done to protect the jobs and wages of the working class majority, not even to ensure that we retained a roof over our heads. The system's checks and balances revealed themselves for what they really were - instruments at the service of the great and powerful, against the rest of us.

Likewise for their political system. The same MPs and ministers who admonish us for "not saving enough", for "retiring too early", for "costing too much" to the NHS, etc.., turn out to have been sponging off the system all along. True, these parasites are merely picking up the crumbs left for them by far bigger parasites - their capitalist masters. But spongers they are, nonetheless.

And how could it be otherwise, in a system in which the role of government is, first and foremost, to manage the system in the best interests of the richest? How could it be otherwise, when, instead of being accountable to voters and recallable when they fail to deliver, politicians are guaranteed a cushy job for five years, which they can use as a springboard for profitable careers as advisers for big business (as with the likes of Thatcher, Major and Blair, among so many others).

The politicians may be changed (only once every five years, though) but the system does not change. But it is this system which is the problem! And without it, there would be no space for spongers!

This world belongs to workers

Since this vote will change nothing, some candidates are telling us that we should use it to express our discontent. But how?

How can we express our anger against the profiteers and their politicians, when virtually all the candidates are either active spongers or aspiring ones, bidding to take over as servants of big business? How can we possibly express our anger against those who are attacking our jobs and wages by voting for politicians who worship the markets and the capitalists' profiteering?

Of course, there are some marginal candidates who have never been tested. Unfortunately, from the so-called "left" No2EU and Socialist Labour Party candidates, to the far right BNP, they all share the same reactionary xenophobic stance. Listening to them, one would imagine that all of the ills that we suffer from would disappear, if only Britain drifted away from Europe into splendid isolation. As if our main enemies were in Brussels, when, in fact, they are here, in Britain, sucking our labour and slashing our jobs!

But who wants to hark back to an outdated past in which each "country" stood in isolation from the rest of the world, in a permanent state of siege against it? Yet, this is all these EU-bashers are offering - a return to a repulsive past which goes right against the interests of the majority.

Of course, having been designed by governments serving the interests of big business, the EU is, first and foremost, an instrument of big business. But what is the best course: for the working class to be locked up in a reinforced "fortress Britain" or, on the contrary, to aim at joining forces with our European brothers and sisters and take Europe out of the hands of the profit sharks?

As Marx said, "workers have nothing to loose but their chains, but they have a world to win". And yes, our ambition should be to free Europe and the entire planet of all capitalist parasites!