And
it certainly is for the rich, who’ll be rocking around the Christmas tree
snorting coke and drinking themselves silly for days on end whilst the rest of
us try to make the most of the ‘festive season’ in the midst of the worst slump
since 1929.
We are, supposedly, celebrating the birth
of the founder of Christianity. But Jesus seldom gets a look in these days. As
usual, the great and the good will make their annual obeisance to the Nazarene,
whom they claim to worship, but whose teachings they ignore for the other 364
days of the year.
We’ll get more drivel from the clergy, who
reserve their most pious platitudes for the supposed birthday of the ‘Prince of
Peace’ on 25th December. But like the Pharisees, whom they pretend to scorn,
these charlatans ignore the teachings of their Master who drove the
money-changers out of the Temple and said: “It is easier for a camel to go
through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom
of God.”
For some of us Christmas is, indeed, a
welcome break from the drudgery of work. It’s a chance to put one’s feet up,
eat and drink and enjoy the life the rich enjoy in their mansions every day of
their worthless lives. For others, the homeless, unemployed and destitute
victims of the capitalist crisis, it’s just another day of despair. The festive
clichés of the politicians and the princes of the church are meaningless to
them.
But events across the Channel have cast a
dark shadow over the celebrations of the ruling class this year. The ‘Yellow
Vests’ are an unwelcome reminder to the bourgeoisie of the wrath of the masses
that overthrew the hated Bourbon dynasty in France in 1789 and got rid of the
Czar in 1917, whilst the splits in Tory ranks over Brexit have raised the
prospect of a snap general election and the return to power of a Labour
government committed to restoring workers’ rights and the welfare state.
Gone are the days when people listened to
the media gurus who told us that socialism was finished and that that the
greatest virtue of humanity was the possession of the largest amount of money.
Hedonism lies at the core of the
capitalist ethos. But the pursuit of pleasure can only be done by those who can
afford it – as the rest of us discover when the decorations come down and the
relentless pile of bills mounts up in January.
The ruling class maintains that capitalism
is the only game in town. And it is – but only for themselves. Capitalism, in
the final analysis, is simply a system designed to perpetuate the rule of the
landowners, industrialists and capitalists to ensure that a tiny handful of parasites
can live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of the millions upon millions
of working people. And so it will continue until we end the system altogether.
As we coast into the New Year we’ll be
told to make the traditional ‘resolutions’ to give up smoking, lose weight and
do more exercise that most people abandon by the second week in January. So
let’s make a couple of New Year resolutions of our own that we can keep. Let’s
make 2019 the year we leave the European Union and sweep Labour back to power!
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