Rudd and Gillard courtesy of Matt Walker

Adelaide photographer and graphic artist Matt Walker has pretty neatly captured the essence of social democracy in the two images above.

Social democracy is the political theory espoused by Labor politicians, a theory that says that capitalism can be reformed peacefully through parliamentary activity, and that only though this avenue of reform can there be improvements in the condition of the working class.

Even the term "class" is discarded by modern social democrats. For Rudd, the preferred term is "working families".

So-called "Labor" and "Social Democratic" parties throughout the world are parties of capitalism.

Capitalist countries generally have a conservative party that is openly reactionary and used by the ruling class to remove all legal and bureaucratic obstacles to their pursuit of profit. They also have an alternative party ("Labor" or some variation of it) that can be used to put in place legal and bureaucratic measures to restore balance between competing sections of the ruling class after periodic bouts of crisis. Traditionally, these parties have also been used to make concessions to the workers when the latter begin to assert their independent interests against those of the bosses.

Rudd, like Howard before him, is an apologist for, and supporter of, US imperialism.

Gillard as Deputy PM has ministerial responsibility for the two key areas of industrial relations and education. She has openly flaunted her commitment to Howard's savage anti-union creation, the Australian Building and Construction Commission. And in education circles, she is fast becoming known as Julia Dullard because of her ignorant championing of bad educational practice sourced from the US and England.

Matt's website http://www.mattwalkerphotography.com/ is temporarily offline but is a rich source of progressive imagery.