It is worth listening to what the ruling class is saying. Because often they display a greater level of class-consciousness than we do when analysing the economic and political crisis.
Take Bruno Le Maire for example. Mr Le Maire is the Economy and Finance Minister in Macon’s government in France. He appeared recently in an interview with Stephen Sackur on Hard Talk (BBC News Channel). His response to Sackur’s questions about the political turbulence in France was telling. Here is the quote (his English is good but there are some expressions he would have changed had he been speaking in his native tongue).
“We are all facing the same crisis, which is a social crisis, an economic crisis and also a political crisis. You have a large amount of people in the UK, in France, but also in Germany, in Spain and in Italy which are suffering from the globalisation; which had deeply the impression of being neglected, of being left out. We have to listen to those people.”
What Le Maire recognises here is that the break-up of the political status quo is driven not by political mistakes on the part of the ruling parties, but more profoundly by economic factors.
Personally I have trouble grasping what they mean by globalisation. It is a vague term. But what is clear is that the economies of most of the advanced capitalist countries are experiencing major problems. And the greatest one is that they have had to reduce the living standards of millions of people in an attempt to deal with the financial crisis of 2007-2008. In the UK the government approach has been termed ‘austerity’. Austerity is just a propaganda term to describe a series of attacks on the wages, living standards and social conditions of the working class. They like to call it austerity because it has a ring of religious abstinence. But economic austerity is not a choice we made. It is a policy of cuts and more cuts.
They like to pretend that austerity is over. Or it is about to be over. But only the other day they announced cuts to pensioner tax credit which would take effect in May 2019. Up to that date, pensioner couples on low income were eligible for a credit that amounted to about £100 per week. But from May if either of them is under pension age then no tax credit is available. So a 70 year old man with a 62 year old wife is not eligible. To soften the blow they are allowing couples who were in receipt of the credit before May to continue receiving it. But approximately 10,000 of the poorest pensioner couples who would have received this assistance will have it witheld.
That is just one small example of how the attacks on living standards are continuing. Public sector workers still have their pay rises held to below inflation. For many workers this has been a 2% cut in wages every year for the last 9 years.
Cuts to local government funding continue apace, with most councils having their funding cut by 60-70% since 2010. This has meant reductions in many of the services provided by local authorities.
According to Mr Le Maire many people have “the impression” of being neglected. It is not an impression. It is a fact of life for many of us. And it is the fundamental driving force behind the disgruntlement, anger and frustration that workers feel.
The media would like to tell us workers are angry because they feel the political class ignores them. They will tell you the anger is because we feel immigrants are making the country worse. But the real reason, the reason even Mr Le Maire acknowledges, is the economic impoverishment we are experiencing.
It is no use the ruling class telling us they are going to listen. It is deeds that count, not words. Listen all you like, but if the economic system over which you preside cannot provide a better standard of living for most of the population you have a big problem. And that problem is that capitalism is bankrupt. It has no future, and has only survived this long by creating massive amounts of made-up money in the form of quantitative easing.
The future of the working class does not lie in following the well-travelled political paths we have been pushed down by the ruling class. Our future involves taking ownership of the wealth we create, and taking political control by rejecting the false democracy of corrupt parliamentarianism in favour of a direct workers’ democracy.
That involves a social revolution, and the signs are out there that its time is coming.
Time to get ready for the big change.