Even before the measures brought in this April food bank use more than doubled in the UK last year. Average earnings rose 0.8% in the year to February, far lower than inflation, particularly for food and other essentials. Teachers will no longer get automatic pay increments, while the schools they work in become more dilapidated due to lack of maintenance. Public sector pay is capped. Doctors and nurses have to sit in meetings to discuss how to manage with ever tighter resources…
No wonder the only way to “make work pay” is to introduce cuts in benefits. Capped below inflation for the next 3 years; an overall benefit cap related to average pay that will cost 40,000 households, 89% with children, an average of £93 a week; disability living allowance to be taken away from 170,000; council tax rebate cut; the “bedroom tax”; and so on.
All these measures are being prepared and brought in very carefully to undermine any working class response.
“Vile product of welfare UK” screamed the Mail (3 April), “I think there is a question for government and for society about the welfare state, and the taxpayers who pay for the welfare state, subsidising lifestyles like that …” echoed chancellor George Osborne. This is the most nauseating extreme of the campaign to divide the working class that wants to stir up real hatred against those on benefits, particularly the unemployed, using the tragedy of a couple who set fire to their house killing six children. Have these people never heard of insurance fraud? Of landlords who destroy their property because it’s more profitable to get rid of tenants? Of businesses in Bangladesh where workers are burned or crushed to death when capital cuts corners? Or indeed of businesses in Waco, Texas, or clubs where young people go to dance, where people are tragically, and negligently, killed?
The more ‘reasonable’ side of the campaign wants to create a division between the “striving” who go to work and those who are “rewarded” for being unemployed by a “broken system” that traps people on benefits and in poverty. All very reminiscent of Gordon Brown’s “hand up, not hand out” from the early days of the last Labour government, as it brought in the benefit cuts of the time. In fact it is the same argument, and one the Labour Party is still making. For all the criticism by Liam Byrne, shadow work and pensions secretary1, of Tories who “want to play ‘divide and rule’. To distract the public from their failure to get the economy growing and control the rising bill for unemployment”, when push comes to shove, he argues: “First, people must be better off in work than living on benefits. We would make work pay by reintroducing a 10p tax rate and supporting employers who pay the living wage. Second, we would match rights with responsibilities. Labour would ensure that no adult will be able to be live on the dole for over two years and no young person for over a year. They will be offered a real job with real training…. People would have to take this opportunity or lose benefits”. All the politicians of left and right use the same phrases and make the same allegation that unemployment is voluntary.
So the Labour Party wants to have its cake and eat it, to divide the working class by allegations of unemployment as a lifestyle choice, and to provide an alternative to the nasty Tories who divide the working class; to ‘make work pay’, and to be fair to those on benefits; to ‘responsibly’ cut the deficit by attacking the working class, as they did in government, and to pose as the workers’ friend.
For all the bluster about getting benefits down by getting the unemployed back to work, they and the long term sick only take a minority of benefits. In 2009-10, Job Seekers Allowance (3%), Income Support and Employment and Support Allowance (4% each) only took up 11% of benefits, whereas tax credits (child tax credit 10% plus working tax credit 4%) for people in work took up 14%2. These benefits, as well as other means tested benefits such as housing and council tax benefit, also go to those on low incomes whether or not they are in work. They are used to maintain those on wages permanently below the minimum needed. Far from allowing ourselves to be divided against each other, blaming the unemployed, we need to see that the benefit cuts, like the attacks on those in jobs, are attacks on the whole working class.
Unemployment in the UK has been counted in the millions since the end of the 1970s, more, often much more, than 1 in 20 of the working population. This was a great shock to the baby boomer generation who were brought up when 1 or 2%, or half a million, out of work was considered high in the 1960s. It’s not that there wasn’t unemployment in the post war decades, but that most of it was in the periphery while Western Europe had a shortage of labour. The current figure of 2.56 million unemployed, 7.9%, comes after the statistics have been massaged many times, and particularly after a policy of transferring as many as possible onto incapacity benefit from the late 1980s. So we know that a proportion of the 2 million on long term sickness and the 2.24 million economically inactive are really unemployed. 900,000 have been unemployed for over a year and half of these for over 2 years. 979,000 of the unemployed are age 16-24, giving them an unemployment rate of 21%: a generation blighted. We see a similar picture in other countries. The USA has a similar jobless rate to the UK, and in the Euro area it is 11.9%.
So unemployment is a long term international phenomenon, but how is it inevitable? Each capitalist business needs to produce and sell both competitively and at a profit. To do so, and to steal a march on their competitors, they need to produce more cheaply, more with less workers, and when they can’t do this by technical innovation they do it by pushing their employees to work harder or longer, or both. Either way more is produced by fewer workers and the market becomes saturated with products that cannot be sold. Workers are laid off, enterprises close. We saw this with steel and shipbuilding in the 1970s and 1980s and with the car industry more recently. Unemployment goes up and increased competition tends to drive down wages. States that found a welfare system useful in times of labour shortage start to cut, cut and cut again – as we have seen since the 1970s.
How long will it last? The mechanisms that allowed capitalism to recover in the 19th century, opening up new markets in new areas of the world, emigration of the ‘surplus’ population to the colonies, no longer exist. China is often hailed as the engine that will get the world economy going again, but its high rates of growth and low wages make it a competitor rather than a market. In the latter decades of the 20th century state intervention has been used, either by nationalisation or by subsidies, but over the last 40 years states have had to pump in more and more money with less and less benefit to the economy. Now debt, and particularly state debt, is one of the key problems in this crisis. Lastly there have been little booms based on speculation, such as the dot.com bubble and the recent subprime housing bubble that burst in 2007-8. Throughout it all unemployment has remained persistently high. Figures for GDP will go up and down but we won’t see any reversal in the general trend of worsening crisis or high unemployment, whatever the politicians promise.
This situation makes struggle against the attacks necessary, but extremely difficult. Difficult both because of the threat of unemployment against workers who resist attacks, and because unemployment itself tends to drive down wages. It means constantly fighting against worsening conditions, resisting one attack only to see another pushed through instead, or the same one introduced later, until the working class is able to pose the question of ending capitalist exploitation once and for all. We must begin by rejecting every attempt to divide us up between employed and unemployed, public sector and private sector, born locally or immigrants. The whole working class is under attack and we can only fight back in solidarity with each other.
Alex 7.5.13
1. See this Guardian article on benefit cuts [4].
2. See "Left foot forward [5]"
The introduction of the bedroom tax is a cruel and massive attack against workers. Designed deliberately to hit a massive section of benefit claimants and the very poorest sector of the working class - it has been deliberately built in as part of the austerity measures to reduce the welfare budget. As an example the minimum amount lost will be 15% for one extra bedroom, very often moving to 25% for those the state deems to have two extra bedrooms. Among those who will lose are:
Overall, it is thought that this will affect more than 660,000 or 31% of working age benefit claimants in the UK, costing an average of £14 a week nationally, and £21 in London where accommodation is notoriously expensive.
Like all the measures in this round of austerity, the bedroom tax is designed to sow divisions among the victims. With so many in crowded or inadequate housing the government wants to be seen as ‘fair’, even ‘reforming’, which is absolutely not the case. With the lack of ‘social’ or ‘affordable’ housing, the lack of building of homes, this measure will do nothing but take money away from the poorest in society, whether working or unemployed, for the benefit of capital.
In addition, housing benefit is administered by local authorities, so it is an attack carried out at one remove from central government; at the same time, it is designed to push people to resist it on the basis of their own individual claims, unlike the poll tax in the 80s, when the Thatcher government made the mistake of attacking everyone ‘equally’. This makes it much more difficult to resist, although there have been a few scattered demonstrations against it, generally well-marshalled by the left and the unions.
Only by understanding this measure as one among many hitting all of us – employed, unemployed, pensioners, students – can we develop the solidarity necessary to begin to build resistance to any one of these attacks.
M and A, 11.5.13
The situation in Syria continues to worsen. Israel has attacked a military facility outside Damascus. Both government and opposition stand condemned for their use of poison gas. The Syrian government is accused of having used at least 200 chemical missiles. A UN expert has said that the opposition has used sarin, the very potent chemical nerve agent. Since March 2011 more than 70,000 people have died in the conflict. More than a million refugees have fled the country.
Not for nothing has CNN (10/5/13) described the conflict as “a vicious whirlpool dragging a whole region toward it.”
A question that has been posed is whether any of the great powers can influence the situation. The CNN article suggests “Many analysts believe the United States can do little to influence -- let alone control -- the situation. And it could make things worse. Fawaz Gerges of the London School of Economics argues against the United States ‘plunging into the killing fields of Syria ... because it would complicate and exacerbate an already dangerous conflict.’
Others contend that if the United States remains on the sidelines, regional actors will fight each other to ‘inherit’ Syria, and hostile states such as Iran and North Korea will take note of American hesitancy. They say inaction has given free rein to more extreme forces.”
So, while the US Congress has introduced legislation that would allow the administration to “provide lethal aid to the Syrian opposition - weaponry that could tilt the balance on the ground” (BBC 8/5/13), against that “The bottom line is that the US administration does not want the rebels to win …the risk attendant on beefing up support for the rebels and prolonging the conflict is that it could lead to an uncontrolled regime collapse and chaos, with all kinds of radical groups possibly moving in”. As we’ve said elsewhere1 the opposition includes all sorts of forces including the al-Nusra Front which is related to al-Qaida.
As for major powers such as Russia, China, France, or Britain, any support they can give to government or opposition will only further fuel the conflict and its potential for inflaming the whole region. The exposés about the use of chemical weapons2 are used as part of propaganda campaigns, but they are a useful reminder of the brutal and ruthless way the factions of the bourgeoisie combat each other, with the population of the area as victims in the crossfire.
The Middle East historically has, for economic and strategic reasons, been the focus of imperialist confrontation and conflict, with the ever-present threat of war. There is potential for Israeli intervention against Iran, imperialist interventions in Syria, the war between Israel and the Palestinians, instability in Libya, Egypt and Yemen, tensions between the Gulf monarchies and Iran. The region has become an enormous store-house for armaments with the escalation of arms purchases by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman. Imperialist powers of many scales confront each other in the region: the USA, Russia, China, Turkey, Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Egypt, with more and more armed gangs at the service of these powers, alongside the warlords acting on their own account. Overall, the situation in the region is explosive and tending to escape the control of the major imperialisms. The withdrawal of western forces from Iraq and Afghanistan will further accentuate the destabilisation, even if the US will try and limit the danger by trying to restrain Israel and cultivate closer relations with the current regime in Egypt.
The spread of war and instability is not confined to the Middle East. Elsewhere in the world you can see the development of imperialist confrontations. In the Far East, for example, the presence of the world’s second and third economic powers, China and Japan, taking more and more military forms (for a historical background to the situation in the region we recommend our online special International Review, Imperialism in the Far East, past and present)3. In the present period, it’s the development of the economic and military power of China that’s a concern for the rival imperialisms in the region. China also intervenes across Africa and in the Middle East and has been clearly identified by the US as the most important potential danger to its hegemony.
The growth in Chinese power is not only a concern for countries in Asia like Japan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines; it has provoked a counter-strategy from the US. America has developed a strategic alliance to contain Chinese ambitions, which echoes the encirclement of the USSR in the Cold War. The cornerstones of this alliance are Japan, India and Australia, but it also engages South Korea, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia and Singapore.
In this confrontation between super-powers, with the involvement of lesser imperialisms, the stand-off between the two Koreas (the North backed by China, the South by the US) is one of the clearest demonstrations of the menace of war. Our statement “Against the threat of war in Korea”4 shows the dangers facing the working class, while giving a proletarian perspective against capitalism’s war drive.
It’s in Africa that capitalism’s descent into militarist barbarity is most clearly pronounced. In continuing conflicts, in the fragmentation of capitalist states, the wearing away of frontiers, the role of clans and warlords in Sierra Leone, Uganda, Mali, or the Congo, it’s possible to see fragmentation and chaos extending across a continent, giving us an idea of what the decomposition of capitalism could have in store for the whole of humanity.
In Europe, where arms budgets have declined and where there are no open conflicts, it might appear that different forces are at play. However, if you look at the economic forces at play you can see the potential for future antagonisms. On the one hand there is a strong tendency toward centralisation in order to face up to the potential for economic collapse. But against this there is the tendency for each for themselves, for national bourgeoisies not wanting to be swallowed by bodies such as the EU, for the growth of anti-Germanism – tendencies exacerbating the tensions between states.
More and more we are witnessing the historic impasse of capitalism. Not every conflict has a direct economic motive, although energy sources such as oil and gas, minerals for the construction of communication technology or weapons, diamonds and precious metals have often been the loot over which imperialist gangs large and small have ravaged whole regions of the globe. And there is no mechanical link between an immediate dip in economic performance and the rise of military conflicts. Rather, the link can be seen on a more historic and global level: the more world capitalism sinks into its economic contradictions, the more it is facing a brick wall in its search for economic solutions, the more the world’s imperialist states and proto-states are driven towards the military option: seizing the resources of your rival, striking out to avoid being attacked, using proxy wars to destabilise your rival’s authority or weaken its alliances. And even though we are no longer living under the shadow of two huge military blocs as we did between 1945 and 1989, today’s chaotic chessboard is in many ways even more dangerous and unpredictable, an even greater menace for the future of humanity. The alternative between socialism and barbarism announced by Rosa Luxemburg in 1916 is even clearer today. Car, 11/5/13
1. See Syria descends into imperialist hell [13]
3. See International Review - Special Issue - Imperialism in the Far East, past and present [15] and also Imperialist conflict between China and Japan [16]
4. See Against the threat of war in Korea [17]
The rise of the UK Independence Party, which won 25% of the vote in recent council elections, has created a lot of noise in the media and much heart-searching among the ‘established’ parties. The Ukip agenda – economically, a rather confusing mixture of greater spending on defence, health and education, while also cutting taxes, but, above all: stopping the ‘flood’ of immigrants and getting out of Europe – is making the other parties, especially the Tories, look over their shoulders and ask: do we need more right wing populism to win back those who are currently voting Ukip?
Ukip’s recent success has been based to a large extent on the careful cultivation of an advertising image - and the media have contributed quite a bit to this in the way they portray Ukip leader Farage and his party. “They’re just three different coloured rosettes”, says Farage, “but they’re all the same party”. Ukip, we are told, is outside this stale establishment, it’s a party of protest. Sober politicians and Guardian editors have even warned that it’s the expression of a dangerous ‘anti-political’ mood in this country. Farage himself is described as being unlike the clones at the head of the three main parties. He’s a good bloke who likes his ale and a good laugh down the pub.
The idea that a party which stands for the ‘independence of Britain’ is outside the political status quo is patently ridiculous. The one thing all factions of capitalism, from right to left, are agreed on, is that our number one loyalty is to the country, the nation, the fatherland; that this fabulous entity, the nation, created by the needs of capitalism to compete on a world scale, needs to be worked for and sacrificed for with our sweat and if necessary our blood. Farage’s Britain is perhaps a bit more fabulous than most: in essence, it’s a return to the Britain of Agatha Christie and the Famous Five. But measured against humanity’s need to consign the nation state to the dustbin of history, it’s no more or less reactionary than, for example, the Labour/Danny Boyle/SWP myth of a socialist Britain consecrated by the foundation of the NHS and the nationalisation of the railways.
Mythology, however, doesn’t arise from nowhere: it is always a distorted product of real tendencies. What are the main realities behind the Ukip phenomenon?
Ukip is, more than most parties in Britain, a product of a process of disintegration which is tearing at the present social order. The world economic crisis, which has been accelerating for decades, reached a new level with the so-called ‘credit crunch’ in 2007, and the EU has been at the very centre of the convulsions that have followed in its wake. The open bankruptcy not only of private financial institutions, but of entire countries like Greece and Spain, has put the very survival of the EU into question. It’s true that the demand for German capital to bail out the increasing number of ‘sick men of Europe’ has given a new impetus towards a more centralised, federal Europe, capable of imposing austerity and financial rigour on its member states. But the recognition that this essentially means a German-dominated Europe can only increase the counter-tendencies towards each nation going it alone, towards an open rupture with the EU, the euro, and the whole European project.
The impossible contradictions of the capitalist economy, and the break-up of the global institutions created by the ruling class to manage the crisis, have their parallel in the increasing fragmentation of the political life of the ruling class: a growing difficulty to administer the political machinery in a coherent manner, to keep the most ‘rational’ parties in charge, to agree on the best policies for the national capital. The proliferation of right-wing populist parties in every country in Europe, from the Front National in France to Geert Wilder’s Dutch Party for Freedom and the Golden Dawn in Greece, is a very evident sign of the way that the decomposition of capitalism is expressing itself at the political level.
Nearly all these populist parties have a noticeable common characteristic: the search for a scapegoat. During the economic depression of the 1930s, the principal scapegoat was the Jews, who were blamed both for the iniquities of finance capital and the threat of communism. Scapegoating is an organic product of a social relationship in which the exploitation of man by man is hidden by the play of market forces. Faced with the consequences of the capitalist crisis, such as unemployment and debt, it is far easier to blame an identifiable, personal enemy than to see the problem lying in impersonal economic powers. So today the problem is personalised, on the one hand, in the shape of the bankers (who can still rather easily be identified with the Jews), and on the other, in the shape of the immigrants, the ‘flood’ of Muslims, eastern Europeans, Africans or others, who are ‘taking our jobs’ and ‘sponging off our welfare benefits', not to mention staining our way of life with drugs, crime and terrorism.
But the vast majority of immigrants and emigrants are those who are driven from one country to another by economic crisis, ecological disaster, and war – and thus by the same impersonal forces which decimate industries in industrialised countries, which lie behind the mountain of debt pressing down on the world economy, which compel the managers of the system – the politicians and bureaucrats –to cut jobs and welfare spending. Blaming the immigrants for these attacks is not only a failure to understand reality. It creates a poisonous division among all those who are exploited by the system and who need to unite against it – not on the basis of nationality, ethnicity, or religion, but on the basis of class.
It is no accident that the question of immigration – the race question, when it comes down to it – is so central to the Ukip platform. This is the reason they have to have special rules barring former members of the BNP and other openly racist parties from joining them, although judging from some recent scandals, a good few very dubious elements seem to have got through the net. Their ‘respectable’ brand of racism is still attractive to those who see it as a step towards more radical and violent forms of the ‘race war’. But let’s not focus too much on Ukip’s anti-immigration stance. All the other parties share the same basic position: Britain is a fortress and must be protected from the intruders. Hence the harsh new measures against illegal immigrants announced in the Queen’s speech. Ukip is just another rosette of the same party of capital.
Amos (11/5/13)
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr_358.pdf
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr_359.pdf
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr360.pdf
[4] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/06/liam-byrne-tory-benefit-cuts
[5] https://leftfootforward.org/2012/03/budget-2012-breaking-down-the-benefits-bill/
[6] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/britain
[7] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/people/george-osborne
[8] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1804/liam-byrne
[9] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/benefit-cuts
[10] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/cathyleavehome.jpg
[11] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1803/bedroom-tax
[12] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/360-syriabarbarism.jpg
[13] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201305/7640/syria-descends-imperialist-hell
[14] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201305/7641/chemical-weapons-syria-winding-war-rhetoric
[15] https://en.internationalism.org/internationalreview/2012/5305/november/international-review-special-issue-imperialism-far-east-past-
[16] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201304/7514/imperialist-conflict-between-china-and-japan
[17] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201304/7513/against-threat-war-korea
[18] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/recent-and-ongoing/syria
[19] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1802/tension-far-east
[20] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/25/1815/nigel-farage
[21] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1812/ukip
[22] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1813/golden-dawn
[23] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/7/1814/bnp
[24] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr_361.pdf
[25] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr_362.pdf
[26] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/wr_363.pdf