Attacks on workers

After a miserable 2011, characterised by rising unemployment, inflation and increased hardship for workers everywhere, most people were probably hoping that 2012 would offer some hope for improvement or at least some relief from the relentless assaults on living standards.

In the last few months, the world economy has been going through a disaster which the ruling class has found it harder and harder to conceal. The various international summits aimed at ‘saving the world’, from G20s to endless Franco-German meetings, have only revealed that the bourgeoisie is powerless to revive its system. Capitalism has reached a dead-end. And this total lack of any solution or prospects is beginning to stir up tensions between nations, as we can see in the current threats to the unity of the Eurozone and even to the European Union itself, and within each country, between the various bourgeois cliques who make up the national political panel. Serious political crises have already broken out.

If Greece was to default on its loans it would have a widespread impact way beyond its national frontiers. Effectively Greece has already been excused billions. It has been agreed that Greece’s creditors will annul 50% of what’s owed to them, effectively wiping out 106 billion euros at a stroke. This was presented as a ‘haircut’. Capitalism doesn’t have any solutions to its historic crisis, only deepening austerity. None of the alternative measures proposed by different factions of the bourgeoisie offer the prospect of a revival in the economy.

The events of July and August all came in such rapid succession that the ruling class seemed dizzied by their speed and depth: the debt-ceiling crisis, the downgrading of the U.S. creditworthiness from AAA to AA+ by Standard & Poor, the plunges and volatility on the stock markets, the news of the insolvencies of countries like Spain and Italy and the impasse at the IMF over what to do, the flight of capital away from U.S. Treasury bonds to gold. The ruling class is running out of arguments with which to reassure an ever more uncertain working class with hopes for a better future. To add insult to injury, its options about how to address an ever-aggravating economic crisis are also wearing thin. What is going on?

“Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, said the economic situation was entering a ‘dangerous place’. Earlier, the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, said the world’s economy was ‘in a danger zone’. The comments came after the Federal Reserve warned that the US economy faced ‘significant downside risks’."Last week, this grim chorus from three of the most powerful economic organs in the world sent the markets into yet another tailspin, compounding a summer already punctuated by volatile market swings.

More than 50,000 health service jobs are due to be lost, including doctors, nurses, midwives and ambulance personnel. In fact Trusts plan to shed 12% of qualified nursing posts over the next 4 years, while the NHS already relies on their unpaid overtime, carried out by 95% of nurses with more than 1 in 5 doing this every shift.

The capitalist crisis continues to deepen despite increasingly desperate proclamations to the contrary. Nestled behind the claims of recovery, class conflict and internecine bourgeois rivalries threaten to tear the social landscape of capitalist society apart. For all of the grandstanding and optimistic rhetoric, there is a noticeable silence about even the possibility of rolling back of austerity measures.

Political pundits are predicting meltdown for Fianna Fail at the Irish general election. Whatever the result, all four of the main political parties in Ireland voted through the austerity measures required to get the €85 billion bail-out from the IMF and the EU. Whatever party or parties forms the next government, it will have little room for manoeuvre.

The bourgeoisie’s calls for sacrifice are heard more thoroughly and the recent mid-term elections have potentially provided the bourgeoisie with the political pieces necessary to institute a harsher round of austerity. This article will turn its attention towards the elements of austerity that the working class are faced with today and try to present these elements within a historical framework of global capitalism’s permanent crisis.

How can workers defend themselves against redundancies, pay freezes, worsening conditions at work and cuts in public services? The scale of the attacks launched against the working class, both before and after the election make it clear that there is no option but to fight.

Austerity regimes like that gradually being reinforced in Britain are being imposed across Europe. The continuing strikes and demonstrations in Greece have been the most dramatic expression of a working class response, but they are only the most high-profile examples.

August 29 sees the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans flood and the war subsequently declared by the US bourgeoisie on its innocent victims. If this event had happened in an underdeveloped country it would have been shocking enough, but to occur in the richest country in the world indicates the bankruptcy of the capitalist system.

Another mine tragedy has this time taken the lives of 29 miners. Combined with similar recent mine disasters in Russia and Mexico, the world is once again grimly reminded that even in the so-called ‘post-work information age', significant numbers of workers continue to make their living putting in long hours in dangerous conditions.

The ruling class is gearing up for its election. This time the big issue is not who will win, not even how many people will bother to vote, but how to reduce the deficit over the next few years - how to make the working class pay by cutting jobs, pay and services.

Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland, France, Germany, Britain...everywhere the same crisis, everywhere the same attacks. The ruling class is revealing its true colours. Its cold and inhuman language boils down to the same basic message: ‘if you want to avoid the worst, if you don't want total economic break-down, you are going to have to pull in your belts like never before'.

The election campaign is already underway and one of the main points at issue between the parties is the problem of Britain's vast mountain of debt.

This is an updated version of the article Greece:One Year On.

The relentless deepening of the crisis and the vast burden of debt weighing on the British economy mean that the ruling class - whichever of its factions are in government in the coming year - will have no choice but to make savage cuts in working class living standards.

The current financial crisis is ultimately the result of a crisis of overproduction, like the one of 1929. The growth over the last few decades has only been possible thanks to the accumulation of vast debts, which have destabilised the entire banking system.But contrary to what all the economic experts are saying, the present crisis is really far more serious than in 1929.

The current financial crisis means a fall in living standards for the working class.Credit is close to unobtainable; prices of everyday necessities are rising far higher than official inflation; unemployment is up and growth at a standstill.