Thursday, 31 December 2020

2020 VISION OF CAPITALIST CLASS WAR: build workers’ struggle, solidarity and socialism


Storm clouds are gathering as we turn our backs on 2020 and face the struggles of the rest of the 2020s.

Several groups of workers are flexing their muscles, threatening to fight back against the multiple tributes being hacked out of their jobs, wages and everyday conditions by the obscenely rich elite, to pay for the crises of 2020.

As we reflect on the past year and prepare for the next, nobody should harbour any doubt that class war is raging in the boardrooms of big business.

Employers and governments work in tandem to unleash a massive redistribution of wealth to the rich from the rest of us, with claims this is unavoidable to balance the books after a year of unprecedented state expenditure. And they plan to use Brexit to rob us further.

In battling to defend every penny of workers’ pay, every job and public service, it is necessary to see the bigger picture, to build the widest possible solidarity action in reply.

The past year has given us ‘2020 vision’ of capitalism in all its ruthlessly exploitative nature.

The globalised hunt for ever-greater profit and new capitalist markets has invaded wilder parts of our planet, bringing humans into contact with lethal pathogens, unleashing global pandemics with increased frequency and ferocity - in particular COVID-19, the worst killer pandemic in a century.

Decades of austerity cuts - better described as planned poverty, in pursuit of even more grotesque wealth for a tiny minority - led to entirely avoidable human carnage, with shortages in the NHS and failure to provide protective equipment or safe conditions in care homes and countless other workplaces the most obvious examples.

As 2020 wore on, more and more people spotted the glaring contradiction between rhetoric and reality; between mantras of “We’re All In This Together” and the brutal expansion of inequality.

In just three months the planet's billionaires increased their wealth by 27%, whilst workers on furlough suffered 20% pay cuts, and a record 370,000 others a full 100% loss of earnings from August-October alone, as they were chucked on the scrapheap of unemployment.

Amazon owner Jeff Bezos increased his personal wealth by $87billion since January, equivalent to the entire, combined NHS budgets for the whole of the UK.

The government propaganda nonsense about treating the Coronavirus like a war prompts one picture they would rather hide from us; as with wars, the pandemic has led to further polarisation of wealth, including increased monopolization of ownership.

That is plain to see in the retail sector, the second biggest employer in the country after the NHS. Retail giants like JD Sports and Mike Ashley's Fraser Group battle over who picks up the spoils as Arcadia, Debenhams and countless small firms go to the wall. Big retail thrives, the High Street turns into a wasteland.



Handouts to Big Business

Government policies in response to the pandemic were shaped by the clash of two opposite class interests.

The furlough scheme was the result both of demands by the trade union movement and socialists to protect workers in their jobs, and the fear and loathing of collapsed profits by big business.

Still, it was primarily huge handouts for the capitalist rich and horrendous insecurity for workers. For example, supermarkets got state handouts of £1.9billion in business tax relief, which they converted into handouts of £1.3billion in dividend payments to shareholders and 230,000 redundancy notices this year to retail workers - whose efforts on the front line not only fed the people but fed the profits of the big four supermarkets and their likes.


It's Capitalism to Blame – not just COVID-19

In fighting to shape the future in the interests of the vast working-class majority of the population, we need to be crystal clear it was not the pandemic which created the crisis of job insecurity, pay cuts and threats to essential services, but the capitalist system itself. The pandemic simply exacerbated the crisis.

Pre-pandemic Britain witnessed an incredible 54% rise in the number of people suffering not just poverty, but destitution, between 2017 and 2019. The number of kids condemned to destitution in their formative years rose by 50% in the same two years.

The ultimate indictment of capitalism must be the fact that in the fifth-richest economy on Earth, UNICEF has been obliged to give a grant for breakfast boxes to feed hungry children in South London on Christmas Day; the first such emergency aid to the UK since UNICEF’s foundation in 1946.

Bosses Unleash Class War

As we step into 2021 it is no longer adequate to predict a ruthless crusade by employers and their hired politicians to claw back the costs of 2020 from workers’ pockets; it’s happening already! It requires at least equal determination to defend the class interests of the millions as is on display by the millionaires in their own self-interest.

Patterns are emerging of systematic pay cuts; ‘fire and rehire’ schemes; reductions in sick benefits, terms and conditions; reduced hours of available work, and a slaughter of jobs.

And as Karl Marx identified over 150 years ago, burgeoning unemployment - and indeed underemployment - are being used to bludgeon workers into accepting lesser pay and conditions, with the age-old, obnoxious declaration “You’re lucky to have a job!”


The Struggle Determines the Outcome

Workers in a range of sectors are limbering up for crucial defensive struggles: in BT, Scottish Gas, further education colleges, ScotRail, CalMac ferries, the NHS and wider public sector, etc.

They face the choice of fighting back or being crushed by pay cuts; jobs downgrading: the corporate thuggery of ‘fire and rehire'; decimation of jobs – and the immediate, ongoing threats to health and safety in the workplace, as employers prioritise profit over lives amidst new waves and strains of the killer COVID-19.

There is nothing predetermined in the outcomes of these struggles.

But some things are certain: the employers are out to use the twin viruses of COVID-19 and capitalist recession to beat down workers’ wages, conditions and jobs; to beat workers down onto their knees.

Unless we get up off our knees and fight back with maximum solidarity across sectoral and Union boundaries then working-class people will pay a terrible price at the hands of class enemies who sing hymns of national unity and “We’re All In This Together” as they seek to divide and conquer.


Defeat Divide-and-Rule Tactics

The Tories announced a public sector pay freeze with mock concern at the pay cuts in the private sector, with Rishi Sunak trying to appear sincere when he said: “This means we cannot possibly justify public sector pay rises.”

But they've taken their divide-and-rule trickery even further, trying to split different sections of public sector workers, promising pay rises to at least some NHS staff but not the millions of frontline workers in local government, civil service departments and others who also kept society functioning during COVID-19.

The Scottish government is a bit more cute about this, announcing a £500 award to health and care workers (which of course the Tories insist is taxable!). But that one-off payment still excludes hundreds of thousands of other key workers in Scotland, and should also not be allowed to distract from the entirely justified demands for a 15% pay increase for all NHS staff, which the Scottish government has given no indication of supporting or funding.


£12 Minimum Wage at 16

One of the weapons which SSP trade unionists are determined to popularise in combating the divisive tactics of employers and governments is the demand - first raised by the Scottish TUC during the spring lockdown - for an immediate £2-an-hour pay rise for every key worker, regardless of occupation.

This is an extremely modest but unifying demand in recognition both of the heroic efforts of workers in the NHS, care sector, retail, postal services, bin collections, utilities, council and civil services, and countless others - and of the fact those workers who society most relies upon are usually also the lowest paid.

However, as we explained back on 1st April, it’s not just ‘Time £2 Pay All Key Workers’ (to quote the STUC) but this needs to be underpinned by a legally enforced National Minimum Wage of at least £12-an-hour from the age of 16 upwards, if we are to avoid further divisions between different low-paid workers, and overcome the rampant poverty which also undermines job security - because workers cannot afford to buy the goods or services produced by other workers.


Workers’ Solidarity and Socialism – not ‘Social Partnership’ With the Enemy

Solidarity in action is a critical plank of what’s required in 2021.

Socialists and trade unionists need to challenge and defeat the false and dangerous philosophy which pervades the upper echelons of most trade unions; namely that of ‘Social Partnership’ between union leaders and company chief executives.

The ‘2020 vision’ of capitalism revealed to millions of people surely exposes the idea of common interests between the very rich and the rest of us, the employers and the working class, as a preposterous, dangerous nonsense.

It took courageous struggle - including strike action in many cases, and even a preparedness by union shop stewards to put their job on the line - to even win adequate sick pay or Personal Protective Equipment from employers who put privatised profit before people’s lives.

And the Tories have gone from hypocritical claps to slaps in the face for key workers, as they prepare to pick the pockets of the very people they proclaimed heroes when it suited the government to get them to work in the jaws of death.

Collective action, good old-fashioned working-class solidarity applied to the modern age, is what’s required, not cosying up to company bosses who would cut your throat as quick as they'd look at you in defence of their profit margins.


Workers Need Socialist Party – join the SSP

Going beyond that, one of the clearest lessons of the past year is that in order to end the rule of the rich in a society based on class division and class exploitation, workers need a conscious socialist party rooted in the workplaces and communities.

A workers’party with a socialist vision and ideology - turned into fighting socialist policies capable of mobilising masses of people because they are expressed in the language and needs of the working class.

The SSP enters 2021 determined to help build a socialist force in the unions, workplaces and communities that can link immediate battles over jobs, wages and rights at work with the need to take the likes of energy, construction, transport, all public services and banks into democratic public ownership. As the foundation for a Socialist Green Recovery Plan which could build 100,000 eco-friendly homes; establish an integrated, free public transport network; provide cheap green energy to all; construct universal basic services fit for the 21st century; thereby also creating at least 150,000 well-paid, unionised jobs and apprenticeships, guaranteeing meaningful work and security to the next generation in a socialist Scotland.

Look back in anger at capitalist 2020, but look forward with determination to shape a socialist future in the 2020s.


Join the SSP (scottishsocialistparty.org)

 

 

 

 

 



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