Articles

The war against our class is being waged relentlessly and now officially endorsed by the government’s bankers, the Bank of England.  According to the bank’s new governor Andrew Bailey, organised workers should not flex their collective muscle against inflation and poverty wages because if they win, it will be at the expense of those less organised without muscle. 

For this we read ‘if you fight against our profits and austerity, we will punish your elderly, you’re sick, your children and your poor.’  As we write, pretty well every sector of transport is preparing to strike, with the government already calling those who simply refuse overtime, of taking illegal industrial action. 

The government knows the stakes are high but while it accuses workers of harming the public, the public (nurses, posties, teachers, refinery workers, firefighters and the mass of other producers) look on in solidarity and hope.  Imaging what winning might look like is turning this into a summer of solidarity!

A distinct set of circumstances created by capital is coming together at the same time and is, out of necessity, not just affecting everyone but unifying their demands.  This hasn’t happened since the ‘70s with Callaghan’s Labour government pay-freeze policy. It’s not us harking back to the 70s, it’s those in power. Their wars and their inflationary attack on wages have put us all in the same boat and they wonder why people are beginning to row together.

Assuming that fuel calculation is modestly right, all workers, if we don’t win, will watch our exploitation grow as our standard of living rolls back. 

This is life or death for those of us without work, but even those of us on minimum or ‘living wage’ will not earn enough in one day to meet our basic needs with 20% inflation for lowest earners on heating, cooking and hot water.  We will have to work one day a week solely to not starve or freeze!  What else has to be met in a debt led, rental economy with spiraling inflation to satisfy them?

Labour, our apparent ‘legal’ alternative, has shown its true colours sacrificing our struggles for their quest for power through respectability.   “We are not a party of a protest but a party of government” they proudly proclaim.  We hear you, we all hear you, those without work, those on poverty wages, we the public, inconvenienced by our need to struggle against you as well as the Tories. 

Demands are shaping on a collective scale as crisis continues to affect us all.  The bosses intend to win, but we intend to win too and what they call inconvenience, we recognise as our common struggle.  Our class IS bringing solidarity to a summer of action and discontent.

Article by Dreyfus 19/08/22

As the class war rages at home and abroad, it is fed by the same capitalist crisis that has brought us to the superpower brinkmanship of the conflict in Ukraine and the consequent global food crisis. 

Less in the eye of the media than when it started 6 months ago, the scale of its casualties are now approaching those of the Bosnian war in the ‘90s, whilst the high risk stand-off around the Ukrainian nuclear facility at Zaporizhzhia puts the whole of Eastern Europe and Turkey in clear and present danger.

Actual figures are a closely guarded state secret on both sides.  Each working to downplay its own statistics whilst inflating that of the other.  But between these figures on each side, from the lowest to highest estimates and from all sources, a median figure of around 70,000 dead and double that wounded or missing is a conservative figure for the Russia Ukraine war.   Even at this level, Russia has lost more in battle than in all its conflicts post WW2 put together.  

The cost in damage to trade, infrastructure and armaments on both sides is now thought to have reached the trillion-dollar mark.  More than a quarter of the entire value of the UK economy or nearly 10% of the cost of the global pandemic – this without factoring in the cost to rest of the world of its repercussions.

The demographic impact is equally obscure with a broad brush estimation of a fifth of the country under Russian occupation and an estimated 25% drop in the total settled population.

While appearing to be stuck on most fronts, the cost and casualties are rising exponentially as high value western technology now pours into Ukraine and Russia draws reserves from the length and breadth of its empire to hold its own. 

Opposition to the war is harder to gauge in Ukraine but even given the level and control and censorship in Russia, mounting legal cases against returning to the front, sabotage at recruitment centres and cash payments to the bereaved to keep them quiet, demonstrates it’s visibility and potential, however small, however stifled.  

This war is very far from over.  All Parties, with the notable exception of those fighting and dying,  have their own vested interest in keeping their side of the conflict going.  Even apparent ‘honest brokers’ like Turkey, hosting peace talks, enabling the renewal of food shipments and International Atomic Energy Agency access to threatened sites, keeps selling its effective drone weaponry to Ukraine while refusing to follow NATO in sanctioning Russia.  

As revolutionaries, we must continue to fight and escalate the class struggle at home as a means of opposing imperialist war abroad – an act of strength and solidarity with each other and the workers of both combatant countries. The war it’s not an appendix of the class struggle, it is one of its most brutal expressions, currently presenting the most immediate existential threat to our class and planet.  We must continue to think globally and act locally, no war but a class war!

Article by Dreyfus 20/08/22