This is a class war

UK’s Prime Minister David Cameron declares in his new year message that “we are on the right track.”

Conjuring up images of a toffee-nosed public school boy with a crumpled exam cheat sheet in his back pocket, the Prime Minister boasts: “On all the big issues that matter to Britain, we are heading in the right direction and I have the evidence to prove it.”

It is here that reality flies off into fantasy.

But only if you are one of the millions of ordinary people being punished on the orders of the Tories and their banker friends.

For Cameron and co, things are going just swimmingly.

Surely never before in British political history has so much been wrecked for so many, by so few, in so short a time.

The capitalist classes globally, and their prominent local representatives of various hues within and outside Parliament in Britain, have been first off the blocks since their early wobble during the 2008 financial plunge.

Then, they temporarily had stripped from them the fig leaf of certainty with which the ideologues of the right, consumerism and greed dressed up their crazy system of financial speculation and dismissed all alternatives as outdated or unworkable.

They soon ensured it was put back in place.

But a systemic crisis in the capitalist system remains barely concealed behind this withered leaf.

Annual global economic output stands at around £40 trillion. A the same time just a few thousand people around the world are estimated to be evading tax on a secret accumulated wealth of upwards of £13 trillion, let alone their known riches.

Globally hundreds of trillions of debt in the form of derivatives is passed around like a deadly parcel between a complex web of capitalist institutions. It is the result of unfettered capitalist speculation – gambling not even based on the real fruits of people’s labour – and is so large that it is near impossible to repay.

But the greedy few want to ensure that they do not lose their investments. In fact, in another example of the true nature of capitalism, despite the crisis they are accumulating more wealth even as you read this.

Since 2008 the fig leaf has been repositioned, loosely sellotaped over the failed system’s private parts via a continued stream of public cash – our cash.

The seemingly successful bid to hoodwink ordinary people into accepting the financial burden of a crisis not of their making is what Cameron refers to when he tells us “we are heading in the right direction.”

His government is one of many in the developed world now pursuing lower tax for big business and massive spending cuts in the public sector. Both represent a wholesale transfer of wealth from us to a tiny, greedy minority.

The road Cameron is taking us down represents a return to the brutal past for millions of people.

The few embellishments to people’s lives, in national insurance payouts to help us when we hit hard times, in decent retirement incomes, a free health service, and reasonable wages are being systematically rolled back.

This is class war in its most brazen form.

As we head into a new year it falls to us to rally the defence and turn it into the required assault on the system that enslaves us.

The People’s Charter represents a set of simple demands around which we can rally.

We must educate, agitate and organise.

And through militant industrial action and civil disobedience we have in our hands the ability to shake the all too comfortable corridors of power.

Let 2013 go down in history as the year the fightback against this capitalist offensive began in earnest.

 

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