A call to arms to the working class from Jason Brannigan in The Leveller as the crisis bites and the rich continue to rob us blind.
We are told repeatedly that we must all pay for the ongoing crisis that capitalism finds itself in... Pension cuts, job losses, longer hours, worse pay, more taxes, less services, more privatisation, bail outs and subsidies for the rich and increased hardship and destitution for the working class and the poor.
This is on a global scale. The debt crisis that capitalism created is being used to excuse an all out attack on those who did not create that ‘crisis’ in the first place.
Capitalism is based on robbery - it is built on profit and greed. The working class built the wealth of this society through our labour. The wealthy have siphoned off the true value of our labour to create immense wealth for themselves. This is what they call profit. They would prefer to leave us with just the bear minimum we need to survive.
This does not always work out just how they would like it to. Through organising and taking action against bosses and government working class and unemployed people forced concessions from them. Higher wages, the 8 hour day, paid holidays, health care, access to free education, pensions. Our combined struggles won all of these things and much more. Now it seems the bosses are having none of that and are stripping us of the little we have fought for over the years to line their pockets with even more of the wealth we create!
In the north youth unemployment has more than trebled since 2008. We are set to lose 26,000 public sector jobs by 2017. With the Welfare Reform Bill before Stormont this month the most vulnerable in our society are set to become even worse off. Poverty is on the increase while the gap between rich and poor has never been greater. The rich continue to get richer while we continue to get poorer. Mortality rates for those living in deprived areas have been found to be no better than during the depression of the 1930s!
The thing is this isn’t a crisis - well not for capitalism anyway. It is simply business as usual.
Instead of continuing to let these bastards rob us blind its time we robbed them! Or rather turned the tables and organised to take back what, is after all, rightfully ours.
Front page article from issue 9 of the Leveller (March 2012). The Leveller is now a free monthly bulletin.
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