Over the past weeks, the election campaign has shifted to all kinds of diversions, from Brown's "bullying" to the dubious donors of the two main parties. It seems that Brown and Cameron have finally realised that boasting about their plans to cut public expenditure and make the working class pay for the bankers' bailout is not a vote-winner!
But their electioneering and hot air about a so-called "recovery" cannot fool anyone. The crisis is still there. Not only is the real economy still in limbo and unemployment increasing, but financial speculation, ironically, largely funded by the public bailouts, is now threatening entire countries with bankruptcy. Meanwhile the bosses' offensive against the working class is as vicious as ever. Behind the politicians' lullabies, these are the only relevant issues of the day.
Turning the screw on the weakest
The smallest countries are the first victims of the predatory drive of the rich capitalist classes. And Iceland just one among a long list of victims.
Since the collapse of its banks, in 2008, it has been the target of Brown's punitive retaliation. Not only were its banking assets frozen using anti-terrorist legislation, but the British government decided unilaterally that the greedy British investors who had been lured by IceSave's fat interest rates would be fully compensated... by Iceland!
Never mind the fact that the dubious methods used by IceSave, similar to those of Northern Rock, had been enthusiastically encouraged by ministers who were only concerned with bringing ever more business to the City sharks!
But unlike Britain, Iceland has a tiny population of just 317,000. Unlike Britain, it did not have hundreds of billions to bail out its banks. And the banking crisis brought its entire economy to its knees. So much so, that the population's purchasing power has dropped by 30%.
This has not stopped Brown from demanding that this population should cover the losses of IceSave's greedy British account holders. Yet the annual interest on this debt alone represents half of the country's health expenditure! Which shows once again that Brown's agenda is to turn the screw on the weakest on behalf of the British wealthy.
On 6 March, Iceland's voters rejected Brown's blackmail by a 93% majority. And right they were. The wealthy should pay for their losses and there is no reason for impoverished Iceland to foot the bill. After all, had we, in Britain, been given a chance to have our say over Brown's bailout of the banking sharks, the odds are that it would have been rejected by a large majority as well!
Greek workers show the way
Like Iceland, Greece has become the target of the richest countries' predatory drive. Pressure has been piling up on its government to make the population pay for the crisis, while financial speculators were pushing up the interest it has to pay on its public debt to unaffordable levels.
Unlike in Iceland, Greek workers were not given a say over the drastic austerity measures introduced by the government to stop the speculation and placate the rich countries. As a result, they took it upon themselves to voice their anger by demonstrating in the streets and striking in factories and offices, in order to force the government to renounce its austerity drive and make the capitalists foot the bill of their crisis.
Only the future will tell whether the Greek working class succeeds in its fight back. But the road it has chosen to take is the right one - in fact, the only possible one - against the parasitism of the capitalist class.
What is true of Greece is true of Britain. Here as well, politicians at the service of big business have turned public funds into a milch cow for the capitalists who caused the crisis. Here as well, the financial bailout has built up a budget deficit (close to that of Greece as a proportion of national production) which is attracting the greed of speculators, as was shown by the sudden collapse of the pound on March 1st, threatening the economy as a whole with bankruptcy. Here as well, politicians are in the process of forcing drastic austerity measures down our throats, on top of the already on-going job and wage cuts.
And yes, against this raft of attacks, the road chosen by the Greek working class is also the only one available for the working class of Britain. Only the mobilisation of our collective strength, on the largest possible scale, will force the capitalist class of this country to pay for its crisis out of the profits it has accumulated from our labour for so long.