One week ahead of the May 7th general election, the latest Sunday Times' Rich list reminds us exactly what sort of society the contending parties are offering us.
Britain's 1,000 fattest cats have got even fatter over the past year - by £28 billion to be precise. Enough to pay the wages of over 1.5 million full-time jobs on £10/hr, for a whole year! Between them, these 1,000 individuals now own £547 billion, or as much as the lower 40% of the population. As to the 117 billionaires, each one of them has as much as 166,000 of us, on average!
In fact, these 1,000 richest own more than the state's annual spending on Social Security, Personal Care, Health, Housing and Education put together. Yet these budgets are supposed to meet the needs of tens of millions - not just a thousand filthy rich. But these are the very same budgets which were cut by every government since 2007, under the pretext that there was not enough money available!
Politicians and the fat cats' parasitism
What's most striking about the fat cats' wealth, is how much it has increased since 2009, after the first shock of the crisis had eroded their wealth. While workers' wages were going down the drain - and are still far below their pre-crisis level - these cats more than doubled their assets!
The truth is, that while the crises produced by the chaotic operation of the capitalist market were devastating for the rest of us, for the top layers of the capitalist class they were just another money-spinner to increase their wealth.
This is because the capitalists can use well-tested agents to do their bidding - their state and the pliable politicians who are running its institutions.
Haven't past and present Labour and ConDem governments used every trick to divert public funds in order to boost company profits - from the bailout of the banks to unprecedented tax cuts and subsidies of all kinds?
And haven't these same parties presided over the emergence of a galaxy of private companies living a parasitic life by sponging off public funds, thanks to the piecemeal subcontracting and privatisation which has gathered pace in the NHS, education and local authorities?
Haven't these parties chosen to fund the bosses' profiteering with massive public sector job cuts, drastic attacks against welfare claimants and chaos in hospitals and public services?
And, with their systematic harassment of the jobless, haven't governments helped the bosses to extract even more labour, for even less, from the labour of working class, thanks to the explosion of casual jobs all over the economy?
Our votes won't count, our fights will!
The arrogance of the fat cats in parading their wealth tells us that we urgently need to reclaim the ground lost in the crisis, by making the capitalists pay back every penny they've stolen from us. There's no shortage of resources with which to create decent jobs, pay decent wages and build decent, really affordable, homes. Sure, a significant bite would have to be taken out of their accumulated profits. But since we've produced these profits with our labour, it's only right that they should be used for our benefit, for once!
Of course, the capitalists won't yield any ground as a result of the coming election. Why would they? Haven't the main parties all proved in office that they always put the interests of the City and the bosses first, in the name of what they call the "national interest". As if, in this class society, the capitalists could ever get richer except by making workers poorer! In fact, not only will voting for the main parties change nothing, but they'll use every vote for them as a blank cheque to justify their anti-working class, pro-business policies.
As for expressing our disgust for the main parties by voting for Ukip - it would be an own goal. Despite its pretence that it stands for the working man, Ukip's ranting against migrant workers and against Europe only exposes its stand against all workers. While Ukip hasn't had the chance to prove itself in office, it can't hide its craving for the perks of power, nor hide its links to business. And let's make no mistake: every vote for Ukip will be used by the main parties to justify even tougher sanctions against workers and the unemployed.
So, regardless of the outcome of the May 7th election, we, workers, have no option but to use the only means which have ever brought any real change in the past - the mobilising of our forces, in the streets and in the factories, so massively that the capitalists begin to really fear for their profits. Then and only then, will we have a chance to start regaining the ground that's been lost.