In his Runcorn speech, on Monday, Cameron justified his plan to cut £12bn out of the annual welfare bill by saying: "We need to move from a low wage, high tax, high welfare society, to a higher wage, lower tax, lower welfare society." Who would disagree with that?

Yes, we all need decent wages. But then, why has his government frozen public sector wages - which are often very low - for years? And why keep the minimum wage at rock bottom level?

Yes, we need to pay lower tax. But why should workers pay any tax in the first place? After all, only our labour produces any value. Part of this value goes into our wages, but the rest is stolen by the bosses and turned into profits and dividends. Only these parasitical earnings should be taxed - at a high rate - to make the capitalist thieves pay for the fact that they are of no use to society!

And yes, who wouldn't be in favour of a "lower welfare" society. In fact, who'd want this current "welfare", if there was another choice? Certainly not the claimants who are made to feel that they're living off public charity and who are treated like "scroungers"! What we need is a society which allows everyone to work according to their ability and which provides for everyone according to their needs - full stop!

But of course, this is not what Cameron has in mind. Although the details of his £12bn cuts will only be disclosed in Osborne's "emergency budget", on 8th July, Cameron gave a foretaste of what he had in store for us in this Runcorn speech.

Drip-feeding the capitalist class

Some of the cuts will be targeted, once again, at the disabled and long-term sick. Already there is a scramble in the Tory press to produce sensational stories about "skivers and scroungers". We've heard it all before. It's so much easier to target those who are least able to defend themselves.

The rest of the cuts will be targeting in-work benefits, such as child tax credit, working tax credit and housing benefit - i.e., mostly the lowest-paid workers. So much for Cameron's cynical posture as a champion of "hard working families"!

His objective is not to break up the welfare system, though - far from it. Judging from DWP plans announced before the election, the welfare system will remain in use - to force more workers into low-paid, non-jobs. For instance, one plan is to force part-time workers to work longer hours, under threat of having their top-up benefits cut - which would presumably mean working several non-jobs, since full-time jobs are so hard to come by. And since Cameron will never force companies to pay decent wages, such in-work benefits will remain in place, although reduced, and so will low wages.

The truth is that, contrary to what Cameron - and, in fact, all the main parties - claim, in-work benefits were never designed for the "welfare" of low-paid workers. Their purpose was always - and is still - to allow the capitalists to pay the lowest possible wages. It is not the working class which lives off the welfare state, it is primarily the capitalist class!

The need for the working class to act

It was to oppose these new attacks against the poorest that protesters marched in London, last Saturday. Although it wasn't widely advertised, this protest was a big success, numbering between 150,000 to 250,000, depending on the estimator! This certainly shows that resistance against Cameron's policies is possible.

However, protesting in the streets alone, though necessary and useful, won't do the trick. Cameron is only doing the capitalists' bidding. To make the capitalists think again - so that they order their lackeys in government to change course, will take a lot more than the odd Saturday march. They will have to fear that their profits will get hurt.

And there is only one force in this society which has the strength and capacity to threaten their profits - the collective force of the working class, using its weapon of class struggle.

Yes, whether to stop Cameron in his tracks or to start reclaiming the ground lost by workers over the past years, there is no other way than to fight back, all together, over demands which are common to all workers today - whether wages, jobs or employment status. Significantly, none of the few trade-union leaders who addressed the marchers last Saturday, even mentioned the urgent need for such a fight back. As for the TUC, it wasn't even represented.

In other words, we should not expect the union leadership to do the job for us. This fight back will have to be built up using our own energy and resources. There is no alternative.