"We're all in it together" - that is what politicians say when they want working people to swallow a bitter pill. Labour used that phrase when they were throwing hundreds of billions at the banks while cutting tens of thousands of public sector jobs. Now, the Con-Dems are using it to introduce the round of cuts that will be included in their 22 June "emergency budget".
Of course, the truth is that the working class is always more "in it" than others. It is us, workers, who are supposed to take the brunt of the cuts in jobs, wages, benefits and services that politicians have up their sleeves - so that bosses and shareholders can keep enjoying the largesse of the state to boost their profits and dividends.
In this class society, there is no such thing as being "all in it together": the capitalist exploiters are "in it" for themselves and they squeeze whatever they can from the rest of us, with the help of their politicians.
What's overspending and what's not
Over the past few days, Cameron has begun to show his austerity cards - no detail, just outline.
His words - "painful cuts", "difficult decisions on pay and pensions, etc., are designed to get us used to the idea of footing a huge bill.
Cameron keeps throwing large numbers at us about the government's deficit and the billions of pounds that it is paying in interest on its ballooning debt. But it is not as if this interest payment means that the money is lost for everyone. It goes straight into the coffers of the very same banks which, despite being bailed out by the state, carry on making profits by lending money to the state!
In order to shift the blame away from the financial system, Cameron says that the deficit black hole is not just due to the crisis, but above all to what he calls a "structural deficit" - the past government's "overspending". And this is what we are supposed to swallow as a justification for the cuts that the Con-Dems are planning on our backs!
But if there was overspending, it was certainly not for the benefit of the working class.
For instance, there were the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which Cameron supported enthusiastically. And the exorbitant cost of maintaining Britain's 225 nuclear warheads, with the missiles and submarines to launch them - which Cameron not only wants to keep, but to renew!
There was certainly overspending too, on the tax credit system. But not, as Cameron's sidekick, Ian Duncan Smith, claims, because it "subsidises" the poor. On the contrary, this system is a shameless subsidy to the capitalists, allowing them to pay rock-bottom wages. Had the minimum wage been set at a level allowing recipients to make a living, had the bosses been prevented from closing down useful factories and forcing millions into part-time, often casual, jobs, there would have been no need for this system in the first place! But don't expect Cameron to do anything against scrooge bosses.
Making the capitalists pay
But there was another way in which Labour was indeed overspending, which has nothing to do with the expenditure targeted by the Con-Dems.
Over their 13 years in office, Labour managed to reduce, considerably, the amount of tax paid by companies on their profits, by cutting their tax rate from 33 to 28%. Meanwhile the so-called Capital Gains Tax or CGT - on profits made from the sale of properties, works of art, investment, etc.., which had been taxed before like normal income - was reduced to only 18%.
With these measures, Labour offered a large handout to the wealthy. But by the same token, they also reduced significantly the income from taxation, thereby reducing the ability of the government to spend on what it is meant to fund, for the benefit of the majority.
Of course, the Con-Dems do not blame Labour for these handouts to the rich, any more than they blame Labour for their bail out of the bankers. In fact, they want to increase these handouts.
They may well be talking about increasing CGT, but with so many "exemptions" as Cameron's ministers stressed, that it will not affect the very rich. On the other hand, Osborne has already outlined his plans to reduce the tax on company profits over the coming two years.
In other words, not only will the cuts planned by the government, on our backs, serve to plug the hole left by the bailout of the bankers, but they will be used to fund an increase in the capitalists' parasitism of public funds.
There can be only one response for us, workers, to this concerted offensive against our living standards - a concerted counter-offensive - to make the capitalists pay for their crisis themselves.