Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials, 5 May 2015

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Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
5 May 2015

While politicians are bickering endlessly over who will get in bed with whom in the next government, the bosses' crisis keeps raising its head, showing that it is still as bad as ever.

So, over the past two weeks, we learnt that, after all, GDP growth was "unexpectedly" low and that manufacturing wasn't growing, while productive investment also remained at a record low. All the talk about a "recovery" turns out to be what we always knew it was - hot air.

Meanwhile, on the job front, 3 in 5 of the so-called "new jobs" which have been created are part-time, self-employed, or both - i.e. not jobs on which one can make a decent living, especially with rents and house prices going through the roof again.

Worse, even, food consumption is stagnating at the same level as it was 10 years ago, despite the growth in population! And, since the wealthy are unlikely to eat less, this can only reflect a drastic rise in poverty among the working class.

No, there is no - and has never been - any "recovery" for the working class. The truth is that we have lost a lot of ground in this crisis. And in the real world - our world, which has nothing to do with the hot air bubble of the politicians - the only political issue of any significance at this point is how we can start regaining this ground.

Enough of the fat cats' parasitism

Not everyone has suffered from the crisis. This year's Sunday Times' Rich List showed that Britain's 1,000 richest fat cats had doubled their wealth since 2009. And this, while workers' wages were going down the drain - and are still far below their pre-crisis level.

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!

And, over this past year, while social budgets and public sector jobs were being cut, the assets of these same fat cats increased by £28 billion, to be precise. Enough to pay the wages of over 1.5 million full-timers on £10/hr, for a whole year!

But there's logic in this madness. In this class society, the capitalists who own the economy can only increase their wealth at the expense of the working class majority - and this is what we are paying for today!

Our votes won't count, our fights will!

The arrogance of the fat cats in parading their wealth doesn't just tell us that we urgently need to reclaim the ground lost in the crisis. It also tells us that we can - 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". 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 mobilise our forces, in the streets and in the factories, so massively that the capitalists begin to really fear for their profits. This is the only way anything has ever been achieved in the past. Then and only then, will we have a chance to start regaining the ground that's been lost.