The gap between what we need and what capitalism provides is yawning. But the solution can only lie in our hands...
The abandonment of Britain
WORKERS, FEB 2007 ISSUE
"Britishness" is now to be taught in schools. But the class wielding power in Britain is not a British class any more. It has abandoned Britain, moving its interests offshore, only perhaps for now trading shares or making deals here. It has lost any sense of Britain as its attitudes follow its interests.
The core of the ruling class is the financial and business elite. The City of London embraces reckless gambling on the one hand and well-spoken, sharp-suited, sharp practice on the other. The rest of London – indeed the rest of Britain – could disappear tomorrow and the City would carry on quite happily. In fact, they would prefer to be rid of this troublesome nation altogether.
Capitalism is going back to its roots, stripping away all the working class's achievements, undermining industry, nation and class. It is selling off industries, utilities and services, Scottish Power the most recent. But the needs of Britain are quite different. We need to control our own resources and control the movements of capital and labour.
A recent Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development report provides fresh evidence that mass immigration is putting pressure on jobs, wages and public services. It says that the arrival of more than half a million Eastern Europeans since May 2004 – an unprecedented wave of workers from abroad – has pushed unemployment rates up from 4.8 per cent last year to 5.6 per cent in 2006. Official figures show nearly 1.7 million people are jobless. There has been an increase of 242,000 over the last year, the biggest annual rise for more than a decade.
The OECD predicts that unemployment will rise to 5.8 per cent next year, above the average for other industrial nations. It estimates that the number of people arriving in Britain is set to increase even further, and it describes the government's immigration projections as "conservative".
Immigration up, wages down
The report adds that immigration also acts to keep wages down – nice for employers, bad for the working class: "Exceptionally strong labour force growth, driven by high immigration and rising participation, is outstripping employment growth, pushing the unemployment rate up. The resulting labour market slack should help to ensure that the anticipated fourth quarter spike in headline inflation does not push up inflationary pressures." The OECD also notes that the wave of new immigrants has put greater demands on limited housing stock.
Globalised capital, with its compulsory free movements of capital and labour, has produced ever greater wealth at one pole of society and greater poverty at the other. In 2002, Britain's richest 5 per cent owned 43 per cent of Britain's total wealth, up from 36 per cent in 1986, and they owned 62 per cent of disposable wealth (i.e. less the value of homes), up from 46 per cent in 1986.
Chief Executive Officers paid themselves an extra 30 per cent more this year and the wealth of the very rich has risen by 18 per cent.
But at the other pole of society, where the rest of us live, globalised capital has produced greater relative poverty. Some 30 per cent of us have no wealth at all.
The tax burden for the average family has risen by £2000 since May 2005. The government has given poor families no rise in tax credits, which, as the Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts, will increase the number of children living in poverty. There are now eight million people with debts of more than £10,000, four million of whom owe more than £20,000.
British homes are 70 per cent dearer in relation to wages than they were in 2000; the average house costs six times the average income, seven times as much in London and the southeast.
Real wages are down, but our productivity is up. This has added trillions of pounds to the value of stockowners' equity, the vast sums gambled in the City of London. As a result, the richest 1 per cent of households in Britain, who own more than half of all shares, get more than half all capital income. Christmas bonuses for City firms will be $17 billion this year. On Wall Street, the top five banks, including Goldman Sachs, will pay out $36 billion, 30 per cent up on last year's record.
Gordon's friends
Gordon Brown boasts that average personal wealth has risen by 60 per cent. That can happen when, for example, Brown's friend Gavyn Davies of Goldman Sachs raises his pocket money from £500,000 to £1,150,000, and 50 people have their wages cut from £10,000 to £9,000.
The ruling class's pretence that its profit is our good has worn out. Parliamentarism is broken, reformist politics have failed.
The parliamentary party system means evasion of responsibility. The working class surrenders authority by electing representatives, who do not speak for us in parliament, but speak for the ruling class to us. MPs then again justify themselves by saying, "It wasn't us, it was the Tories." "It wasn't us, it was the leadership, or New Labour, or whatever."
The more concentrated and extreme a form of power becomes, then the more vigorously it digs its own grave. Everything changing for the worse here stems from the un-British, anti-British class in power, except for the one thing that we cannot blame them for – that we continue to let them misrule us.