March 2013 – The standard of living of all workers (whether employed or not) is under attack

The increasingly severe crisis of capitalism has resulted in the only solution remaining to the boss class – defending profit levels by reducing the wages (and benefit costs) of the working class. This time, those in work and those on benefits, are being treated the same – a 1% increase of salaries (at most) and the same for benefits. Those in work are increasingly affected by reduction in hours along with real cuts in pay as the “only way of keeping their jobs”. With inflation in the region of 3% (according to the massaged statistics provided by the Government) this means that we are all suffering a reduction in our standard of living.

Those on benefits, including the long-term sick and disabled, are now increasingly being forced to show they are actively seeking work, and forced to take any job going, even if appallingly paid and highly unpleasant. School-leavers are being required to sign up for apprenticeships at Colleges who want to provide them as skivvies for two-bit outfits who don’t really want to pay anything. Many of these “apprentices” are left to their own devices and then forced to sign on again as unemployed.

Of the welfare reforms, one particularly disruptive one is the “Bedroom Tax”, where those below Pension Credit age who are considered to be under-occupying their home will have significant reductions to Housing Benefit, and will be expected to pay the difference themselves or face the prospect of losing their home.

All of the workers, both employed and unemployed, are now facing the same attacks and can only defend themselves by fighting together as a class.

WORKERS CAN DEFEND THEMSELVES ONLY WITH THE STRENGTH OF THE CLASS STRUGGLE:
– With effective strikes, prolonged, without notice, with pickets, which extend beyond companies and categories;
– By fighting for goals that unite all workers: real wage increases (above inflation) with more for the worst-paid categories; generalized reduction of working hours for the same salary, wages for workers made ​​redundant.
– By linking in with, uniting with and defending the proletariat as a whole, that is, including the unemployed, pensioners, the sick, disabled, the young, in order to unite ourselves as a class.

To do this we need to rebuild a real CLASS UNITY, OUTSIDE AND AGAINST THE CONTROL OF THE UNION LEADERS, whose main function is to prevent the class struggle.

And that can only be a start. No economic victory will be final until capitalism is finished off once and for all. This has been amply demonstrated in recent years, as all the achievements of the hard-fought workers’ struggles of the past have been destroyed one by one. The working class can only free itself from the condition of poverty, insecurity and exploitation by gaining power through revolution, by overthrowing the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and imposing the dictatorship of the proletariat. Themeasures needed to emancipate humanity from capitalism can only be the revolutionary communist program:
– Abolition of wage labour, with the abolition of capital and the free distribution of goods and services;
– Socialised work with the disappearance of unemployment;
– Drastic reduction of the working day;
– Reorganisation of production according to human needs and not for profit.The International Communist Party is the only party which has defended and has been able to maintain the original Revolutionary Communist program against reformism and the worst revolutionary defeats which culminated in Stalinism and fake Russian, Chinese, etc ‘socialism’. It is the only one able to draw from that defeat the necessary lessons needed to rescue and defend the proletarian future, without the distraction of electoralism.