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Fight the Cost of Living Attacks!
STATEMENT OF THE WORKERS LEAGUE
28-12-2022: The year 2023 looms ominously over the heads of working people in the West. After two solid years of assault under the guise of a fraudulent “pandemic”, basic costs of living are set to skyrocket, sending millions more into despair, destitution and possibly death. This is on top of those who are suffering perilous injuries or perishing outright from the global rollout of mRNA injections, supposedly to counter a real or imagined “Covid”. The prices of basic food in supermarkets are jumping, increasing weekly grocery bills by 50% or more. In Europe, the cost of electricity, gas, water is tripling or quadrupling. In some places, working people are being expected to spend as much as 70% of their income on basic utilities. Inflation is simply out of control, reaching 10% according to official figures, but in reality it may be double that. Wages, where there are any increases at all, fall as much as four or more percentage points behind the official inflation rates. This is unacceptable.
The Great Reset
None of these misfortunes are inevitable, or simply a sign of the economic times, as implied by the corporate media. Nor are they due to Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, which is often trotted out as the official excuse for price rises by Western politicians. Russia is resisting NATO’s proxy war for regime change in Moscow, by combatting the Nazi infested Ukrainian military which is armed, funded and trained by the governments of the US (United States of America) and the EU (European Union). Rather, the cost of living attacks are merely the second phase of the Great Reset, the first being the overwhelming onslaught of broadsides on working people launched with the transparent excuse of Covid-19. While the World Economic Forum (WEF) may be the authors of the Great Reset or New Normal narrative, they are only its publicists, as the foremost neo-con think-tank. The source of both the Covid and post-Covid attacks on workers (which also hits much small business) is the pre-eminent crisis of the West, which is the historical crisis of the centuries old system of capitalist imperialism.
Imperialism is carrying out attacks on working people as it is being stymied from launching World War III – though it is doing its utmost to do so. The economic power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the military power of the Russian Federation are combining to block incredibly dangerous US/NATO led provocations. It is the PRC’s largely nationalised and planned economy which the West is unable to combat. This is not just for reasons of the gigantic size of the PRC in terms of population. It is the fact that the state ownership of the strategic means of production there is providing a huge springboard for ongoing economic growth. Even though the PRC’s political leadership decided to sacrifice some economic growth to entertain the non-scientific Covid spectacle, economic growth is starting again in the PRC after it finally abandoned pointless PCR testing and brutal lockdowns.
While it is true that the Communist Party of China (CPC) was more enthusiastic in imposing nonsensical Covid repression (apart from vaccine mandates) than politicians in the West, this can be attributed to Stalinism – not socialism, and certainly not “communism”. We should not be surprised that Stalinists with state power are more devoted to propping up capitalism outside its own borders, even if that means imposing Covid totalitarianism at home. The conservative bureaucracy of the CPC only retains its power to the degree they can prevent a proletarian political revolution at home, and to the extent that they can block workers’ revolutions from boiling over in Eurasia and beyond.
Resist war at home and abroad
Yet neither the CPC bureaucrats nor the Western politicians have ultimate power to prevent generalised uprisings. If the working class is organised and committed enough, and guided by its own vanguard party, little can stand in its way. To do this, however, working people must link Covid repression to imperialist war to cost of living daylight robbery. Covid tyranny was an attempt to partially shutdown whole economies, throw millions into unemployment and crush small business to enable big capital to scoop up the remains. The imperialist war against Russia via Ukraine led by NATO and the EU has been long planned, but dovetails with the contrived “pandemic” by seeking to destroy whole countries or continents, to allow fresh fields of investment for the Western corporate elite. The skyrocketing cost of living increases (rent, mortgages, electricity, gas and water bills) in the West for working people is a deliberate move to create fear among the still employed for higher levels of unemployment, poverty, homelessness via monopoly price fixing to once again drive down the cost of labour power – wages and salaries. The relentless rising of interest rates on home loans will force many to abandon their homes to capital buyouts.
Politicians in the US, Europe and Australia are openly blaming price rises on what they claim is an “invasion” of Ukraine. In reality, the West applied mind boggling sanctions on Russia as they appeared to believe that sanctioning Russia’s central bank would soon collapse its economy, and sanctioning oil and gas purchases from Russia would likewise lead it to financial ruin. As Russia’s economy is NOT just based on oil and gas sales, and large parts of it are effectively state run and therefore profit is not the sole determining factor, Western sanctions have boomeranged back against the countries that levied them. At the same time, Russia’s economy has not only weathered the storm, but improved, particularly as they find more willing customers for their raw materials in China, India, Iran and elsewhere. The working people of Europe, and to a lesser extent those in the USA and Australia, are being forced to pay the most severe price for Russophobic and Sinophobic ideological ends.
Paraphrasing Russian revolutionary leader L Trotsky, every society is founded on production, production gives rise to classes, the state is formed on the basis of class struggle, and the state is an organ of class oppression. For Marxists this is axiomatic, and this framework still explains what today appear to be abnormal occurrences – staged “pandemics”, the danger of world war, and difficulties just getting by for millions of those who must labour in order to survive. These looming catastrophes can be turned into opportunities for a better world, provided workers are prepared to fight for it. Indeed, the dire scenarios being faced today are proof positive that the ruling classes of the West do not and cannot have any other solutions than ongoing wars and political repression of the masses.
The only way out for workers and the oppressed is a series of revolutions which result in a federation of proletarian states. Key to this perspective is the urgent forging of Leninist vanguard parties which can inspire millions in an epic struggle for liberation. This goal must be paramount at the same time as mobilising under some critical demands, including: Abolish NATO! Abolish AUKUS! Lift the sanctions on Russia! No funding for Nazis in Ukraine! No war on China! For a six-hour workday! For public ownership of energy, infrastructure and banks! For workers’ republics!
WORKERS LEAGUE
E: workersleague@protonmail.com
Photo: Charity organisation Age UK stage a protest demanding the government assist the elderly with rising power bills, so they can continue to have their homes heated during a freezing cold winter. http://www.infotatiles.com
Source: Red Fire
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