None of the desperate measures being taken can prevent the decline of capitalism.

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None of the desperate measures being taken can prevent the absolute decline of capitalism. It is destined for the dustbin of history. But without a strengthening of the working class we could be facing something worse…
A crisis out of control – and it’s a crisis for the working class, too

WORKERS, DECEMBER 2008 ISSUE

As we watch the daily reports of the credit crunch and the recession, two main thoughts strike most of us. Firstly, governments are unable to control this crisis of capitalism, and secondly, what do all these huge sums of money mean and where do they come from?


We are told that the British government will make available £0.5 trillion – that’s £500 billion to you and me, because the scale of this credit crunch is forcing us to think of previously unimaginable numbers like trillions – to bail out the banks who refuse to lend to one another because they think the borrowing bank is about to go bust.


Meanwhile, around the world the figures total trillions – and Brown tells us that the cupboard is bare and there is no money for public sector pay rises! And despite this, it’s still impossible to get a mortgage, leading to massive layoffs in the construction industry.


Losses in the trillions
While all this has had little, if any, impact, we then learn that the five biggest British banks are set to lose £2.5 trillion while the government is part-nationalising some of them without exercising any control. Brown flies off to the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia, begging for loans for Britain and for petrodollars to prop up the IMF. Meanwhile, stock exchanges crash, with some speculating on the consequences of the FTSE 100 index reaching zero. Despite the parlous state of the US economy, we see the value of the US dollar rise as if it is seen as some safe haven whilst the Pound slumps. And we see Hedge Funds losing millions as their reckless gamble over the future of the Volkswagen motor company fails spectacularly.




Brown and Darling say that they are going to spend their way out of the recession with construction and infrastructure projects, but when pressed, only talk about bringing forward the construction of aircraft carriers and a new generation of Trident nuclear armed submarines – both of no value to Britain. Wages are held down using the bogeyman of inflation whilst economists insist that workers need to spend more money on consumer goods to minimise the effects of recession. Hence, the rundown of the retail industry and of manufacture of consumer goods. The motor industry is set for huge layoffs.


Then we have the spectre of Brown telling Parliament that the US is in recession, some European countries are in recession and inevitably “we in Britain are not immune from this foreign alien contagion”, as if it’s an accident, not Britain’s fault, like catching a cold from a neighbour.


Welcome to the world of capitalism in absolute decline!
Of course it’s the responsibility of this government, controlled by capitalism and serving capitalism. Brown is also directly responsible, by handing over power to an ‘independent’ body to set interest rates, by deregulating the finance industry in this country and by destroying manufacturing industry in favour of basing the British capitalist economy on the finance sector.


Lending to those who can’t pay
Who else is responsible for dreaming up and allowing the practice of lending mortgages to poor Americans without the ability to repay them and then selling on those loans to every other bank including British banks such as Northern Rock? Who else is responsible for banks lending British workers 130 per cent mortgages or loans worth six times their salaries, and who now have no chance of repaying them and are faced with repossession of their homes?


Who else is responsible for the record level of personal debt, greater than any other country because of the easy credit? We all know how credit card companies work, i.e. banks, to push their credit cards with interest free transfers and unsolicited cards making it so easy to run up debt. We all know about the exorbitant penalties for late payments on loans or credit cards or overdrafts that make the debt worse.


Soak the young
And today, it is the young who are shouldering the burden of debt. Today, it is not possible to be a student without massive levels of debt. It was once the case that no bank would lend money to a student. Now banks are throwing debt at them and the government is forcing hundreds of thousands into debt through student loans.


But what about us – the working class? What is our responsibility? Did our class really believe that this debt represented wealth creation? Were we foolish enough to think there would be no price to pay for this desperate capitalism? Few British workers are more than one pay packet away from destitution. Personal debt is a weapon of capitalism to enslave workers.


So now that the government is giving away our money to prop up capitalism after this spiral of debt has got out of control, what are we to think? The half a trillion pounds that Brown is handing over to the banks is our money, our future assets. He has mortgaged our future at our cost just as he has with his Private Finance Initiatives to build hospitals, schools and the Tube – all have stored up more debt for the future. Our entire future under capitalism is based on a huge gamble at our expense and is doomed to collapse. Surely this is a case of our class propping up its enemy.


What is our class to do or think about this situation? What do our trade unions have to say? Well, the TUC Economic Statement presented to this year’s TUC says, “The economic downturn is not made in Britain.” This is the same line as the British government – it’s not our fault. No British banks have been moving dodgy loans around. Deregulation of the city has nothing to do with the British government. The fact that Britain has the highest level of personal debt in the world is nothing to do with Britain or the government.


Bankrupt thinking
The TUC calls for tax increases for the rich, a windfall tax on energy companies, more government borrowing and an increase in the winter fuel allowance. What kind of woolly thinking is this? It confirms that our unions are simply an extension of this morally, as well as financially, bankrupt government. Since the TUC Conference in September, they have been conspicuous by their silence.




Our Party has said for many years that capitalism is in a process of absolute decline. When you understand that, it’s easy to understand all the mechanisms that capitalism employs to try to survive. Free movement of labour in the EU, deregulation of everything from the financial industry in the city to transport, privatisation, war, destruction of well unionised industries, are just a few examples. Immigration and record high levels of personal debt along with anti-trade union laws are intended to weaken the working class.


What we see today, however, explains why none of these measures can prevent the absolute decline of capitalism. It is destined for the dustbin of history. But without a strengthening of the working class we could be facing something worse.


Without a working class alternative to capitalism, there is the probability that we will get dragged down with capitalism and face disaster. Such alternatives do not magically appear. They must be fought for by workers and they will come about only by a working class taking responsibility for its own future. It may sound a hard thing to do but there are examples of workers taking responsibility for their own future that we can learn from.


The history of Cuba during the Special Period is of the highest level of the dictatorship of the proletariat in a country that is impervious to the credit crunch and the recession, just as the Soviet Union was impervious to the effects of the Great Depression during the 1930s. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the East European bloc around 1990, Cuba’s economy went into free fall and its economy shrank by a massive 40 per cent. (And our government is worrying about –0.5 per cent.)


A wartime footing
The Special Period put Cuba on a wartime footing, not unlike our own Special Period during the Second World War. Despite severe hardship, there was a strong sense of class collectiveness and faith in the working class leadership. Cuba has now emerged from the Special Period and looks forward to a brighter future. (See the account given of Cuba’s experience in next month’s issue of Workers.)


How can we learn from this example? Why is Cuba so important to us? Well, it’s about taking responsibility and taking charge.
It’s about understanding that it is possible for a working class to hold state power. It’s about understanding that in capitalism’s current crisis, no one is in control or in charge.


So why can’t we take charge? Well first, we must take charge of our own organisations – our trade unions – not as individuals, but as a class. That a working class exists is a given. But so long as our class thinks of its existence as simply a fact and nothing more, as a class in itself, then the working class will not take power. Only when the working class sees itself as a class for itself is there the remotest possibility of it taking power. This is the ideological change that is our task.


In Cuba, they were able to change the ideology of the working class after having made revolution. In Britain it is the other way round. We have to change the ideology of our working class before we can make revolution.


Surely, we can run the banks better than they can. Our class has a banking history. It’s called the building society, where members can deposit money to save, whilst others can borrow money to build. No need to gamble on stocks and shares.
Money lent never exceeded the deposits, consequently no chance of a crash. In the 1820s, our class gave birth to the mutual societies that became Building Societies. They were outside of capitalism and so would eventually have to pay the price. That price was “demutualisation”, begun under Thatcher and ending with their collapse today. And workers went along with it in order to get a payout.


Similarly, we have a history in retail. It was called the Coop. From the Cooperative Wholesale Society which grew the produce, made the shirts and trousers, and sold them to the Cooperative Retail Society that gave us members a dividend at the end of the year. These institutions represented all that was good in working class culture, epitomised by the attitude of collectivism during our Special Period during the Second World War. That’s probably when we came nearest to being a class for itself rather than a class in itself, and resulted in Britain’s wartime leaders Neville Chamberlain and Winston Churchill being thrown out of office as workers recognised Chamberlain’s collusion with Hitler over Czechoslovakia, and Churchill’s attacks on workers before the war.


A start to changing the ideology of our class would be for it to recognise that it is propping up its own enemy and that it is not rocket science to see how we could run things ourselves as a working class. For the trade unions to recognise this would be a big step forward.


There is no point in a trade union sending a 30-strong delegation to Cuba for Mayday, as happened this year, if they return to Britain and continue to support our propping up a dying capitalism with our own money or if they don’t even recognise that capitalism is our enemy. Imagine if they came back and said ‘we’ve seen how the dictatorship of the proletariat works and we can do it here’. It’s as if such things can only happen in other countries. It’s the same with the concept of a national working class. It’s OK for Cubans to be patriotic – “patria o muerte” is their national slogan: homeland or death. But here in Britain it’s almost impossible to stand up for the British working class consisting of every worker in Britain without being accused of racism or chauvinism by those who believe that everyone in the world has a right to live here and work here. We’ve spoken to some Cuba Solidarity Campaign activists in London who, while praising the Cuban Revolution, have no interest or desire to change things here by following their example. Not acceptable!


This attitude that revolutions only happen in other countries shows a complete lack of responsibility for our country and our working class, as does a doomed trade union merger between our Unite union and the United Steelworkers of America. By hiding behind the fantasy of creating a “global super union”, Unite is neatly avoiding its responsibility to Britain and its working class. Copping out! Running away! Heads in the sand!

The only ideology that allows us to take responsibility and that unites us with Cuba is Marxism Leninism.