Chancellor Jeremy Hunt received whoops and cheers in Parliament yesterday, as Tory backbenchers applauded his latest billionaires’ Budget.

Not far away in Trafalgar Square, by contrast, the roar of hundreds of thousands of public sector workers could be heard echoing around the streets, as striking teachers, civil servants, lecturers, Tube drivers, and junior doctors came together to demand a proper pay rise.

Hunt’s spring statement received praise from across the capitalist press, with its bungs for big business and its ‘professional’ delivery.

After years of chaos under successive Tory administrations, the establishment are clearly pleased to see the serious adults back in Downing Street, attempting to restore order and deliver the policies that the bosses want.

The contents of the Chancellor’s Budget was more notable for its absences, however. Most importantly, to the exasperation of the trade union leaders, there were no promises on public sector pay.

The class struggle, in this respect, is only set to sharpen. And whilst the ruling class may hope for calm waters ahead, all indicators point to further storms on the horizon for British capitalism.

And that is before further sharp turns and sudden changes in the fragile world economy – like a new financial crisis – are even added into the equation.

Lost decade

Accompanying forecasts from the OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) provide little cause for optimism. The UK economy might technically avoid a recession this year. But for ordinary people, the coming years will feel like a recession – as is already the case.

According to OBR estimates, economic output will not recover to its pre-pandemic amount until the middle of 2024. And whilst inflation is predicted to fall below 3% by the end of the year, the estimated 5.7% squeeze on household incomes between 2022-24 will still represent “the largest two-year fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s”.

Consequently, real living standards are expected to still be below pre-COVID levels in 2028. As Financial Times writer Martin Wolf notes: “That is almost a lost decade and comes on top of a very poor previous decade.”

It’s not all doom and gloom, however. According to new research from Unite the Union, UK corporations are laughing all the way to the bank. FTSE 350 firms, the report finds, saw their profits jump by 89% in the first half of 2022, compared to the same period in 2019. From energy to supermarkets: the bosses have never had it so good.

Workforce exodus

The main motif of Hunt’s speech was ‘growth’, with a range of measures intended to boost business investment and workforce participation.

One major headline announcement by the Tories, for example, was the expansion of free childcare provision to one and two year-olds. But nurseries have already highlighted how, in the absence of adequate additional funding, this will simply add to the strain on overworked, underpaid staff.

And the same theme – of workers bearing the burden for the special crisis of British capitalism – can be seen playing out across Britain’s public services.

Labour shortages can be seen in almost every sector: the product of accumulated stresses and pains, on the one side, as workers are pushed to breaking point by ruthless bosses, seeking to squeeze out ever-greater profits; and of deteriorating healthcare and mental health services, on the other.

But clearly the Tories have no plans for addressing these endemic problems and pressures. Instead, they and their capitalist chums will be demanding that workers shoulder even more weight in the months and years ahead.

Whilst there were giveaways for Tory voters, there was nothing on offer for the NHS and its tireless staff; no suggestions of ending austerity, or of giving councils, schools, and hospitals the money that they so desperately need to provide reliable services to users, and decent pay and conditions to workers.

No wonder placards could be seen everywhere on yesterday’s inspiring half-a-million-strong demo in London saying ‘WTF!?’ – WHERE’S THE FUNDING!?

Strikes and demonstrations in GB: Teachers, junior doctors und Tube workers walk out and fight for higher wages.

Streiks und Demonstrationen in GB: Lehrer, Assistenzärzte und U-Bahn Fahrer legen die Arbeit nieder und kämpfen um höhere Löhne. pic.twitter.com/Cl0TUzi81c

— ZDF Studio London (@ZDFlondon) March 15, 2023

Elephant in the room

The Chancellor might pay lip service to the idea of helping people back to work. But the suggestions proposed by the government are little more than a sticking plaster.

At the same time, by repeatedly offering public sector workers insulting below-inflation pay deals, the Tories are actively exacerbating the haemorrhage of teachers, doctors, and nurses from these much-needed professions.

Burnout and exhaustion resulting from understaffing are bad enough. Forcing workers to rely on foodbanks, and adding to their worries about how to pay for rising rents and bills, is rubbing salt in the wound.

The question of public sector pay, in this respect, was the “elephant in the room”, stated TUC general secretary Paul Novak.

“The Chancellor had a chance to save the NHS,” asserted Unite general secretary Sharon Graham. “Instead, he made the wrong choices and delivered a historic betrayal.”

But Hunt and co. haven’t made any “wrong choices” or “betrayed” anyone. Their loyalties lie with the bosses and bankers, not with the working class. It is the capitalists whose interests they serve, not workers. And their stubborn refusal to offer a real pay rise is entirely consistent with these aims.

Carrot and stick

From the start of these disputes, the trade union leaders have been desperate for a deal. Their entire strategy has been based on moralistic appeals to the government – calling on the Tories to ‘see sense’, come to the table, and make an offer that can amicably end the strikes.

Yesterday, for example, ASLEF head Mick Whelan remarked that the Chancellor’s Budget was “disappointing”, showing “an absence of a serious plan to resolve the industrial strife in our public sector”.

The government would clearly also like to “resolve the industrial strife”. But only on their terms. And this means deploying a carrot and stick: offering dodgy deals to some sections of workers, such as certain health unions, in an effort to splinter the movement; and isolating and repressing the most militant unions, in order to break their backs and impose the employers’ demands.

The union leaders must not fall for these Tory divide-and-rule tactics. The movement cannot allow any workers to be left behind. Unity is strength.

The call from the unions must be: either we’re all around the negotiation table, together as one voice, or none of us are.

Instead of compromise or collaboration, the trade union movement must take note of the words of left-wing Labour MP Zarah Sultana from the rally platform yesterday: “This is a class war!”

RMT assistant general secretary John Leach emphasised the way forward, in this respect: “We will not beg! We don’t beg to no-one. What we’re gonna do is what you’re doing: stand shoulder-to-shoulder and fight – fight til we win!”

🎥 "We will not beg."@RMTunion Assistant General Secretary John Leach speaking at today's @NEUnion rally in Trafalgar Square#EnoughIsEnough pic.twitter.com/ix5hooRXgD

— RMT (@RMTunion) March 15, 2023

Unity and escalation

Sultana and Leach are 100% correct. This is a class war. And the only way for workers to win this battle is by remaining united, and going on the offensive.

Yesterday’s massive demonstration – the largest trade union protest and coordinated action in over a decade, with around 700,000 out on strike together – highlights the potential power and strength of the movement.

The confidence amongst teachers and junior doctors was palpable, as they shut down schools and surgeries, forged joint picket lines, and took over the streets. But this determination and dynamism from below must now be matched by militancy and audacity at the top.

Left-led unions like NEU and PCS have correctly refused to cave in to the government’s demands for them to call off scheduled strike action before beginning pay talks. And they have led the charge in terms of pushing for coordinated walkouts, like those seen this week and on 1 February.

But even here, weaknesses are evident. Yesterday saw separate demos organised by these unions in London, for example, with strikers marching separately and converging at the same rally. And only a small handful of contributions on the microphone explained the common enemy shared by all workers: the Tories and the bosses.

Similarly, whilst there have been efforts by striking workers to coordinate at a local level, national campaigns and organisations – like ‘Enough is Enough’ and the TUC – have done little to help activists on the ground; for example, by providing direction on how to set up cross-union strike committees in different areas and workplaces.

Also notable by its absence yesterday was any suggestion of the next steps for the movement. No further days of action have been called, as yet. Some unions, such as those in the NHS, are hoping to secure a deal. Others, in turn, will come under pressure from the government and the employers to ‘be reasonable’ and follow suit.

Instead, what is required is escalation. Rather than acting as a bargaining chip, yesterday’s momentous march should be the launchpad for a mass campaign of action, including plans for building towards a one-day general strike.

Revolutionary leadership

Above all, what is needed is a clear, bold, socialist programme, around which all of the struggles can unite and mobilise.

This must include demands to: reverse all austerity and privatisation in Britain’s public services; link pay increases to inflation, with a sliding scale of wages; and nationalise the banks and major monopolies, in order make the bosses pay for this crisis.

The era of reforms is long behind us. Instead, all of the gains won by previous generations are being ripped to shreds as the crisis of capitalism deepens. Neither the Tories nor Starmer’s Labour have any solutions. And nor do the old ‘lefts’, who cling to the utopian idea of a ‘nicer’, ‘kinder’ form of capitalism.

Only by overthrowing this rotten system, and transforming society along socialist lines, can we solve the dire problems bearing down upon the working class.

Join the Marxists today, and help build the revolutionary leadership required to make this reality.

The contest for Scotland’s next First Minister and SNP leader is well underway, with three candidates vying for the top spot. Voting opened earlier this week, on Monday, with the winner set to be announced on 27 March.

Nicola Sturgeon’s shock resignation has left the party unprepared, however, with no obvious successor lined up to replace her. Nor is there much enthusiasm amongst workers and youth for any of those who have stepped forward to fill her shoes.

There has been no seamless changing of the guard, as there was from Salmond to Sturgeon. Instead, a vacuum has opened up.

This has left many SNP members desperate to hear serious proposals for the future of the party, and for the independence movement. In early polls, over two-thirds of SNP supporters were undecided about who should take over.

Controversy

From the outset, the various leadership campaigns have been a disappointment, to say the least. At first, the race was dominated by the controversy surrounding initial frontrunner Kate Forbes, the Scottish Finance Secretary. 

MSPs who had endorsed Forbes rapidly withdrew their support, after she stated that – given the opportunity – she would have voted against gay marriage legislation owing to her Christian beliefs. Forbes also opposes the recent Gender Recognition Reform Bill.

This sparked a rather ugly, intense focus in the media on Forbes’ religious views, as a member of the Free Church of Scotland (the ‘Wee Frees’) – a roughly 8,000-member Protestant denomination known for its fundamentalist beliefs.

This then spilled over into journalists questioning Health Secretary Humza Yousaf whether, as a devout Muslim, he is sincere in his support for LGBT people. Naturally, many people found this whole debacle to be offensive and divisive.

Distraction

There can be no defending Forbes’ reactionary views. These are clearly a source of embarrassment for most of the SNP. But the attention given to them is a distraction from the real class questions that Scottish workers need answers to.

In a poll by Opinion Matters, only 5% of SNP voters said that the candidates’ religious beliefs were important. This compared to 58% who said that priority is to have a plan to help people with the cost-of-living crisis. Similarly, 53% said that the next SNP leader should be focussed on improving the NHS, education, and public services.

On these essential questions, however, there is nothing that really separates the candidates apart. All are practically committed to the programme of austerity that the Scottish Government has planned, with public services facing ‘four difficult years’ ahead. 

2023 will likely be the worst financial year for Holyrood in its history, with billions in budget cuts and thousands of jobs on the chopping block. 

Independence

Nor have there been any fresh answers to the problem of where the campaign for independence is going.

The short notice of the leadership contest has ensured that the planned March conference has been postponed indefinitely. And neither Forbes nor Yousaf have really said much about what the movement should do next, apart from continuing to “make the case” for independence.

Despite essentially being a stand-in for arch-anti-Sturgeonite MP Joanna Cherry, Ash Regan is the only candidate defending the outgoing First Minister’s proposal for a ‘de facto referendum’ at the next UK general election.

Much of the SNP hierarchy have backed-off from the de facto referendum idea altogether. Their plan now is to essentially do nothing, while continuing to ask nicely that Westminster grants a referendum.

Regan may be speaking up against this, but even she has no clue how to actually fight Westminster’s veto, as shown in a string of embarrassing interviews.

Shortcomings

One can almost feel the negative mood building up around the SNP, brought on by this surprise leadership contest which has shown us anything but the ‘talented politicians’ Sturgeon predicted would succeed her. Instead, the party looks like a train coming off the rails.

The STV hustings debate was particularly tense, with the three candidates raising their criticisms of each other frankly, and highlighting each others’ shortcomings without much explanation for their own. For those watching, the arguments just ran in circles.

The Scottish Conservatives have said they will use Kate Forbes's criticism of her own government in their campaign materials.

In a letter to Forbes the party said they applauded her "truthful assessment" pic.twitter.com/LwZtN5R2n2

— The National (@ScotNational) March 13, 2023

Deputy First Minister John Swinney, one of Nicola Sturgeon’s closest allies, has announced that he is also retiring from frontline politics once the new SNP leader is chosen.

With Swinney and former deputy leader Angus Robertson ruling themselves out of the leadership contest very early on, it looks like Sturgeon’s resignation will really mark a turning point.

Struggle

A new generation of politicians are rising to the top in the SNP: those who have only ever known the party to be in power in Scotland, and with the (false) promise of a second indyref within touching distance.

The situation they will inherit is a dire one, however: economic crisis, austerity, sharpening class struggle, and a dead-end for the independence movement.

This moment must provoke some serious re-evaluation among independence supporters – the majority of whom are workers and youth.

The bourgeois methods of the SNP leaders has led to an utter impasse. The only way forward is through militant class struggle, in the fight for a Scottish Workers’ Republic.

Students at the Farnley Academy in Leeds recently held a three-day protest in response to a draconian toilet policy introduced by management.

The school is part of the GORSE multi-academy trust (MAT), which runs 13 academies across Leeds. It recently proposed extending an already strict toilet arrangement.

Already, in order to use the toilets during lesson times, students needed to have an official note, while a member of staff stands guard. But the new setup would now take this to the extreme, locking all but one toilet in the entire school.

As a result, in late February, hundreds of students started to demonstrate on their own initiative outside of the academy.

Suspensions

Farnley Academy is not the only school seeing student protests against ridiculous policies. Demonstrations have been happening across the country, spreading like wildfire through social media, in response to senseless rules implemented by out-of-touch school management.

Similar protests have taken place over stringent toilet policies at Oasis Academy Mayfield in Southampton, Haven High Academy in Lincolnshire, and Penrice Academy in Cornwall.

At Weston Secondary School, another academy in Southampton, protests over toilet arrangements have seen as many as 200 pupils participating.

As well as similar restrictions on using toilets at break times, the introduction of gender-neutral bathrooms led to a situation where there are an insufficient number of cubicles. This means that students spend most of their break queuing to use the toilet.

Some students also reported cases of sexual harassment. “We don’t think it’s fair,” one 14-year-old student was quoted as saying. “Girls in our school are not comfortable. People think it's funny to unlock the doors while you’re in there.”

“The boys have got this thing about putting their phone over the toilet or under the doors to try to get pictures of them (the female students),” a pupil’s mother added. “Why did the school not tell us about it before, and get people’s opinions before they put something in place?”

Shockingly, the school management has responded to these protests by suspending multiple students.

Pressures

Another issue angering many students is uniform policies, with female students in particular being policed about the length of their skirts. Rainford High in Merseyside, for example, has seen protests over this issue.

Other harsh measures are being rolled out elsewhere. This is creating a pressure cooker environment in many schools. 

For instance, Kingsway School in Greater Manchester, again a member of a MAT, introduced searches and inspections – of school equipment and uniforms – for every student entering the school.

This led to massive queues and delays at the start of the school day, sparking outrage. Staff and students can see that this is a clear misuse of resources, adding demands on teachers who are already overworked and stressed.

Austerity

The introduction of these strict behaviour policies is not accidental or arbitrary, but is linked to ongoing austerity and academisation.

Funding for schools is at an all time low, with woeful understaffing prevalent across education. Staff are expected to manage ever-growing class sizes, with all the extra lesson planning and marking that this requires, alongside a range of other duties.

But denied the resources to adequately engage with students, teachers are forced to rely on superficial, sweeping measures to maintain order.

As one teacher in Merseyside explained, speaking to Socialist Appeal comrades on a recent picket line:

“No teacher that I know delights in strictness. We would not need draconian behaviour policies if we had enough teaching staff (including teaching assistants) to cover class sizes; a manageable level of staff duties to monitor key areas (such as toilets), where the most serious bullying occurs; and enough time to plan lessons we are proud to deliver.

“A popular slogan among teachers has been: ‘Our working conditions are your learning conditions.’ Teachers and students are not enemies, but allies, with a shared interest in fighting against the Tories and the bosses.”

The Tories’ drive for academisation, meanwhile, has amplified all of these pressures on both teachers and students, with MAT bosses infamous for driving down staffing levels, pay, and conditions in order to boost their bank balances.

It is no coincidence, therefore, that many of the protests highlighted above are at academies.

Anger

Frustration is clearly growing amongst school students everywhere. Indeed, footage of these protests, and advice on how to organise them, is spreading via TikTok, as students discuss the problems they share.

This generation is experiencing first-hand Britain’s school system failing apart. And academisation is leading to the corrosive effects of profit and marketisation seeping into education.

Understaffed and under-resourced schools are nothing new. But the process of academisation – accelerated under successive Tory governments – has worsened these problems.

The 2010 Academies Act gave the government the power to enforce an academy order, converting underperforming or ‘coasting’ schools into academies. This has led to 78% of secondary schools becoming academised.

Academisation was dressed up as a way of helping struggling schools. But research involving these schools shows that it has had the opposite effect, as many forewarned. 

MATs are heralded as giving schools more flexibility to pay their teachers a higher wage, for example. But classroom teachers in both primary and secondary academies earn, on average, at least £1,300 less than their counterparts in local authority maintained schools. 

On the other side of the scale, upper management are laughing all the way to the bank. In 2019/20, almost two-thirds of trusts (1,772) reported paying at least one individual between £100,000 and £150,000.

Radicalisation

No wonder students are drawing radical conclusions, when their schools are falling apart in front of their eyes; and when policy-makers seem to be more concerned about the length of skirts than about providing an adequate supply of staff or essential facilities.

Perhaps if material conditions in schools improved, then so would classroom behaviour.

These students have also seen their own teachers organising and striking, as well as other workers – all uniting and fighting across the country for better pay and conditions.

And many students will have learnt how to organise and protest through movements like Black Lives Matter, the climate strikes, Kill the Bill, and other recent youthful demonstrations.

All of these inspiring examples will no doubt have empowered school students to take action.

Traditions

There is also a tradition of school strikes for these students to look too.

In Britain in 1911, and again in Dublin in 1913, school children – after seeing their working-class communities and their families turn to strike action – started to fight for better conditions themselves.

Some estimates suggest that around 62 towns had school strikes in this period, with demands for free school meals and for an end to caning. 

As of yet, today’s protests are not at the same level of organisation as those in 1911. Back then, local action was organised by strike committees. And students’ sought to imitate the militant conduct of the railway and dockers’ strikes of the time.

Such committees should be formed today: composed of teachers, pupils, and parents – standing in solidarity, and fighting together for control over school finances and policies. 

Fightback

It is clear that these protests represent a boiling point being reached amongst school students.

There is an accumulation of frustration with the state of the country’s schooling system. And the current resurgence in the class struggle is inspiring students to take action themselves. 

To advance, the struggles being waged by teachers, workers, and pupils must be brought together into a common fightback against the bosses and the Tories.

Ultimately, both the issue of pay and conditions for staff, and the ludicrous rules being imposed on students, come down to a question of management and control.

We say: Open the books! Let teachers and working-class communities decide how money should be spent in our schools! 

Above all, we need to put the education system in the hands of workers, teachers, and students, so that we – not the Tories or the bosses – can democratically decide what policies are actually needed in our schools.

For the first time since 2016, junior doctors organised with the British Medical Association (BMA) have moved into strike action, in order to fight for full pay restoration.

Like many workers in the health service and across the public sector, junior doctors are staring down the barrel of the cost-of-living crisis.

Over a decade of austerity and privatisation has eroded pay and working conditions in the NHS, sparking off a series of strikes, as workers look to defend themselves.

In particular, the BMA has highlighted that junior doctors’ pay has fallen by 26% in real terms since 2008. This is without taking into account the latest jumps in inflation, which will only have made matters worse. 

Tomorrow, on 15 March, junior doctors will be joined by workers from across the public sector for the latest trade union ‘day of action’. Unfortunately, however, their NHS colleagues will not be amongst them. 

At present, strikes by nurses in the RCN and by ambulance workers have been called off, while health unions engage in talks with the employers.

This strategy of suspension and negotiation has been cynically used by the Tories to attack the BMA, with government ministers putting pressure on the BMA to follow suit.

But the junior doctors and their representatives have correctly rejected this, refusing to abandon their strike action in order to join any talks – especially when it is clear that this is just a stalling tactic by the Tories, with no formal offer on the table. 

This shows the danger facing the movement: of allowing the strikes to be picked off one-by-one, by a government attempting to play a game of divide and rule.

Instead, the unions should be coordinating their actions to hit even harder; refusing to suspend strikes for anything other than concrete offers that actually match the needs of their members. 

United the movement can win – but divided, it will surely fall.

Socialist Appeal comrades have been visiting BMA picket lines this week, speaking to junior doctors, and offering solidarity and support.

What we’ve found are determined, dynamic pickets, manned by workers who are prepared to fight.

• Victory to the junior doctors!
• Unite the struggles! Escalate the action!
• Save our NHS with socialist policies!
• For a mass campaign against austerity and privatisation!
• Kick out the Tories! Kick out capitalism!

Leeds

Comrades from the Leeds Marxist Society and Socialist Appeal were out on the BMA picket lines on Monday. Despite exhaustion from long shifts and understaffing, there was a real mood of excitement amongst the junior doctors, and a real appetite for radical change. 

We talked to strikers about everything from extortionate student loans to the stubbornness of the local NHS bosses, who have refused to come anywhere near making a deal with Leeds BMA.

The junior doctors we talked to agreed that medicine was no longer the comfortable middle-class position that it once might have been. In fact, all of the supposedly ‘middle-class’ professions are coming under extreme pressure – including teachers, lecturers, and barristers.

It was also clear that these NHS workers are beginning to draw political conclusions. Some strikers, for example, were handing out satirical ‘one hundred clap’ tokens, with Rishi Sunak’s face on them, highlighting that the Tories’ empty gestures do not pay the bills.

These doctors are clearly drawing the right conclusions about who is to blame for the crisis in the NHS. And we stand with them to say: Down with this rotten Tory government! Victory to the workers!

Sheffield

On Monday, we attended the BMA pickets at Hallamshire and Children’s hospitals. What was immediately clear is that there is plenty of energy and enthusiasm on these picket lines.

The doctors we spoke to have clearly had enough. Everyone talked about underfunding, low pay, overwork, and the problems of privatisation. It seems that the experience of the previous struggle (in 2016) has hardened the BMA and HCSA (Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association) strikers.

In response to questions about coordination, some doctors pointed out how the government is trying to divide unions against each other by only negotiating with the RCN. “Everyone supports the nurses,” one striker stated, “and people will likely think doctors are just greedy.” 

But public support for the doctors’ strike was very much apparent in Sheffield. Passing cars were constantly honking their horns, and one lady even pulled up to hand out some chocolates to those on the picket line.

When discussing this support, one NHS worker even agreed that we need to be prepared to break the anti-union laws, unite, and win the strikes. Another raised the need for a general strike. The mood is clearly militant in Sheffield – and beyond!

London

On Tuesday morning, comrades joined striking junior doctors on the picket line at UCLH in Euston.

There was palpable enthusiasm on the picket line. Many voiced how they were inspired by their nursing colleagues in the RCN, who were also out on strike recently. And they recognised that this is a joint struggle – not just with other workers in the NHS, but with all workers fighting for better pay and conditions.

There was also lots of support from the wider public, with a constant chorus of bus and car horns boosting morale for those on the picket line.

Passers-by often raised fists too. And several people stopped by to drop off cakes and biscuits for the strikers. Members of the BMA council also came along to show solidarity. They were warmly received by the pickets.

A similar scene was found in south London, at the Queen Elizabeth II Hospital in Woolwich. The comrade who visited was greeted by the magnificent sight of 50-60 staff on strike, assembled outside the main gate. Even the Grim Reaper decided it was worth his time to visit the picket line! 

The mood was positive, despite the wind and rain. Speaking to a few of the junior doctors, it was easy to feel their confidence, with no apologies about being on strike. 

One doctor said that she wished there was another way. But this did not hold anyone back from enthusiastically calling for public support. “Clapping was fine, but where are you now,” was a common refrain, aimed at the Tories.

It’s clear that the BMA strikers in London are ready for the fight!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Southampton 

The general consensus that comrades found on the BMA picket lines was that pay had to be restored in order to stop an exodus of staff.

One GP junior doctor spoke to Socialist Appeal, saying that, in some parts of the NHS, anywhere between a third to a half of junior doctors have left the profession over the past year. This dire situation was likened to the haemorrhaging of over forty thousand nurses in the same period.

Another junior doctor said that it is now common to see 40 patients in a day. “The demands put on us are becoming absurd,” they exclaimed, having workers in the NHS for over nine years.

“Some of the people I worked with have now left the profession to work in IT,” said another, adding that: “People who want to do this job because they care about it are being forced to leave. At the end of the day, you need to pay your bills.”

Canterbury

Rahul Mehta, BMA junior doctor (personal capacity)

Our local BMA picket, in East Kent, reflected the enthusiasm of junior doctors in fighting for our pay and conditions.

After a rank-and-file campaign of ‘ward walks’ (walking between wards to speak with juniors), infographics, and mess meetings, we held our first picket today. Despite heavy winds, the spirit was high, with regular chanting.

The public were overwhelmingly supportive, with regular thumbs-ups and honks. This included our colleagues in the ambulance service and commuting nurses.

We also had a local healthcare activist group and East Kent NEU branch attend in solidarity. Similarly, we had support from a couple of senior consultants. 

The current generation of junior doctors are (re)learning traditions like a picket line. The renewed energy and militancy inside the BMA was reflected in chants like ‘No cuts! No losses! Take it from the bosses!’

With no sign of a compromise from Tory health secretary Stephen Barclay, and lessons learned from RCN’s struggle, junior doctors are committed to the militant demand of full pay restoration. 

Scarborough 

Will Collins, BMA junior doctor (personal capacity)

I attended the picket line at Scarborough General Hospital. There was a good energy, and a deep sense of anger towards the Tory government. 

Doctors no longer feel like a privileged section of society. “Being a doctor is no longer a vocation,” said one of the striking workers. “New doctors come into the NHS and see that it is nothing like what they thought they signed up for.”

Despite this, there is a general feeling of optimism. The mobilisation for this strike has been impressive, and has drawn in wide layers of junior doctors. Many on the picket line wanted other unions to join us on strike, to strengthen our bargaining power. 

One BMA rep told us that they were considering contacting RCN reps to discuss the possibility of coordinated action. “This dispute would be over even before it begins,” they stated, calling for all hospital and public sector workers to walk out together. 

What took people by surprise the most was the high level of public support. Car horns were honking every 10-20 seconds. This shows that the general public do not blame doctors for the appalling state of the NHS – they correctly blame this rotten Tory government. 

Unity is our main strength! Let’s coordinate the strikes, and bring down the Tories and the decrepit capitalist system they represent! We have a world to win!

Today, 14 March, marks the 140th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx, the greatest thinker and revolutionary who has ever lived.

The capitalists and their representatives thought that they had finally buried him long ago. But he keeps coming back to haunt them. This is especially the case today. 

It has been nearly 15 years since the slump of 2008 broke out. This was the onset of the deepest crisis ever faced by capitalism, which threw the world into turmoil.

Those aged around 35 or under today have grown up in the wake of this crisis, knowing only the ‘wonders’ of capitalism: economic turmoil, bailouts for bankers, food banks, austerity, climate catastrophe, and more.

At the same time, as the poor become even poorer, the wealthy elites have never been so stinking rich, amassing fortunes beyond their wildest dreams.

The class divide is increasingly a chasm. From 1978 to 2020, CEO salaries grew by 1,322%. Meanwhile, the numbers living in poverty in Britain are projected to rise from 11 million to 14 million, including 30% of children.

Spectre of communism

No wonder people’s faith in capitalism has been shredded. This was graphically confirmed by a recent poll, issued by bourgeois think-tank the Fraser Institute, who interviewed those aged 18-34 years in countries including Britain, the USA, Canada, and Australia.

Researchers were shocked at what they found. They discovered that: “The level of total agreement for communism as the ideal economic system among those aged 18-34 years is disturbingly high in the United Kingdom (29 percent) and to a lesser extent in the United States (20 percent) and Australia (20 percent).” [Our emphasis.]

Yes, that’s right – “disturbingly high”. Well, we say: let them be disturbed!

When the pollsters interviewed those aged between 25-34 in Britain, the figure supporting communism rose to 32 percent. In other words, almost one in every three young people in the UK regard themselves as communists. This translates to around 4.5 million people.

Marx was right

No wonder the ruling class and their apologists are shaking in their boots. All their attacks on Marxism and communism have not had the effect they hoped for. On the contrary, for millions of ordinary people, the idea of the socialist revolution is not at all fanciful, as they claim.

When an idea grips the minds of the masses, Marx explained, it becomes a material force. And this is what is beginning to happen.

Marx’s ideas were supposed to be ‘out-of-date’ and ‘old-fashioned’. Yet they are proving to be strikingly modern. It is capitalism that has become decrepit, and which needs to be put out of its misery.

The Marxist theory of crisis has now become a reality. Just take a look around.

He explained that the laws of capitalism would lead to an accumulation of riches and wealth at one pole, but also to increasing misery, toil, and burden at the other. 

Is this not the case today – not only for the richest 1%, but for the rest of us who suffer from stress, insecurity, and falling living standards?

Capitalism’s crisis, and the widening gulf between the classes, prove without a shadow of a doubt that Marx was right. 

Capitalism’s gravediggers

Marx was a true revolutionary, who made socialism a science. He understood that socialism was not simply a ‘nice idea’, as the utopian socialists believed, but was rooted in the development of society.

The productive forces created by capitalism have outgrown the limits of private ownership, which have become a barrier to further progress. The contradictions of the capitalist system are preparing its downfall.

“From forms of development of the productive forces, these relations [of private property] turn into their fetters,” Marx stated. “Then begins an era of social revolution.” 

Capitalism has produced its own gravediggers, Marx highlighted, in the form of the working class. Unlike previous revolutions in history, the overthrow of capitalism would mean the abolition of classes and of class distinctions.

Crisis and revolution

Even some of the serious bourgeois strategists grudgingly admit that Marx was correct on many fronts.

For instance, Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, the organ of big business, recently wrote a book called The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. In this, the author frets about the dual crisis of capitalism and of bourgeois democracy. 

“Capitalism on its own, as Marx himself said rightly, tends towards monopoly,” states Wolf. “Capitalists like to rig the markets in their favour. Of course, they do.”

What he and others can never admit, however, is that the impasse of capitalism is paving the way for revolution.

The elimination of competition, and the tendency towards monopoly, marks the beginning of the disintegration of capitalist society.

Today, the world market has been carved up by a handful of multinational corporations, which plunder the globe in pursuit of ever-greater profits. In doing so, they prepare the ground for devastating crises, wars, revolutions, and counter-revolutions. 

A world to win!

Revolutionary upheavals impend. This can be seen from the dramatic changes taking place in Britain and internationally. There is instability everywhere.

With this has come the reawakening of the working class, which is entering onto the road of struggle, with all the ups and downs this entails. The revolutionary moods affecting the youth will become universal.

Our communist vision is for a society based on the emancipation of the working class. This could become a reality, on one condition: that we build a revolutionary party, based on the ideas of Marxism, just as the Bolsheviks did prior to the October Revolution of 1917. This is what we are doing in the International Marxist Tendency.

Our task is not to patch up capitalism, as the reformists aim to do, but to overthrow it. There is no middle road.

Yes, indeed, the communists are coming! We wholeheartedly echo what the founders of scientific socialism stated when they proclaimed their revolutionary goals in the Communist Manifesto:

“The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win!”

If you agree, then join us!

The recent row between the BBC and footballer-turned-TV-presenter Gary Lineker has exposed the real role of the national broadcaster as a voice of the British establishment. At the same time, it has also exposed the limits of the Tories’ ‘culture war’ strategy, which is increasingly backfiring on the government as the class struggle heats up.

Last week, Lineker was forced to step down from presenting Match of the Day (MotD), the BBC’s flagship football show, after putting out a tweet in which he compared the Tory government’s rhetoric around asylum-seekers to that used by the Nazis in 1930s Germany.

Under pressure from Tory ministers and right-wing newspapers, the BBC accused the MotD host of breaking its impartiality guidelines. But he refused to apologise for his views.

The situation then rapidly escalated, with the BBC going into meltdown, as a massive backlash broke out over the channel’s botched move.

Lineker’s stand was met with widespread solidarity. His coworkers effectively went on strike over the weekend, forcing the BBC’s sports coverage to be cancelled or scaled back. Alan Shearer, Ian Wright, and other MotD pundits refused to turn up for Saturday evening’s show, which consequently was reduced to just 20 minutes of highlights, without any in-studio analysis. And players boycotted interviews with BBC reporters.

Lineker has subsequently put out a statement saying that an agreement has been reached, and that he will be back in the presenter’s chair for this coming weekend’s MotD. Meanwhile, Beeb bosses have promised an ‘independent’ review of their guidance to high-profile employees regarding social media use.

Nevertheless, the BBC and the Tories have both been left with egg on their faces by this whole messy affair. The establishment, it seems, has scored a spectacular own goal.

Saw this. “Love crisps, hate racism, solidarity with Lineker” pic.twitter.com/FVlsWYtNF9

— martin routledge (@mroutled) March 11, 2023

Hostile environment

The origins of this standoff lie with a further ratcheting-up by the Tories of their ‘hostile environment’ against migrants and refugees.

The government is currently trying to push through its new Illegal Migration Bill. This reactionary legislation seeks to ‘stop the boats’ crossing the English Channel, by threatening asylum-seekers who arrive on Britain’s shores via this route with deportation.

From the outset, charities and lawyers have warned that these latest draconian proposals would be unworkable, and could potentially be in breach of international human rights laws.

Notably, in the wake of #Linekergate, even Tory MPs have begun to speak out against the government’s policies. This includes renowned migrant-basher and ex-home secretary Priti Patel, along with other former cabinet members.

“This is a classic example of something the Lords will amend if we don’t,” stated one ex-minister. “It’s hard to see how [the government] lets it get to that stage. It would be foolish to engage in a prolonged battle on this.”

In other words, the Tories’ cynical attempts to manufacture another divisive distraction have once again blown-up in their faces – exacerbating tensions and splits with the party, and turning public opinion against the government and its media mouthpieces.

Tsunami of strikes

Lineker is clearly not the main victim in this issue; the tens of thousands of refugees fleeing imperialist war, poverty, and climate catastrophe are – as the former England footballer himself has emphasised.

But the hamfisted attempt by the BBC and the government to suppress Lineker’s freedom of speech have shone a light on the public broadcaster, highlighting the hypocrisy of the establishment.

The tweet in question was a fairly mild comment about how the government is treating migrants as a political football, to be kicked around at the Tories’ pleasure, in order to appease their rabid ranks.

Yet government ministers and the gutter press jumped on Lineker’s remarks, in the hope of further whipping-up a culture war and cutting across the rising tide of class struggle – in particular, this week’s tsunami of strikes, with junior doctors, teachers, lecturers, and civil servants all taking action together.

Initially the BBC did not take any action against the MotD presenter. But under pressure from Downing Street, they changed their tune and forced him to stand down.

Double standards

This fiasco once again exposes the role and class character of the BBC. Silencing Lineker had nothing to do with protecting ‘impartiality’, and everything to do with the fact that he spoke out against the Tories.

There are countless recent examples of BBC personnel taking vocal political stances in public, but without any penalty, as long as the views expressed are in line with the establishment’s interests.

Prominent capitalist and BBC employee Alan Sugar, for example, has repeatedly tweeted his disdain for left leaders such as Jeremy Corbyn and Mick Lynch, whilst openly supporting Boris Johnson and the Tories. But instead of reprimanding Lord Sugar, the rest of us are punished, with the arrogant businessman plaguing our screens on series after series of the Apprentice.

Even notorious Blairite spin-doctor Alastair Campbell has waded into the debate, highlighting these disgusting double standards.

It’s a strange day in British politics when @campbellclaret condemns an attack against Jeremy Corbyn.

Alan Sugar’s post was outrageous and the BBC did absolutely nothing yet they’ll crack down against @GaryLineker for condemning the cruel and evil ‘stop the boats’ policy. pic.twitter.com/drMFPIoiKp

— George Aylett (@GeorgeAylett) March 10, 2023

BBC bias

The right-wing bias at the BBC goes much deeper, however. The broadcaster is well-known for being stuffed full of Tories at the top.

Prominent figures responsible for the BBC’s political coverage, like Laura Kuenssberg and Andrew Neil, for example, have close personal ties to the Tories. This can clearly be seen in their reporting.

Even former Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis recently accused the BBC of being under the influence of the Tories, saying that an “active agent of the Conservative Party…now sits [on the institution’s board], acting as the arbiter of BBC impartiality” – a reference to Robbie Gibb, Theresa May’s old director of communications.

Most notably, many commentators have drawn attention to Richard Sharp and Tim Davie, the BBC’s current chair and director general, respectively. Both have strong links to the Tories. And both have faced calls to resign as a result of the Lineker furore.

Sharp, a former banker, is well-known as being a Tory donor. And he is currently under scrutiny over allegations that he obtained his job at the BBC on Boris Johnson’s recommendation, after helping the ex-PM obtain a £800,000 loan.

It will not surprise anyone to learn that Davie, meanwhile, was once the deputy chairman of the Hammersmith and Fulham Conservative Party, and has stood as a Tory candidate in local elections.

And yet, despite having all these friends in high places, the Tories still have the audacity to claim that Auntie Beeb is overrun by lefty ‘woke warriors’.

Liberal hypocrisy

Liberals and Labour right-wingers are amongst those who have joined the chorus of critics calling out the BBC over the Lineker incident.

‘Sir’ Keir Starmer, for example, accused the broadcaster of “caving in” to Tory pressure. Lib Dem leader Ed Davey, meanwhile, asserted that the country “needs leadership at the BBC that upholds our proud British values and can withstand…Conservative bullying tactics”. Similarly, journalists at many liberal outlets have also been outspoken over this issue.

Yet such comments expose their own stinking hypocrisy over the question of media bias and ‘impartiality’.

None of these people had any problem with the BBC being consistently used as a tool by the ruling class when it came to attacks on Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters – including the scandalous Panorama documentary about supposed antisemitism within the Labour Party; or the infamous photoshopping job to paint Corbyn as a ‘Moscow stooge’.

Indeed, liberal papers like the Guardian were amongst the most vicious opponents of Corbyn’s leadership, eagerly amplifying every slander that was slung his way.

Notably, in 2017, Lineker himself tweeted “bin Corbyn”. Yet he faced no punishment from BBC chiefs at the time for expressing such political bias.

And none of these people have defended Mick Lynch or his union’s members when it comes to the bosses’ smear campaign against striking rail workers, which the BBC has more than happily echoed.

These liberal commentators and politicians might be opportunistically denouncing the BBC and the Tories when it comes to the Lineker affair and the government’s racist agenda. At the end of the day, however, they defend the same class interests and rotten capitalist system as the more overtly reactionary wing of the ruling class – just with a nicer, smilier face.

This is why workers, youth, and the oppressed cannot trust any of these ladies and gentlemen when it comes to fighting back against the ruling class and their poisonous policies.

Instead, we need to fight their culture war with class war, on the basis of mass mobilisation and united class struggle.

For a workers’ media!

The fact is that the BBC, just like the rest of the mainstream media, has always represented the interests of the establishment, against those of the working class. It is not simply a propaganda machine for this Tory government, but for the British ruling class, in its war on workers.

From its inception, the BBC was designed to be a mouthpiece for the British establishment. It will never reflect and represent the interests of the vast majority – the working class.

Institutionally, structurally, and culturally: the Beeb is beyond reform. For a real transformation of the BBC, free from censorship and corporate interests, only clear socialist measures will suffice.

At a minimum, this must include a reversal of all privatisation and outsourcing; full funding, paid for by the super-rich, not through regressive taxes; the abolition of the BBC Board, and the election of all managerial and editorial roles, under the democratic control of the working class, including unionised BBC staff; and use of the broadcaster’s resources – including studios, editorial suites, offices, and more – allocated on the basis of the support for their views within society, not the amount in their bank balance.

The problem runs far deeper than this, however. It is not simply that the Tories exert a political influence over Auntie’s output, but that the capitalist class own and influence all the major news channels and outlets.

Above all, therefore, we need a revolution across the whole media industry. This means expropriating the billionaire owners of the press and private TV monopolies, and running these under public ownership and democratic workers’ control.

Under capitalism, the working class and the oppressed have no voice in the mainstream media, whether this be on the BBC, or in any of the right-wing rags. Instead, we must fight for a media of our own – one run by workers, for workers – as part of the fight for revolution.

Junior doctors are the latest workers to join the picket lines, with walkouts taking place this week, from 13-15 March.

The NHS and its staff are at breaking point. The urgent task is to coordinate strike action across the public sector, and fight for a nationalised, fully-funded healthcare system, under workers’ control. 

Doctors’ Vote

Junior doctors are fighting for full pay restoration, calculated as a 26.1% increase compared to current levels, to account for years of real-terms wage cuts.

On 20 February, the British Medical Association (BMA), which represents doctors, announced the results of their ballot for industrial action. 98% of junior doctors voted in favour of striking, on a turnout of 77%. 

This impressive ballot result is the product of hard work by rank-and-file activists, who have organised inside the BMA through the ‘Doctors’ Vote’ campaign to demand a proper pay rise.

More than pay

Austerity and privatisation have had a dire impact on conditions within the NHS. Health workers are being crushed by a decade-or-more of real-terms wage cuts, and by the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. 

Junior doctors, for example, have gone from being a middle-class profession to one that – just like other layers of workers – is overworked and underpaid.

For a doctor in their second year of practice, monthly pay has dropped in real terms by £1,170.

On top of this, doctors find themselves working under increasingly dangerous conditions.

This is more than just a pay dispute, therefore. These strikes are also a response to the mass exodus of staff from the NHS.

According to a recent BMA survey, 79% of junior doctors often think about leaving the NHS. The majority cite pay erosion and worsening conditions as factors in their decision-making.

Those who choose to stay are faced with ‘moral injury’. 89% of junior doctors in the early years of their career feel torn between their desire to heal patients and the actions they have to take within the constraints of the system.

Escalation and dynamism

This represents an escalation from the junior doctors’ strikes in 2016. Back then, isolated one-day strikes – combined with internal tensions within the union over whether to withdraw emergency care – culminated in a compromise deal being struck between the BMA and the Department of Health.

This, in turn, demoralised a layer of junior doctors, pushing them out of trade union activity. The ongoing crisis in the NHS, however, with pay and conditions facing continued attacks, has led to a renewed militancy amongst fresh layers of health workers.

The Doctors’ Vote campaign has been able to tap into this widespread discontent, channelling the anger in a productive direction.

In the last few months, for example, strike champions have been recruited in every hospital. These activists have played an important role in building for the walkouts, distributing materials and helping to sign up doctors to the union. 

This has injected a much-needed boost of energy into the union and its activity. A dynamic campaign, led by the rank and file, shows the way forward. 

Junior doctors are also reaching out to other sections of the working class: expressing solidarity with other strikers and organising picket lines across the country.

This is already having an impact, as BMA members will be joined on the pickets by their colleagues from the British Dental Association.

Lies and slanders

The Tories – in cahoots with the gutter press – will no doubt wage an all-out war on striking doctors, as they have with other workers.

They will whip up a vicious campaign of lies and slanders. We will be accused of being greedy, spoiled, and lazy; of putting patients in harm’s way. 

Let us be absolutely clear: the fault for the crisis in the NHS lays squarely at the feet of the Tories and the bosses’ system they represent. They have callously gutted health and social care, selling off the most profitable services to their big business chums.

These private parasites are making record profits at the expense of hundreds of thousands of tireless NHS staff, who are constantly forced to work longer and more gruelling shifts.

Patients inevitably suffer the consequences of this strained workforce. One senior healthcare official has estimated, for example, that 500 patients are dying every week due to delays in A&E.

As with other recent strikes, however, the Tories’ lies will struggle to cut through. The public overwhelmingly backs the NHS and its workers. One recent poll revealed that 56% of people believe that newly-qualified doctors are not paid enough. Our action is therefore likely to receive widespread support from ordinary people, and from the rest of the labour movement.

Unite the struggles

The stakes are high for junior doctors. The crisis in the NHS is not going away. The damage done is already extensive. And neither the Tories nor Starmer’s Labour are prepared to offer the necessary solutions, as they are both wedded to austerity and privatisation – the logic of capitalism in crisis.

Instead, we – along with other health workers – will need to trust in our own strength. 

To start, the current wave of strikes should be coordinated across the entire NHS and public sector. This not only includes disputes being waged by nurses, healthcare assistants, cleaners, dentists, and physiotherapists, but also teachers, rail workers, and posties. 

To realise and strengthen this united action, we need to join our struggles up from top to bottom. This includes forming cross-union strike committees in every hospital, to bring different health workers together at a rank-and-file level. 

The BMA should also promote regular union branch meetings in every workplace, to help involve and integrate new layers of activists in the democratic running of the union as the strike progresses. This will allow us to keep the momentum going beyond the first round of action.

Socialist solution

Ultimately, the only lasting solution for the NHS is a political one. Health workers must therefore organise around a bold socialist programme to tackle the problem at its root.

This should include demands to reverse all privatisation and outsourcing of jobs and services; to replace bureaucratic management with workers’ control; and to conduct a mass union-led recruitment campaign, in order to end staff shortages. 

Such measures should be funded by expropriating and nationalising Big Pharma, the private healthcare companies, the banks, and other major monopolies. All these vultures have made more than enough money at our expense!

The Tories are languishing in the polls and have their backs to the wall. A mass campaign of militant, coordinated public sector strikes has the potential to topple this rotten government.

NHS workers can play a key part in this struggle. We have a world to win. Let’s seize this chance.

For the second time in less than 12 months, Harrow council has launched an attack on the democratic right to free speech and the freedom of political ideas.

On Saturday 11 February, several comrades from Socialist Appeal in Harrow were handed fines totaling £200. This follows previous fines of £200 imposed last summer. The alleged offence on both occasions was “distributing newspapers” in the town centre.

Bullying socialists

This is now a consistent pattern of behaviour by council enforcement officers, designed to harass, intimidate, and bully socialist activists.

Ravi, one of the comrades fined, recounted:

“I was holding some copies of Socialist Appeal and was speaking to a local man in his fifties called Bhavesh. We were speaking about the mess the Tories had left the country in, and how it was difficult for his children with inflation and the housing crisis.

“Out of nowhere, two PSPOs came and interrupted us and said that they were recording me via their camera for their safety and asked if I had a permit to hand out Socialist Appeal. After explaining I did not, they asked for my details and threatened to call over the police if I did not cooperate.

“I explained that I was simply standing here with copies of Socialist Appeal speaking to people about politics and Marxist ideas; I had no stall, and the paper was clearly political, which is protected by the law. After taking my details, they immediately handed me a ticket with a fine of £100.”

Double standards

The council’s officers are carrying out this campaign of harassment under the ludicrous cover of Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs).

The stated purpose of PSPOs is to prevent anti-social behaviour, defined as activities which have “a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality”. Typically they are used to prevent people making noise, nuisance, or trading illegally or unscrupulously. Activity for religious, political, and charitable purposes is explicitly exempted from PSPOs.

By no stretch of the imagination could distributing newspapers be considered anti-social behaviour. If this was the case, then every Evening Standard distributor, Big Issue seller, and newsagent should be cleared off the streets of Harrow by the council’s enforcement officers.

The fact is that Socialist Appeal comrades have been targeted by the council for no reason other than our political ideas.

Tory clampdowns

As we know, in recent months and years, the Tory government has been trying to clamp down on the right to protest – particularly against activists opposing their policies.

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act was a big step in this direction. The banning of ‘anticapitalist literature’ in schools was another. Anti-monarchist demonstrators have also been punished. Most recently, the government has been pushing through ‘minimum service’ legislation, which will severely undermine the right to strike.

Harrow’s Tory council is following the example of their friends in Westminster, using spurious legality to harass socialists and try to clear us off the streets.

Needless to say, they won’t succeed.

Support the socialists!

We’ll be pursuing the matter through legal channels. But we also need your support, in the following ways:

DONATE to help us cover the costs of these fines, and to support our legal battle to defend our democratic right to spread political ideas.

SHARE this Go Fund Me and spread the word.

SUBSCRIBE to Socialist Appeal: the paper Harrow’s Tory council doesn’t want you to read.

Wednesday 15 March will see hundreds of thousands of workers out on strike. Following on from last month’s ‘day of action’ on 1 February, unions across the public sector are once again all walking out together.

A national demo in London, organised by the NEU, will bring tens of thousands onto the streets. Meanwhile, local rallies are set for the same day in towns and cities across the country, bringing out tens of thousands more.

These strikes and protests are timed to coincide with Budget Day, when Chancellor Jeremy Hunt will announce the government’s spending plans for the year ahead, including any potential pay rises for public sector workers.

The message from the trade unions is clear: workers want real pay rises, not cuts!

On this latest day of action, teachers, civil servants, and university staff will be joined by junior doctors in the BMA, as well as trainee dentists in the BDA and colleagues in the HCSA (Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association). 

Prospect members in the civil service are also coming out, alongside those organised in PCS. And on the London Underground, Tube workers organised in ASLEF and the RMT will also be walking out, in a continuing dispute over staff cuts and attacks on conditions. 

This coordinated strike day will therefore be bigger than the last. This is a welcome step forward, showing that more and more layers of the working class – including sections that were once perhaps considered more privileged – are now joining the struggle.

Whatsmore, this united action is set to continue into Thursday 16 March as well. Not only will the education system in Britain be effectively shut down, as the UCU and NEU come out together again, but RMT members working for the train operating companies will also be paralysing Britain’s rail network with the first day of their latest round of strikes.

Carrot and stick

As more unions join the fray, the Tories must be sweating through their Saville Row suits. And feeling the heat, they are turning to new – or rather, old – methods in an effort to divide the labour movement and quell the strikes.

Recently, for example, the Tories have found that the infamous ‘magic money tree’ does in fact exist – and has miraculously borne fruit.

An unexpected extra £30 billion has been found down the back of the sofa, it seems, apparently the result of various accounting and forecasting errors, amongst other factors. 

This sum may be enough for Hunt to provide pay rises to some, but not all, public sector workers.

Given the high support for nurses, and for NHS staff more broadly (one needs only to stand on an RCN picket line for five minutes to experience this firsthand), the Tories may look to peel these workers away with a slightly improved pay offer, while leaving others high and dry.

All the while, the Tories’ draconian anti-strike bill is making its way through the House of Lords.

As ever, it appears that the ruling class is looking to employ a combination of the ‘carrot’ (of increased pay offers) to splinter off some unions, alongside the ‘stick’ (of repressive laws) with which to beat back the rest.

Tory tricks

The Tories and bosses also appear to be relying on manipulated numbers and twisted figures in an effort to bamboozle workers.

They note that inflation is beginning to slow, making unions’ pay demands even more ‘unreasonable’. But whilst inflation might be (very gradually) coming down from its eye-watering peak, it is not negative. Prices are still going up, just not quite as fast. So workers’ wages will still be lagging behind their rents and bills.

Another variant of this is to offer two-stage pay rises, but to present this as a single annual offer, making real-term cuts seem like inflation-busting increases.

For instance, firefighters in the FBU recently voted to accept an offer with a 12% pay rise headline. But reading the small print, this in fact breaks down into a retroactively applied 7% offer and a 5% increase from this July.

Meanwhile, inflation has been running higher than this level throughout the period in question, meaning that firefighters’ wages will not be catching up with prices.

Similarly, RMT members on Network Rail have suspended their planned action, as they vote on a reported 9% pay deal. In reality, however, this is a 5% increase backdated to January 2022, and a further 4% from January 2023.

And at the time of writing, there are rumours that the government will look to sweeten their below-inflation offer to public sector workers by throwing in an additional one-off lump sum. But again, this will do nothing to help workers with permanently higher living costs going forwards.

Workers can see through this chicanery. Nonetheless, union members must always be given the final say over whether to accept such deals, as is the case with the FBU and RMT. Any attempts by the trade union leaders to sell out their members with rotten deals must be staunchly opposed.

‘Good faith’

Unfortunately, some unions have proven themselves to be more susceptible to the Tories’ dirty tricks and divide-and-rule tactics than others.

The end of February saw the RCN suspend their strikes, for example, in order to enter ‘intensive’ pay negotiations with the government. They were followed the week after by Unison, who were also set to bring out members in the NHS, and by ambulance drivers organised in the GMB.

Earlier in the same month, the UCU leadership also suspended two weeks of scheduled strike action, as a sop to the bosses. The justification for this was essentially based on platitudes by the employers, without any concrete promises.

Furthermore, this decision was imposed on members without any consultation, and at very short notice, angering many rank-and-file union activists.

Lo and behold, in these two weeks, the employers association UCEA advised university bosses to impose the poor pay deal that UCU members were fighting against.

Health unions have correctly voiced doubts about whether the government is approaching these negotiations in good faith, or whether such talks are really a stalling tactic. Whatever the case may be, the lesson from the UCU dispute is that the unions must not bend the knee.

The only reason that the bosses and the government are starting to come to the table is due to workers taking militant action. Continuing and escalating this action – not suspending it – is the way to maintain the pressure on the bosses and Tories, and to force them to concede.

The bosses, everywhere and always, have demanded that the unions behave in a ‘chivalrous’ and ‘respectable’ manner. All the while, the ruthless ruling class plots how they will undermine and attack workers.

The union leaders must not fall for this cynical and hypocritical ‘good faith’ rhetoric. Weakness only invites aggression. But militancy pays.

Unity

Above all, the trade union movement must not allow itself to be divided. Instead, the unions must continue to deepen and strengthen the unity between these struggles.

If the Tories attempt to splinter off this or that union, with separate negotiations and bespoke offers, then the response of the union leaders should be: it’s all or nothing – either all of us meet around the table, or none of us.

After all, as has been acknowledged in speeches by many of the trade union leaders themselves, the fights being waged across the labour movement are largely the same: for proper pay rises, and for an end to the bosses’ attacks. All these battles are part of the same wider struggle between the working class and the capitalists.

NHS workers should therefore not allow the Tories to leave teachers up the creek, while they accept a slightly-improved offer. Likewise, civil servants should not accept any pay deals while RMT members are stonewalled.

We cannot allow the struggle to be broken up on the terms of the bosses. As the old saying goes: An injury to one is an injury to all! United we stand, divided we fall!

Escalation

Further days of united action like 15 March will continue to breathe confidence into the reawakening movement.

Workers coming together at picket lines and rallies – from across different industries and sectors – will reinforce the unity of the working class, which is our movement’s greatest strength.

The joint nature of this struggle must be consciously recognised and pursued. Currently, coordination is being pushed by left-led unions like the PCS and NEU. The next step is for the major battalions of the trade union movement, such as Unison, Unite, and the TUC as a whole, to take a militant stand and bring workers across the board out together.

At a rank-and-file level, this unity can begin straight away, through the establishment of strike committees, linking up workers from different unions within the same industry or workplace.

Similarly, trades councils and other local bodies should bring together grassroots activists and representatives from striking unions, in order to coordinate action in every town and borough, and to enable workers to discuss the way forward for the movement as a whole.

Above all, the trade unions should be mobilising a mass campaign to build for escalated, coordinated action across the entire public sector, including a one-day general strike, in combination with protests and rallies across the country.

The aim must be not only to win on pay, and smash apart the government’s anti-union laws, but to topple the Tories and end their austerity agenda once-and-for-all.

Leadership

The trade union leadership must not blink or buckle in the face of sweet words from the Tories. They will seek to divide us however they can. We cannot let them.

Striking workers have shown enormous energy, determination, and sacrifice. We must warn, however, that the working class does not have endless reserves. If the movement does not keep moving forwards, then it could dissipate and fracture.

What is needed is a clear strategy to win, and a bold socialist programme that can inspire workers to fight. 

This should include demands for a sliding scale of wages, with pay rises automatically tied to inflation; for an end to austerity and cuts, with the bankers and billionaires expropriated to properly fund public services; and for workplaces and industries to be put under the control of the working class.

More than anything, what recent events make clear is the decisive role of leadership. With a militant, revolutionary leadership at its head, the labour movement would be unstoppable. After all, there is no force on Earth more powerful than the working class, when organised, mobilised, and made conscious of its own strength.

Building such a leadership is the urgent task facing us, as Marxists, in order to guarantee the success of the coming revolutionary struggles, in Britain and internationally.

The current upswing in industrial militancy is unprecedented in the last 30 years. We have to go back to the 1970s to find something comparable.

That decade saw a rebirth of the class struggle, after an era of relative calm since the end of the Second World War. We can therefore learn a lot about today’s strikes and class struggles from this period.

Setting the stage

As early as 1966, there were signs of what was to come, when the National Union of Seamen (NUS) struck against poor wages and conditions. This was the first strike of the NUS since 1911, having not even joined the General Strike of 1926.

This was followed in 1967 by a dramatic change of leadership in the engineering workers’ union. The right-wing incumbent was defeated by a self-described Marxist called Hugh Scanlon. 

Shortly afterwards, another radical left-winger, Jack Jones, was elected as the leader of the General Workers’ Union. Political shifts in the leadership of important unions are often a harbinger of big struggles to come.

In the late 1960s, the Labour government published a white paper called ‘In Place Of Strife’. As the title suggests, Prime Minister Harold Wilson and co. were looking to curtail the class struggle. This document outlined a massive attack on trade union rights.

It provoked uproar in the ranks of the trade union movement. Scanlon and Jones demanded that the Trade Union Congress (TUC) convene immediately to discuss how to respond.

The movement against the white paper came from the rank and file of the unions. It was in this context that the Communist Party, which had around 30,000 members on paper at the time, formed the Liaison Committee for the Defence of Trade Unions. This was an unofficial network of shop stewards.

In late 1969, it called an unofficial political strike against the attacks on the trade unions. This was the first political strike in Britain since 1926. It set the stage for the turbulence of the next decade.

Opening shots

A Tory government under Edward Heath was elected in 1970. It found British capitalism in a feeble state. 

The previous several decades had seen a relative decline in the strength of British capitalism. The increase in living standards since 1945 had not kept pace with other European countries. Industrial production had been growing by 1.5% per year, but in the USA and Germany it was growing by 3%.

Between 1945 and 1970 manufacturing exports had fallen from 25% of the world total to around 10%. The rate of profit was falling for British capitalists, who failed to invest. They became increasingly parasitic and short-sighted.

Heath and the Tories wanted to reverse this trend of decline for the British capitalist class. Their solution was to attack workers, drive down wages and conditions, and restore the rate of profit. They also wanted to close those businesses which they saw as uncompetitive.

Despite a bullish approach, they ran into difficulties straight away. Within one month of being elected, they declared a state of emergency in the face of the first official dockworkers’ strike since 1926. The dockers were soon joined by local authority workers.

The following year, the government was rocked by a dispute involving the Upper Clydeside shipbuilders who were trying to save their jobs. This was after the government had identified them as an uncompetitive industry. The Tories hoped to shut them down by scrapping their subsidies.

The shipbuilders organised a work-in, which involved occupying their workplaces and carrying on the work. It was a defiant statement that the workers were willing and able to work and be productive, in the face of the government’s efforts to throw them on the scrap heap.

This caught the imagination of workers all over the country. There were solidarity demonstrations everywhere, and occupations in other factories. The movement was so strong that it forced a government U-turn on the policy of cutting subsidies to certain industries.

Kill the Bill

This rattled the Tory government. Clearly, the unions would need to be tamed sooner rather than later if the Tories wanted to carry through their policies.

The establishment introduced the centrepiece of their strategy to attack the working class: the Industrial Relations Bill. This proposed even harsher attacks on the trade unions. It involved huge state regulation of the unions. The class struggle was escalating.

Scanlon, Jones, and other left-wing trade union leaders led the opposition to the Industrial Relations Bill. But once again, most of the opposition came from below. Demonstrations and strikes involving half-a-million workers were called around the country. 300,000 people marched in London under the banner of ‘Kill the Bill’.

This was being pushed forward by the semi-official shop stewards’ network of the Liaison Committee. Many of the trade unions’ so-called leaders were being dragged along by the rank and file.

The whip of Tory reaction drove the movement forward. Such is the ebb-and-flow of the class struggle. There is no gradual, uninterrupted crescendo of class struggle, from local strikes to international insurrection. Instead, there are leaps forwards and backwards, as events unfold.

In March 1971, there was an unofficial strike in which two million workers participated. The Liaison Committee used this to successfully pressurise the leaders of the TUC to advocate defiance of the rules imposed by the Industrial Relations Act.

The Battle of Saltley Gate

Another example of the impact that a union’s rank and file can have on its leadership came in 1972. 

At that time, the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was dominated by the right wing. But the leaders were coming under pressure to act, as inflation eroded the miners’ living standards. More radical activists were being elected to the local and regional leaderships of the NUM.

The pressure to take action led, in early 1972, to official strike action in demand of a 47% pay increase.

The TUC, under pressure from below, called for the members of other unions to refuse to move coal around the country. This was met with massive support.

The government did have certain stockpiles of coal in anticipation of a crisis. They tried to use these stockpiles to break the strike and minimise its impact.

Attention fell on a place called Saltley in Birmingham, which had a large stockpile and was one of the few that remained open.

In Birmingham, 40,000 engineering workers voted to go on strike in support of the miners. Immediately after the vote, 10,000 of them marched on the Saltley gas works, where the coal was stored.

There they joined 2,000 miners who were already picketing the gas works, facing off against 1,000 police officers, trying to stop the coal being moved.

Arthur Scargill, at that time a local NUM organiser, describes what happened at Saltley on that day.

“Some of the lads…were a bit dispirited…And then over the hill came a banner and I’ve never seen in my life as many people following a banner. As far as the eye could see it was just a mass of people marching towards Saltley…Our lads were jumping in the air with emotion – fantastic situation…I started to chant…‘Close the Gates! Close the Gates! And it was taken up, just like a football crowd.”

The gates were closed. It was a spectacular victory for the miners.

The government panicked, called an inquiry, and recommended a 20% wage rise for the miners. It was a total humiliation for the Tories.

The Pentonville Five

Things went from bad to worse for Heath’s administration. During the summer of 1972 there was an almighty industrial battle on the docks in London. Two haulage firms went to court to try to stop the dockers’ union picketing their workplaces during the dispute, and requested that the court fine the unions under the provisions of the Industrial Relations Act.

One of these haulage firms succeeded, and the court granted an injunction against the union. On the evidence of private detectives, the bosses secured the arrest of five trade unionists for breaching the injunctions, and had them sent to Pentonville prison.

As soon as the arrests were discovered, 44,000 dockers immediately downed tools and walked out. 130,000 workers in other industries did the same. The movement spread like wildfire.

The pressure on the TUC leaders was instantaneous and immense. The leaders convened a meeting and decided to call a one-day general strike at the end of July, which would have been the first in Britain since 1926.

This posed a huge risk for the ruling class and the government. Under the circumstances, a one-day general strike could easily snowball into something more prolonged – potentially even developing into a revolutionary situation, beyond the control of the TUC bureaucracy.

The overzealous actions of an insignificant haulage firm had, under the heightened conditions of class struggle, brought Britain to the brink of an epic industrial showdown, which the ruling class was not confident of winning. 

Such was the volatility of the situation. Sharp turns and sudden changes were implicit. Echoes of those conditions are growing louder today.

The government accordingly panicked once again. The Tories conjured up someone called the Official Solicitor, who has never been heard of before or since. He reinterpreted the law, discovered a loophole, and ordered the immediate release of the Pentonville Five.

This was another massive victory for the labour movement.

The Shrewsbury 24

The mood among the working class was jubilant and confident. For the first time since 1926 there was an official building workers’ strike in 1972. Flying pickets of strikers would go from picket line to picket line, shoring up support and plugging any gaps.

The government hated these flying pickets because they were particularly effective, as the Battle of Saltley Gate had proved.

The Tories decided to make an example of some of these flying pickets, which they did in north Wales in February 1973. The government arrested and framed 24 workers on charges of intimidation, violence, and conspiracy.

They were taken to court and given an overtly political trial. Fourteen were convicted and received up to three years in prison.

Scandalously, these workers were forced to finish their sentences under the Labour government elected in 1974. It was not until March 2021 – 47 years after their arrest – that the Court of Appeal finally overturned these political convictions.

Despite this setback in the struggle, the general line of march was towards more radical and militant action. The working class was outraged, but not cowed, about what the Tories had done to the Shrewsbury 24. They were determined to intensify the struggle.

Workers bring down the Tories

1972 was a year of industrial insurrection. After such convulsions, there was a slight lull in 1973. But at the end of 1973, a new miners’ strike began to develop. Inflation was putting pressure on the miners once again.

The Tory government tried to isolate the miners and turn the public against them. The Tories declared a three-day-week, blackouts of television and street lights, and other measures, citing the disruption to fuel supplies caused by the NUM.

This was an attempt to intimidate the NUM, but it failed. The miners voted for strike action in larger numbers than ever before.

The Heath government responded with an even bigger gamble. They called a general election asking the question: Who do you want running the country – us or the unions?

The answer was ‘not you’. And the Tories were booted out of office in February 1974.

Capitalism’s B-team

In 1974, there was a world slump. It was the end of the post-war boom. Unemployment shot to over one million in Britain. Internationally there was the Carnation revolution in Portugal, the collapse of the Junta in Greece, and the turbulent twilight of the Franco dictatorship in Spain.

All of this, coupled with industrial struggle and economic collapse, was spawning plots and conspiracies within the ruling class.

A high-ranking military officer in Britain wrote a book called ‘low-intensity operations’, in which he said the main threat for the army is not external but internal. Specifically, he referred to the working class in Britain and their organisations, such as the trade unions.

There were military manoeuvres at Heathrow airport, in which a takeover of the airport was carried out by the military, ostensibly as a training exercise, but without informing the government. In fact, this was a threat by the military to the civilian government.

This is the context in which a Labour government came to power. Cowed from the start, the new Wilson government immediately started doing the ruling class’ work for it, as a loyal B-team, while the Tory A-team was out of action.

The Labour government immediately introduced a policy of wage restraint, despite massive inflation, which reached 25% in 1975. This meant that 1974-77 saw the greatest fall in real wages of any comparative period prior to that. That was presided over by a Labour government, carrying out the diktats of big business in the face of a capitalist downturn.

After a period of Tory rule, the Labour Party leaders were supported by the working class to a certain degree, at least at first. The workers wanted them to succeed, and wanted to give them time to do their work.

It soon became clear, however, that the Labour leaders were simply doing the bidding of the ruling class. Despite this, the trade union leaders refused to stand up to the government on behalf of their members. 

Even Jones and Scanlon supported the wage restraint policy. They didn't like it, but they couldn’t see any way forward except supporting a Labour government. 

These leaders never looked beyond the confines of capitalism and reformism. They lacked the revolutionary socialist perspective of Will Thorne and the New Unionists of the 1890s. So they backed austerity and convinced workers to follow their lead. 

In doing this, these left trade unionists held the working class back. And they were uncritically supported in doing so by the Communist Party and the Liaison Committee.

In 1976, there was a sterling crisis, and the IMF had to step in to bail out Britain.

As is well known, when the IMF bails out a country, it comes with strings attached. The conditions for the bailout were £3bn of cuts to public services.

The conditions were designed to be especially harsh, because the IMF didn’t trust the Labour government – with its links to the organised working class and its strong left wing – to carry out the necessary policies.

Nevertheless, the Labour government bent the knee and accepted the bailout and the conditions imposed by the IMF. It was behaving as the humble servant of the capitalist class.

Unions move into opposition

Wilson resigned, and Callaghan took over as Labour leader and Prime Minister in 1976. He pursued policies of harsh austerity as required by the ruling class.

Finally, after two years of holding back the working class, the union leaders caved to the pressure of the rank and file, and moved into action against the government.

A wave of disputes began against the Labour administration. These were mostly on the question of wages, as workers struggled to keep their heads above the water in the context of rampant inflation.

The mood was reflected by the Fire Brigades Union, whose members voted for strike action, even in the face of opposition to action from the union’s right-wing leadership. Such was the fury at the government’s wage restraint and austerity policies.

Eventually the pressure from the ranks was so great that the TUC itself, which had been supporting the Labour government’s wage restraint policies since 1974, was forced to come out against the government.

The Winter of Discontent of 1978-79 saw a huge wave of industrial action against the Callaghan government. Between October 1978 and March 1979, ten million working days were lost to industrial action.

Lorry drivers, local authority workers, health workers, and many more were on strike. The struggle affected every part of society. It led, in the end, to the fall of the Labour government in 1979. Callaghan called an election and lost to Thatcher, opening up a new chapter in the history of the class struggle in Britain. 

Throughout this decade, the working class demonstrated its power. It brought down governments. In factory occupations, it showed it could organise production. It was butting up against the limits of capitalism, and posing the question of socialism. 

Ultimately, however, this was not enough, as the resulting election of Thatcher shows.

What is needed is to combine this industrial militancy with revolutionary political leadership, without which capitalism cannot be overthrown.

October 2020
Matt Hancock (Health Secretary): A bunch of absolute arses teaching unions are
Gavin Williamson (Education Secretary): I know they really really just do hate work
Matt Hancock (Health Secretary): 😂😂🎯

Just two years after sending these messages, Matt Hancock, a serving Member of Parliament, would spend three weeks in the jungle being paid £320,0000 for an appearance on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here. 

In his next money-making scheme, Hancock, Tory health secretary from 2018-2021, hoped to publish a book detailing his role in leading Britain’s healthcare service through the pandemic, in a deal worth £150,000.

Unfortunately, it seems that Handsy Hancock struggled to fit the task of writing said book into his busy schedule. He therefore hired right-wing journalist Isabel Oakeshott to pen it for him. To assist in this task, he handed over 100,000 Whatsapp messages to his appointed ghostwriter.

It seems that judgement of character is also a skill he lacks, however. Oakeshott – whose partner leads the Reform UK party, which sees itself as a reactionary rival to the Tories – promptly decided to publish the entire cache of texts in the national press.

Callous

The messages reveal a government permeated with a deep sense of cynicism, a disdain for working people, and a callous disregard towards the education, health, and wellbeing of children. 

During the COVID outbreak, the Tories played fast and loose with the protection of care homes. They made important policy choices, not on the basis of consultation with experts, but in pursuit of their own narrow interests. And they dismissed the advice of teachers – worried for the health of their students, colleagues, and communities – as being “an excuse to avoid having to work”. 

It was not scientific evidence that drove decisions, but a combination of maximising the bosses’ profits, meaning that children had to be in schools so that parents could work, and the myopic, self-seeking outlook that pervades the Tory Party. 

The texts show that Gavin Williamson, the education secretary at the time, was personally wedded to reopening schools in January 2021. This is despite opposition from other cabinet members who could see the dangers that this would entail, knowing that schools were an important vector for transmission. 

Instead the Tories were determined to open schools, with then-PM Boris Johnson claiming that the situation was safe for teachers and pupils, only days before U-turning under pressure from below. 

Action

The only thing that prevented a greater disaster at this time was a mass struggle by the NEU and by teachers on the ground, who organised a huge campaign of resistance.

Thanks to this mobilisation, tens of thousands of teachers refused to open schools on the grounds of health and safety. 

The high point of this campaign was an enormous online rally, called by the NEU, with over 100,000 in attendance, which demanded that the government close schools in order to protect the public. Within hours of this mass meeting, the Tories had changed course. 

In one of the leaked messages, Williamson claims that all of this was just “an excuse to avoid having to teach”. In other words, the Tories paint teachers and their unions as lazy and uninterested in their jobs.

Yet the truth is that the NEU consistently put forward plans to allow schools to be run safely during the pandemic – but these were consistently overlooked by the government, who were more concerned with protecting profits than lives. 

The union called for the requisitioning of public buildings in order to limit class sizes, and for a national plan to bring hundreds of thousands of qualified teachers back into the profession. All of this was ignored. 

Damage

Whilst lives were saved by the lockdowns, irreparable damage has been done to children’s education. The responsibility for this lies with the Tories and their stubborn refusal to invest in safe and effective schooling.

When the government’s education catch-up programme was eventually released, it offered a meagre £50 of extra funding per pupil. This compared to £1,500 per head in the USA, or £2,500 per student in the Netherlands. 

In truth, a change in Westminster wouldn’t change much either. At every stage, Starmer has shown that he shares the same levels of contempt for workers – including those in education. He has made it clear whose side he is on. 

The shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson cries crocodile tears today when she describes Williamson’s attitude as “a kick in the teeth for the teachers who stretched every sinew for children during the pandemic”. But at the time, she was just as happy as the Tories to ignore the advice of teachers on key issues: from Ofsted to school reopenings.

Struggle

All of this clearly shows why the ongoing struggle of the NEU against the government is so vital. 

At the end of the day, establishment politicians of all stripes will always put profits over education. The conditions of teachers; the health of students; and the quality of education: all of these are secondary considerations for them, far behind their own short-term interests, and those of the capitalists that they represent. 

To defend education against the attacks of the Tories and the bosses, we need to arm ourselves with both a shield and a sword: the shield of militant united action – between the NEU and other education unions, and across the labour movement; and the sword of bold socialist policies, to answer the problems that teachers and pupils face.

Our schools will never be safe in Tory hands, or under capitalism in general. Instead, we need an education system free from the influence of profit; run by staff, parents, and students; and funded by the expropriation of the banks and big monopolies.

Importantly, the fact that these messages were leaked at all is a reflection of the deep splits within the ruling class and amongst its agents.

The government may be digging its heels in against the strikes, and threatening our movement with further repressive laws. But the truth is that the Tories have never been weaker. We must seize the moment, and strike whilst the iron is hot.

Every year, on 8 March, people around the world celebrate International Women’s Day. In many countries, workers and youth go onto the streets, raising demands around equality and emancipation for women. 

This day originates in the revolutionary traditions of the working class. But over time, the class content has been diluted. Instead, the ideas of liberal feminism – which provide no genuine answers – have become dominant in the movement.

Consequently, today, women’s oppression is nowhere near solved. Instead, the position for women worsens with each new crisis of the capitalist system. Currently, the UN predicts that we are 300 years away from global equality for women!

One of the key questions that remains unanswered is that of women’s oppression in the home, with the majority of domestic labour still falling to women. 

In the UK, for example, almost 50% of working-age women carry out about 45 hours of care duties per week, on top of paid work. Across the world, women and girls perform over 75% of care responsibilities and housework.

Technology

Some feminists argue that women should receive wages for all this unpaid work. But this completely misses the point. Women should be freed from the home and from the burden of domestic labour, not kept inside doing the same arduous tasks but for money.

Thanks to modern technology, there is the potential to automate much housework altogether – a process that has already begun with the development of washing machines, dishwashers, and microwaves.

One recent report has concluded that almost 40% of domestic tasks could be automated “within a decade”, thanks to modern robotics, logistics, and artificial intelligence (AI). This includes grocery shopping, cleaning, cooking, and the washing of clothes and dishes.

Ekaterina Hertog, associate professor in AI and Society at Oxford University, correctly argues that advances in technology have the potential to improve gender equality, by reducing the overall amount of domestic labour that is required – work that disproportionately falls to women currently.

Inequality

To lessen this load would be a great step forward. Under capitalism, however, there are clear limitations.

As Hertog goes on to highlight, not everyone will be able to afford the latest time-saving technologies. What we will see, therefore, she says, is “a rise of inequality in free time”, with only richer households benefiting from this automation inside the home.

Furthermore, the report found that the time required to care for children or the elderly – one of the main tasks that fall to women – can only be reduced by an estimated 28% through automation. 

This reinforces a trend that we already see under capitalism. The question of domestic labour is ultimately a class question. The wealthy are able to buy the expensive gadgets to help around the home – alongside hiring nannies, carers, and cleaners to take care of any remaining tasks.

Working-class women, meanwhile, are lumbered with all these chores and caring responsibilities, on top of their waged labour.

Capitalism

Inequality, in short, is baked into capitalism. A system based on profit and private ownership cannot utilise technology for the benefit of the whole of society. Instead, access to advances in automation will be restricted to those with the biggest wallets – not those with the greatest needs. 

At the same time, the capitalists also gain from the oppression of women. Sexism, misogyny, and discrimination are fomented by the ruling class in order to divide and exploit the working class, and to drive down wages for both women and men.

This, in turn, helps the bosses to maintain a cheap workforce and boost their profits. And with wages held low, there is no incentive for the capitalists to invest in automation.

Instead of reducing labour, the bosses extend working hours, force staff to put in unpaid overtime, eat into their leisure time, and work their employees to the bone.

Revolution

Capitalism cannot provide a way forward. Instead, the working class is being made to pay for capitalism’s crises. And it is women and other oppressed layers who are hit the hardest. 

At the same time, it is working-class women who are often found at the forefront of the struggle. This can be seen from the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, which began on International Women’s Day in 1917; to Iran today, where women have bravely led the mass movement against the repressive regime.

To achieve genuine emancipation for women, these struggles cannot limit themselves to tinkering with capitalism. Instead, we need a revolution. It is only by transforming society along socialist lines that the whole working class can be liberated from exploitation and oppression.

Socialism

On the basis of a socialist economic plan, with production for need not profit, working hours could immediately be slashed, providing the whole of society with more leisure time. 

Everyone would have access to the latest time-saving technology. And investment in automation could rapidly reduce the hours required for necessary labour – in the workplace and in the home – for all.

In turn, any remaining tasks would be socialised, taking the burden of housework off of the shoulders of working-class families. This means providing the resources required to set up public nurseries, communal canteens and laundries, and fully-funded social care services.

The resources and technology exist to achieve all this and more, bringing about equality between women and men in the space of a generation, not centuries. Under capitalism, however, this potential will never be realised. 

Only through united class struggle can we bring down this whole rotten, oppressive system. The fight for women’s liberation must be a fight for revolution – to build a socialist society, based upon genuine equality and real freedom.

Why release a Marxist book on women and the Russian Revolution in the year 2023? The answer is that, more than 100 years after the 1917 Russian Revolution, we are still very far from achieving genuine equality between women and men.

The women’s question has been transformed by liberal feminists into one of identity, to be solved within the confines of capitalist society. We maintain that it remains a question closely linked to the class issues we face under capitalism.

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY TODAY!

Marxists were promoting women’s emancipation long before bourgeois feminists: they demanded equal pay for women against the opposition of bourgeois feminists; and they called for the right for women to vote without property restrictions way before the Suffragettes did.

It was the Marxists (Engels and Bebel in particular) who originated the concept of a woman’s double burden – now trumpeted by bourgeois feminists. Marxists also strongly promoted the right of women to equal education opportunities, not least because many leading Marxist women, such as Clara Zetkin, had been denied access to university education.

The Russian Revolution was the first time that Marxists could put into practice their programme and ideas in relation to the problems faced by women.

The Bolsheviks proceeded to implement reforms such as full equality in law between men and women. They enormously simplified divorce proceedings; eliminated the concept of ‘illegitimate’ children; granted women the right to an abortion, long before the more advanced capitalist countries, such as Britain or the USA; and decriminalised homosexuality at the same time.

In the 1930s, the Stalinist regime banned abortion, recriminalised homosexuality, and rendered divorce more difficult.

Nevertheless, despite the counter-revolutionary nature of the bureaucracy, because of the mighty impetus of the October Revolution women in the Soviet Union were, in many ways, better off than many – and possibly most – of their Western counterparts.

They had better access to education; equal pay for equal work; much better access to childcare facilities; better maternity rights and healthcare; the right to their own pension; relatively generous child allowances; were not required to adopt their husband’s name and nationality; had the right to initiate divorce, etc.

This confirms that socialist revolution – in spite of the later bureaucratic distortions – gives better results than trying to implement piecemeal reforms under capitalism.

This book outlines the gains of the October Revolution for women, and the partial retreat under Stalinism. But it goes beyond that.

It analyses the role of the family after capitalism’s restoration in the USSR. The bureaucracy promoted the family as a conservative basis of support for itself. But the reactionary nature of the family structure fed back into and amplified the greed and self-aggrandisement that was a major motor force driving the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Passing one’s privileges on to one’s children became a major factor in the privatisation of Russian state property. And now women in capitalist Russia have lost many of the rights they had won through the 1917 revolution.

As capitalism faces its most serious crisis in history, the century of experience since 1917 is full of lessons for today’s struggle for the genuine emancipation of women.

International Marxist Radio

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio is on the same topic – focusing on the Marxist position on the struggle for women’s liberation, and the positive example embodied by the tremendous advances accomplished by the Russian Revolution.

In the latest podcast, we welcome Ylva Vinberg, leading comrade of Revolution, the Swedish section of the International Marxist Tendency, and Fred Weston, co-author of Wellred Books’ latest publication on ‘Women, Family, and the Russian Revolution’

Rather than ignoring the question of women’s liberation, or delaying it until some distant time after the revolution, Marxists take an active interest in fighting for emancipation. Combatting women’s oppression, therefore, is not a secondary issue, but rather forms a vital part of the class struggle.

In the last issue of the Socialist Appeal newspaper, we published a letter from a commercial archaeologist working in London, whose workplace had seen a wave of layoffs.

Since then, we received another letter from a worker in a different archaeology company, which is sacking a quarter – 100 out of 400 – of its staff.

This signals dark storm clouds ahead for the thousands of archaeologists employed in Britain, as well as for the construction sector in general.

British commercial archaeologists play an invaluable – but often overlooked – role in the construction and infrastructure sector.

Whenever building projects, from new homes to new roads, pass through areas of archaeological importance, archaeologists are the first on the ground, preserving heritage before it can be destroyed.

The wave of layoffs hitting the sector, due to a lack of new contracts, indicates more than just a crisis in archaeology, but a crisis in the entire construction industry.

For archaeology workers, these sackings are the latest symptom in a long-term decline of the industry. 

For years now, the archaeology sector in Britain has been sustained on a diet of low wages, precarious contracts, and cost-cutting, as companies try to squeeze every penny of profit out of their workers.

Archaeology companies are now claiming that several large long-term government projects have been postponed, causing huge deficits in their budgets. Even with bigger projects coming up, they cannot pay fieldwork teams for the time in between.

This leaves archaeologists in a precarious position, not knowing if they will be fired from one week to the next. As one worker put it: 

“If construction stops, so do we. If the construction sector slows down, we can be thrown out of a job. Four other colleagues and I have just been sacked with one week’s notice. One week’s notice – to find a new job; to start a new career; to find a new place to live. How can you expect to build a life on such wet ground?”

Race to the bottom

The origin of the problems that workers face today can be traced back to the privatisation of the industry in the 1970s. Archaeological companies must now compete with each other to bid on construction contracts, which are awarded to whoever can get the job done the cheapest.

This has created a race to the bottom in terms of wages and working conditions. Despite the fact that a university degree is required for this job, the average starting salary is less than £22k per year.

The economic crash in 2008 caused the majority of archaeologists to lose their jobs. Many never returned to the industry. For those who remained, wages fell. And they have never recovered to pre-2008 levels – even now, 15 years later. 

A recent report by British Archaeology Jobs and Resources showed that 50% of workers at all levels of the industry are looking to leave.

These low wages stand in stark contrast to the billions being made by the construction bosses, who often blame inefficient or expensive infrastructure projects on ‘too much red tape’.

Archaeologists are often told by their bosses that they should simply be grateful that the developers are willing to spend any money whatsoever on them.

“Companies often push the idea that we are ‘lucky’ to work in heritage,” one worker told Socialist Appeal, “Lucky? To work for so little? To do backbreaking manual labour that will leave us with health problems for the rest of our lives?”

Corruption

The bosses in this industry cynically justify low wages by playing on genuine issues in how archaeology and construction are managed under capitalism.

They claim that if wages rise, the construction industry will cut corners, lobby local authorities to get around regulations, and even put pressure on the government to end the need for archaeological surveys or environmental protections altogether.

In reality, all of these things are already taking place. This is inevitable under a system where housing is built for profit, and large infrastructure projects are sold off to the highest bidder.

Subcontractors like Carillion have raked in millions for their investors, while paying workers a pittance. And when the company went bust, after having its assets stripped, workers were sacked overnight with little warning.

The corporate piracy that goes on within these companies beggars belief. On the HS2 project, for example, mysterious regulations have been brought in limiting the types of trucks that can be used on site.

Only one or two companies in the country have the certification required, which leads to them being able to charge huge amounts. As a result of price-gouging like this, each phase of the development has cost two-to-four times more than it would in a regular job. 

This is the real root of the ‘inefficiencies’ in the sector: asset-stripping, profiteering, and corruption – not workers demanding higher wages, or communities attempting to preserve natural habitats or heritage sites.

The entire construction industry is being plundered by the bosses. Yet the capitalists and their representatives scandalously scapegoat ‘red tape’ – i.e. regulations that have been put in place to protect our history and the environment – for holding back homebuilding and other development.

Where next? 

Even though construction and infrastructure are vital to any economy, in a crisis they are often the first to fold. Contracts are put on pause or cancelled altogether.

In January, Britain’s largest housebuilder introduced a hiring freeze, and drastically cut its plans for land purchases. Soaring interest rates towards the end of last year forced councils to pull the plug on billions of pounds worth of infrastructure projects.

As the UK economy slides towards recession, this is only the beginning. The bosses will do anything to cut costs in order to maintain their profits. In this regard, archaeologists are just the canary in the coalmine.

But after decades of wages and conditions being driven down to the lowest possible level, there is no fat left to cut.

Despite what the bosses, the Tories, and their media mouthpieces say, the truth is that there is no contradiction between heritage protection, development, and workers demanding decent wages and living conditions. The poison in the mix is profit. 

It is clear that these profiteering monopolies must be taken into public hands.

With socialist planning and workers’ control, we could ensure that workers are paid well; that new building projects are planned effectively to meet social needs; and that site regulations are put in place to protect workers – not the bosses’ bottom lines.

Last month, on 27 February, following a ‘charm offensive’ aimed at European leaders, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak triumphantly proclaimed a new UK-EU agreement relating to trading relations in the North of Ireland.

The so-called ‘Windsor Framework’ amends the existing Northern Ireland Protocol. Trade barriers and borders in the Irish Sea are set to be eliminated (or so Sunak claims). A ‘green lane’ is to be established to help smooth the flow of goods from Great Britain destined for sale in the North of Ireland. And medicines, chilled meats, and pets will be able to move more freely between the two.

At the same time, the Northern Ireland Assembly will be given powers to slow down the implementation of new EU rules that would potentially apply to the territory – a mechanism dubbed the ‘Stormont brake’.

‘Breakthrough’ or break-up?

Speaking at a joint press conference to announce the deal, Rishi Sunak and Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, hinted that this ‘breakthrough’ in negotiations could herald an era of warmer relations between Britain and Europe.

Without a hint of irony, Sunak hailed the North of Ireland’s “unbelievably special position…in having privileged access, not just to the UK home market, which is enormous, but also the European Union single market.” What a claim from a man who hailed the wonders of leaving the single market back in 2016!

Brexiteer Tories, meanwhile, were fairly mute in response to the renegotiated protocol. Headbangers in the notorious European Research Group of Conservative backbenchers remarked that they would be going through the proposals with a fine-tooth comb. But other influential Tory figures in the Brexit camp, such as Steve Baker and David Davis, struck a more supportive tone.

Similarly, tied down by renewed attention over his partygate shenanigans, Boris Johnson has failed to mobilise any serious rebellion against Sunak’s plans for the North of Ireland. With the Tories languishing in the polls, unruly MPs have been less inclined to mutiny of late, for fear of exacerbating the party’s slump.

Schrodinger’s trade deal

The establishment’s optimism could quickly evaporate, however. The PM’s deal may be good for sausages and sausage-dogs, but Unionists will not be so easily pleased.

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has stated that he and his party will be examining the details of the full legal text. In actual fact, they are nervously waiting to see which way the wind blows. And already, alarm bells are ringing over suggestions that the European Court of Justice will retain its influence and role regarding trade laws – a red rag to a bull for Unionists and Brexiteers alike.

Like Schrodinger’s infamous cat, the proposed changes attempt to square a circle by placing the North of Ireland in two regulatory states at once. But ultimately reality must assert itself. And sooner-or-later, a case will arise that forces politicians and judges to peer inside the box to ascertain the truth – no doubt revealing that the cat had in fact been dead all along.

Despite Sunak’s claims to the contrary, for example, the new agreement will continue to mean customs checks at the Irish Sea border.

Don’t count your chickens…

Above all, the DUP are feeling the heat back home. The Frankenstein’s monster of Loyalist sectarianism remains alive and kicking. There are already grumbles that the sea border remains. And the threat of violence from Unionist ultras hangs in the air like a volatile vapour, ready to ignite at any moment.

Donaldson and the rest of the DUP might be willing to sign up to the Windsor accord. But these ‘moderates’ are not fully in control. As one anonymous Tory source told journalists, behind “the men in suits” stand “the men with tattoos”.

Before the talks were even concluded, senior figures from the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force) were warning that “the streets will be in flames”, and that they would “wreck the place” if their stubborn conditions weren’t met.

It therefore remains to be seen whether the DUP will be willing and able to return to Stormont, in order to end the Assembly’s longrunning paralysis. Above all, they fear being completely torn apart if they make a misstep.

Certainly neither Donaldson, Sunak, nor the rest of the British establishment will be counting their chickens just yet – despite all the hype and fanfare served up by them and the press for public consumption.

Hostile environment

Even the supposed rapprochement between Westminster and Brussels could soon come unstuck. The rabid ranks of the Tory Party still need feeding. And seeking some more red meat to sate their appetites, Sunak’s racist government has once again turned to bashing migrants.

Further ratcheting up the Tories’ ‘hostile environment’, home secretary Suella Braverman has boasted that the UK government will seek to push “the boundaries of international law”, with tougher restrictions on those arriving on Britain’s shores through “irregular” routes.

In plain speak, this means deporting asylum-seekers who – fleeing war, repression, and catastrophe – attempt to make the perilous journey across the English Channel in small boats.

But critics, such as refugee charities, have asserted that the proposals would be unworkable, and could potentially be in breach of the European convention on human rights. This would soon set the Tory government on a collision course with the EU once again.

Turmoil ahead

Above all, with the latest Budget Day approaching, on 15 March, and Britain’s strike wave continuing to grow, it is clear that there will be no respite for Sunak and the Tories.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt is predicted to have few giveaways in his latest fiscal statement. Subsidies for energy bills might continue. And there is talk of public sector workers being offered a (below inflation) pay rise of 5%, in an effort to quell the rising tide of industrial militancy – made possible, apparently, by the Treasury magically stumbling across an extra £30 billion.

These offerings will be thin gruel for workers, however, coming after a year of rampant inflation and a decade-or-more of austerity and attacks. And there is no doubt that the main course served up by Hunt and co. will be billions more in cuts, slashing already-ravaged services to the bone.

Just as recession and turmoil lie ahead for British capitalism, so too will there be no recovery for the crisis-ridden Tories. In truth, Sunak is a lame-duck leader, presiding over a party of degenerates, a government of imbeciles, and a system in terminal decline.

It is time for the leaders of the labour movement to rally together, mobilise workers and youth, and sweep away these crooks and charlatans. We say: Unite the struggles to end austerity! Kick out all the Tories! Kick out capitalism!

A number of staff members at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) have publicly declared their resignation over punitive strikebreaking measures carried out by university management.

This comes following a spate of particularly vicious attacks by QMUL management on striking workers, which has created a truly toxic environment between staff and upper management at the university.

These draconian tactics include threats to deduct 100% of pay for 39 days as a result of staff striking for just three days last year; threats of closing down courses altogether to punish strikers; and, most shockingly, encouraging students to snitch on their lecturers.

Resignations

Professor Laleh Khalili, one of the academics who has quit QMUL, posted her resignation letter on Twitter, detailing the reasons for her departure.

Last week I resigned my post at QMUL. Although the sector as a whole is becoming inhospitable & I loved my students & colleagues, QMUL managerial decisions made staying untenable. For me the last straw was the cruel, craven call by management for students to snitch on us. https://t.co/gnDcUfBrhu pic.twitter.com/6ZzimMcvbd

— Laleh Khalili (@LalehKhalili) February 21, 2023

These include the hasty sackings of colleagues on precarious contracts, resulting in an increase of workload for full-time staff with no additional pay or resources.

Across the board, resources and funding have been slashed. Meanwhile, schedules have been made tighter and more inflexible – adversely affecting both students and lecturers alike. This is the logic of marketisation; of treating the university like a cash cow.

This is not the first time that poor treatment by QMUL management has led to a wave of resignations either. Only last year, 31 examiners at Queen Mary resigned in protest after striking lecturers had their pay frozen.

These hostile measures have clearly poured fuel on the fire, leading to increasing anger and bitterness among the staff, who were already at the end of their tether after over a decade of cuts and attacks.

‘Snitch form’

Queen Mary bosses – particularly vice-chancellor Colin Bailey, who is infamous among students – are well known for their bullying and anti-strike antics.

But during the latest round of UCU strikes, they have developed a new method to victimise trade unionists, and to sow animosity between students and their teachers: the ‘snitch form’.

This ‘snitch form’ – which Khalili described as her “last straw” – was circulated to all students during the most recent wave of walkouts, asking them to report on their teachers if they had missed any classes because of the strikes.

Management has sacrificed the trust that is needed in a classroom, and put a big ’SNITCH’ sign on every student’s face. Many students see through this and resist.

But the possibility of 1 student filling in the form, whether unwittingly or not, has an impact on the classroom.

— Queen Mary UCU is #rising (@qm_ucu) March 6, 2023

As one UCU member commented, this is an attempt to “turn students into spies”; to allow management to gather the data they need to victimise striking staff, by threatening them with further pay deductions if they do not reschedule missed classes.

This is a vicious strikebreaking tactic that undermines the whole point of the strike.

The actions of Queen Mary management are a harbinger of what is to come in this bosses’ offensive. Already, other universities such as Leeds are beginning to employ similarly punitive measures.

The UCU, the wider labour movement, and the student movement must oppose these tactics tooth-and-nail. The bosses are escalating their action. We must do the same!

Student-staff solidarity

The ‘snitch form’ also serves the interests of university bosses, by giving students the impression that it is striking staff, and not the fat cats at the top, who are responsible for the disruption to our education.

Students have reported feeling distressed and deceived by the whole ordeal. “I didn’t understand I would be responsible for pay being deducted from my teacher,” revealed one QMUL student.

These methods are forcing students to consider whose side they are on: their lecturers or the bosses. This is hardly a tough question.

Colin Bailey and the rest of the senior management team earn up to £400k a year. This comes on top of their shareholdings, not to mention the perks and bonuses that they graciously award themselves.

University workers across the country, meanwhile, have been driven into desperate conditions. Years of real-terms pay cuts have left campus staff struggling to pay their bills, and even resorting to food banks.

As students, we are facing a similar situation. Maintenance loans are failing to keep up with inflation, leading to a drastic decline in living standards. An unprecedented housing crisis, with eye-watering rents, only adds to the misery and insecurity. And to top it all off, there is the possibility of a further hike in tuition fees. 

Unite and fight

Students are therefore beginning to draw the conclusion that they have more in common with university staff than they do with senior management.

The bosses’ attempts to pit students against staff – and to justify their strikebreaking measures under the guise of ‘looking out for students’ – will fall on deaf ears. We know who really stands to gain from this division.

The attacks on students and workers are two sides of the same coin; the corrosive result of capitalism infiltrating higher education. We are both being squeezed in order to line the pockets of university bosses.

We must therefore call out these divide-and-rule tactics, and stand in complete solidarity with our lecturers. The only way that we can achieve an education system that works for everyone is to unite and fight against marketisation.

This means taking our universities out of the hands of bully bosses, and putting them under the democratic control of staff and students.

Above all, it means ending the race to the bottom in higher education, and providing universities with the proper funding they need, by expropriating the banks and monopolies, and transforming society along socialist lines.

On 5 March 1953, Joseph Stalin, the gravedigger of the October Revolution, died. His regime had been characterised by monstrous repression, with a river of blood separating his dictatorial rule from the genuine traditions of Bolshevism established by Lenin.

It was also a reign marked by spectacular catastrophes, such as the famine of the 1930s and the needless loss of millions of Red Army soldiers in the first stages of the war.

Stalin died in fairly suspicious circumstances. The longer he held power, the greater his paranoia grew. By the 1950s, having instigated an antisemitic campaign against mainly Jewish doctors, Stalin was preparing for another mass purge. Fearing the ramifications for themselves, and for wider Soviet society, it is believed top figures of the bureaucracy may have hastened his end.

Yet how had the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 come to this?

On this day in 1953, Joseph Stalin, the man who spearheaded the bureaucratic degeneration of the Soviet Union, died following a stroke. In this video, Alan Woods explains how Stalin came to play this ignominious role.

🔗 https://t.co/pUOa9gr9S0 pic.twitter.com/UlygnaVOWu

— Socialist Appeal (@socialist_app) March 5, 2023

Origins of Stalinism

There is a perfidious lie that the regime of Stalin was a natural continuation of that of Lenin. This is false to the very core.

The regime established by Lenin and Trotsky was amongst the most democratic in history, basing itself as it did on the soviets. These were organs of the working class, peasants, and soldiers, which reflected the mood of the masses far more accurately than any parliament.

The soviets provided direct representation, and established the right of recall. This meant that deputies who were out of tune with the masses could be replaced. This was a far cry from the totalitarian dictatorship of Stalin.

So how was it that this brutish figure came to usurp the October Revolution and roll back many of its gains?

To understand this, we must look at the situation in which the fledgling workers’ state found itself.

From the outset, the young workers’ state faced enormous challenges. These undermined the basis for a healthy regime of workers’ democracy.

The October Revolution provoked horror and dread amongst the ruling classes of the world. Immediately, the young Soviet republic was invaded by 21 imperialist armies, who supported the efforts of the counter-revolution in Russia. This plunged the country into a bitter civil war.

The civil war – along with WW1 before it – completely shattered industry. In 1920, the production of iron ore and cast iron fell to 1.6% and 2.4% of their 1913 levels. The output of industrial commodities stood at just 12.3% of their pre-war level. Similarly, agriculture was ruined, with the 1921 harvest producing just 37.6 million tons of various crops – just 43% of the pre-war average.

Isolation and backwardness

Perhaps the most crucial consequence of the civil war was the direct impact it had on the working class. The war itself claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers. Many of those who survived migrated to the countryside, so desperate was the breakdown of society in the towns and cities.

By the end of the war, the working class had been decimated, and the material conditions required to maintain genuine workers’ democracy had been further eroded. 

The industrial collapse undermined one of the major conquests of the October Revolution – the eight hour day. In order to produce even the most basic articles of consumption, workers had to work 10, 12, or even 14 hour days, and had to forgo their weekends.

In short, the time necessary for workers to engage in the soviets simply didn’t exist. As a result, workers’ control in society, industry, and politics was impossible. 

Moreover, the historic backwardness of Russia meant most workers were illiterate, and consequently were unable to take part in the management of industry.

In all regards, a healthy regime of workers’ democracy was impossible. This was the material basis for the cancerous growth of a bureaucracy in the Soviet Union.

Even more decisive was the isolation of the revolution. Lenin and Trotsky correctly saw the October Revolution as the beginning of the world proletarian revolution. Yet tragically, the revolutions that did spring up in the years after 1917 – in Germany, Hungary, Italy, and China – were all defeated.

The responsibility for many of these defeats rests with the reformist leaders, who consciously betrayed them. Yet in a number of them, Stalin also played a decisive role, as we shall see. 

As a result of the delay of the world revolution, there existed a deep contradiction within the USSR. On the one hand, the working class was incapable of running society. But on the other hand, the bourgeoisie had been defeated and capitalism had been overthrown.

It was from this vacuum that a permanent layer of functionaries emerged: the former managers and administrators of Tsarist Russia. These opportunistic, well-to-do ladies and gentlemen formed the basis of the bureaucracy. And as their weight in society increased, with the revolution isolated and the working class exhausted, Stalin would increasingly come to embody the bureaucracy’s interests. 

Revolutions betrayed

The bureaucracy crystallised around Stalin in part because he was almost their living embodiment. He held a narrow, bureaucratic outlook. He was a competent organiser. And he was ruthlessly ambitious.

This bureaucratic caste was keen to maintain and increase its own power and privileges. This meant ending the upheaval of revolution, establishing order, and maintaining the status quo. 

It was for this reason that Stalin would come to champion the ‘theory’ of ‘socialism in one country’, which provided a cover for abandoning socialist internationalism and the goal of world revolution.

In the eyes of the short-sighted, parochial bureaucracy, world revolution was unrealistic and undesirable. Instead, they wanted to strike deals with capitalist regimes. These careerists had what they wanted from the revolution, and wanted it to go no further.  

‘Socialism in one country’, in reality, meant socialism in no country. At first, it reflected a general cynicism from Stalin that the workers couldn’t take power and transform society outside of Russia.

This was seen in his approach to the extremely favourable situation for revolution in Germany in 1923. “In my opinion, the Germans should be restrained and not spurred on,” Stalin wrote. Given the inexperience of the German communists, this advice was fatal, and the revolution was defeated. 

Similarly in the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27. Stalin’s complete lack of faith in the Chinese working class led him to pursue a completely opportunist alliance with the bourgeois Guomindang party. This led to a disastrous policy of the young Chinese Communist Party subordinating itself entirely to a bourgeois nationalist party. The end result was the smashing of the Communist Party by the Guomindang and the defeat of the revolution. 

Bureaucracy strengthened

These defeats of the working class internationally further demoralised and isolated workers in the Soviet Union. This, in turn, emboldened and strengthened the bureaucracy. But it was not the only layer of Soviet society that was encouraged by these reversals of the world revolution.

In 1921, the Bolsheviks had been forced by the isolation of the revolution to adopt the New Economic Policy (NEP). This meant reintroducing market relations in the countryside, in order to incentivise peasant proprietors to produce more food.

The problem was that the policy disproportionately benefited the kulaks – the rich peasants. They had larger landholdings, which allowed them to produce agricultural goods more efficiently. This meant that they could profit more from selling their surpluses.

The trade between peasants and the cities, in turn, was facilitated by so-called NEPmen – a class of petty merchants and speculators who spied an opportunity to make a quick buck.

These layers were naturally hostile to Soviet power, and sought the restoration of capitalism.

Trotsky and the Left Opposition had consistently warned against this threat. Stalin, meanwhile, leaning on Bukharin’s Right Opposition, had encouraged the kulaks to ‘get rich’, in order to develop the economy.

The ramifications of this policy came to the surface by around 1927. The kulaks began to withhold grain, and the threat of starvation in the cities loomed once more. And Stalin, the crude empiricist that he was, suddenly made an about face in 1929 – breaking with Bukharin and calling instead for the liquidation of the kulaks as a class.

Stalin began to adopt huge swathes of the Left Opposition’s programme. But did so in a crude, distorted, caricatured manner. This created huge problems.

Industrialisation was massively accelerated, to the point of adventurism. Infamously, Stalin even called for the first five-year plan to be completed in four years. Crucially, these measures were combined with the most brutal suppression of the Left Opposition itself.

Trotsky and the Left Opposition were the proletarian vanguard. But this proletariat had been drained by events. In a physical sense, they’d been devastated by war. In 1917, there were 3,000,000 industrial workers in Russia. By 1920, this figure had fallen to 1,240,000. Politically, meanwhile, workers had witnessed defeat after defeat on the international plane. 

The clash between Stalin and Trotsky was ultimately a struggle of living social forces. The exhaustion of the working class thus enabled Stalin to exile Trotsky to Alma Ata in the Kazakh Soviet Republic, before exiling him from the USSR altogether in 1929.

Alongside this, there was a wave of expulsions of anyone hostile to Stalin’s policies. His grip on power – reflecting the strengthening of the bureaucracy – became absolute. As Trotsky put it:

“In its struggle against the Left Opposition, the bureaucracy undoubtedly was dragging behind it a heavy tail in the shape of Nepmen and kulaks. But on the morrow this tail would strike a blow at the head, that is, at the ruling bureaucracy…As early as 1927, the kulaks struck a blow at the bureaucracy, by refusing to supply it with bread.” 

This crisis accelerated Stalin’s Bonapartist grip. The bureaucracy was petrified that it could be overthrown from the left or the right. In Stalin, this bureaucratic caste saw a strongman who could defend their privileged position from these acute threats.

Stalin’s purges

Many a sneering liberal has tried to claim that socialism inevitably leads to the kind of bloodletting and horrors that Stalin oversaw. Yet this entirely misunderstands who this violence was directed at, and for what reason.

The chief target of Stalin’s purges were the Old Bolsheviks themselves – anyone who had a connection with the October Revolution.

So it was that, of the Bolshevik Central Committee that led the working class to power in 1917, only Stalin and Kollontai were still alive by 1940. Most were murdered by the GPU (the Soviet Union’s secret services) at Stalin’s behest. Even the total capitulation of figures like Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Radek did not save them. 

True enough, many of the victims of the purges were bureaucrats themselves. Does this suggest that, in a hamfisted way, Stalin was striving to defend workers against the bureaucracy? 

In reality, layers of the bureaucracy were targeted for the same reason that a doctor might recommend an amputation: to cut off the part to save the whole.

Stalin leaned on the workers to strike blows against the most rotten elements of the bureaucracy: those whose voracious greed threatened to stir the workers and topple the entire edifice; those whose ambition represented a threat to Stalin’s position and to the bureaucratic machine as a whole.

So it was that over a million perished – not to establish socialism, but to preserve the rule of a parasitic caste of functionaries. 

Thermidorian reaction

The purges were a culmination of what Trotsky characterised as the ‘Thermidorian reaction’ in the USSR.

Basing his analysis on the analogy of the French Revolution, Trotsky concluded that what had occurred in the Soviet Union was a political counter-revolution from within.

Having overturned the old order in October 1917, the working class had subsequently lost political power. Nevertheless, the social conquest of the revolution – the nationalised planned economy – remained. 

This was comparable to the process of the French Revolution. Robespierre’s Jacobin faction, the most revolutionary section of the movement, was deposed by more conservative elements from within the revolution.

Eventually Napoleon Bonaparte seized power. In 1804, he proclaimed himself Emperor, undoing the political gains of the republic. Yet Napoleon did not restore feudalism in France. Instead, he based his regime on the new capitalist relations that had been established by the revolution.

Similarly in the USSR, Stalin based himself on the nationalised planned economy. Representing the bureaucracy, however, he had politically usurped the working class. Socialist property relations remained, but many of the gains of the revolution were rolled back.

The most obvious expression of this was the complete annihilation of workers’ democracy inside the Soviet Union, in favour of the rule of the bureaucracy, alongside the counter-revolutionary role played by Stalinism internationally.

Zigzags and catastrophes

Stalin never really grasped the Marxist method. Indeed, the Old Bolshevik Yeveny Frolov claimed that “Stalin struggled to understand philosophical questions, without success”. Instead of applying dialectical materialism to problems, he adopted a crude empiricism approach – with disastrous consequences.

This first manifested itself with Stalin’s adherence to the New Economic Policy. He viewed its relative success – in comparison to the previous period of ‘war communism’ – as proof that there was no need for a change of course.

Neglecting to analyse the NEP in an all-sided manner, such as its impact on class formations, he failed to see the latent political danger that it carried: strengthening market relations and emboldening the kulaks and petty traders.

Empirically, Stalin later drew the conclusion that private capital accumulation in agriculture was not the way forward. Consequently, he did a volte-face, launching a campaign to forcibly collectivise agriculture and liquidate the kulaks as a class.

No consideration was given to whether collectivisation was possible; whether the country’s industry could furnish peasants with the machinery and resources required to make collective farming successful.

As a result, the policy led to a total and utter catastrophe in agriculture, provoking a famine that killed millions, and leaving a lasting scar in the countryside. 

‘De-Stalinisation’

Stalinism can be defined as the bureaucratic (mis)management of the planned economy. From this flows the political dictatorship required to protect the power and privileges of the bureaucratic caste. But did this system die with its boss?

In his ‘Secret Speech’ in 1956, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev attempted to pin the blame for all the horrors and catastrophes of the preceding decades onto Stalin and his ‘cult of personality’.

Stalin had placed emphasis on developing heavy industry at a blistering pace, at the expense of consumer goods and housing. This meant that living standards were still much lower in the USSR than in the West.

By the 1950s, this was preparing a social explosion, particularly as the bureaucracy furnished itself with limousines and dachas. According to historian Roy Medvedev, wage differentials between top bureaucrats and workers stretched to as much as 100-to-1.

Under Khrushchev, therefore, economic concessions were granted from above in order to prevent political revolution from below.

Between 1955-58, the average factory wage was raised from 715 roubles a month to 778. Meanwhile, official prices remained fixed, and some were even cut. Shorter hours were introduced for young workers, without a loss of pay, alongside longer holidays.

Given the decades of accumulated discontent, particularly in the satellite states of Eastern Europe, it did not take long for these concessions to encourage a movement from below.

As French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville perceptively noted: “The most dangerous moment for a bad government is generally that in which it sets about reform.” And so it was for the Soviet bureaucracy.

In October 1956, revolution broke out in Hungary. Workers and students were resentful of totalitarian rule, Soviet domination, and the deteriorating living standards that flowed from this. Indeed, disposable income for Hungarian workers in 1956 was two-thirds of what it had been in 1938 – a consequence of the Soviet Union draining the country through post-war reparations. 

Contrary to the claims of the Stalinists, however, this was no counter-revolution. The manifesto under which the revolution was fought was issued by Péter Veres, the president of the Writers' Union. The second demand of this read:

“The social and economic system of Hungary should be socialism built up by democratic means in accordance with our national characteristics. The 1945 agricultural reform and the public ownership of factories, great industrial enterprises, mines and banks, have to be maintained.”

Even more instructively, the revolution saw the formation of democratic workers’ councils – i.e. soviets. Yet what was the response of Khrushchev and co? It was to send in the tanks and brutally repress the Hungarian Revolution.

As Ted Grant put it at the time: “If the Kadar government really represented the masses and not the counter-revolution in Stalinist form, it would have based itself on the soviets or workers’ committees, as Lenin did in 1917.”

Stalin’s legacy

Stalin’s death, therefore, heralded no qualitative change. Stalinism remained in place, with tragic consequences for the working class, in Russia and internationally.

The bureaucratic monolith, which Stalin had stood at the head of, eventually came crashing down in 1991 – just as Trotsky had predicted in his masterpiece Revolution Betrayed.

This was Stalin’s real lasting legacy: to pave the way for capitalist restoration in the land of the October Revolution.

In marking the anniversary of his death, our role – as the philosopher Spinoza once stated – is neither to weep nor to laugh, but to understand.

Today, disgusted by capitalism, a new generation is turning towards communism. Our task is to organise and educate these class fighters in the genuine ideas of Marxism, and to prepare for the revolutionary upheavals that impend.

According to Donald Trump, he was brilliantly accurate when he predicted in 2019 that “America will never be a socialist country”. Why? Because, as he stated a few weeks ago: “The train didn’t stop at the socialist station…We hit the Marxist station and the communist station.”

The House of Representatives, meanwhile, recently passed a bipartisan resolution denouncing the “horrors of socialism”.

Based on these latest absurdities from the political establishment, one might be forgiven for thinking that we are on the brink of an imminent and glorious communist revolution.

But wait a second – didn’t the collapse of the USSR mean the final victory of capitalism and confirm its superiority once and for all? Why keep beating a dead horse?

The explanation is simple: Marx may have been placed in his grave 140 years ago, but far from being dead and buried, his ideas are more relevant than ever – and the serious bourgeois know it.

Spectre of communism

Unable to resolve the system’s contradictions, their political lackeys must find a new bogeyman, or rather, attempt to revive an old one. In the absence of convincing political arguments – which is itself a function of the shattered objective basis for class peace – they must resort to utter inanity to sow fear and confusion.

Where is the party in opposition that has not been decried as communistic by its opponents in power? Where is the opposition that has not hurled back the branding reproach of communism against the more advanced opposition parties, as well as against its reactionary adversaries?

Thus wrote Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, the birth certificate of our movement. Fast forward 175 years, and we are treated to the ridiculous spectacle of one right-wing capitalist party accusing the other right-wing capitalist party of being communist!

But this sad attempt at provoking a new Red Scare – this time under the auspices of Kevin, instead of Joseph, McCarthy – doesn’t have any serious traction. In fact, these ludicrous attacks will only backfire.

Repelled by both parties and exhausted by years of turmoil and instability, the interest of millions in these ideas will only be piqued further. After all, “if these clowns reject Marxism and communism, maybe I should check it out!”

And this is precisely what is already happening on a massive scale. Recent polls show that millions of young Americans – and not an insignificant number of older ones – are wide open to socialism and even communism.

For example, a new poll by the Fraser Institute found that, when asked about their ‘ideal economic system’, 31% of all Americans replied ‘socialism’, and 11% said ‘communism’. In Britain, 29% of young people (aged 18-34) gave ‘communism’ as the answer to the same question.

1 in 3 young people in Britain consider communism "the ideal economic system", according to a recent survey by the conservative Fraser Institute.

If this applies to you, and you haven't joined Socialist Appeal yet, we would ask you a simple question: what are you waiting for? pic.twitter.com/cE66I7Vl72

— Socialist Appeal (@socialist_app) February 27, 2023

Workers on the move

This is particularly remarkable given the stranglehold the bourgeois have on all forms of media, and the lack of a mass force arguing for socialist or communist ideas.

How can this be explained? In a word, the 2008 generation has been joined by the 2020 generation. Tens of millions have started drawing inevitable conclusions from the greatest of all teachers – life itself. The capitalists have no one to blame but themselves for this dramatic shift in consciousness.

Although most people are not yet consciously aware of it, they are gradually realising that the internal contradictions of a system based on private ownership of the means of production, the market economy, and the nation-state cannot be resolved within the limits of the system itself. 

These artificial boundaries will only be superseded when they are deliberately replaced by a rational and democratically planned economy under a workers’ government. Until then, we will be plagued by crisis, hypocrisy, poverty, corruption, inflation, racism, sexism, and war.

It is natural and normal that people seek the path of least resistance when trying to improve their situation. That path tends to lead first through individual solutions and familiar institutions, parties, and leaders.

But workers have been trying this for decades. They have been blocked on all fronts and, instead of less resistance, face only increasing resistance. Already, millions of workers in the USA and Britain have entered the road of trade union struggle. But this is only the beginning.

Socialist revolution

Industrial struggle must be combined with political struggle and, ultimately, mass collective action on a revolutionary scale. And after centuries of capitalist rule, we can rest assured it won’t be a bourgeois revolution.

Quite the contrary; what is on the not-too-distant horizon is a socialist revolution, which will raise the working class to power and lay the basis for the abolition of exploitation, oppression, and class society itself – in other words, real ‘communism’.

As Leon Trotsky put it in 1934:

Should America go communist as a result of the difficulties and problems that your capitalist social order is unable to solve, it will discover that communism, far from being an intolerable bureaucratic tyranny and individual regimentation, will be the means of greater individual liberty and shared abundance.

That is what the ruling class is really worried about. The ‘horrors of socialism’ they fear are the loss of their wealth, power, and privileges, and the rise of a world where there is equality in life, not merely in law.

And they are right to be afraid. Because in addition to amassing incalculable wealth and technological know-how, they have created their own gravediggers: the world working class, the most numerous and potentially powerful social force in history.

All the pieces are in place for the revolutionary transformation of society. All except one, that is. To make that potential to change the world not only probable, but actual, the working class requires three things: leadership, leadership, and, again, leadership!

Limits of the ‘lefts’

The more clear, decisive, and resolute the leadership, the shorter the path to victory, and the less convulsive the transition from capitalism via socialism to stateless, classless communism. 

Unfortunately, the current gaggle of so-called socialist leaders is nothing but. In reality, they are liberal apologists for capitalism in socialist guise and have zero confidence in the potential power of the working class.

Bernie Sanders voted to fund NATO’s inter-imperialist proxy war in Ukraine. Three of the four Democratic Party ‘socialists’ in the House voted to strip railroad workers of their right to strike against intolerable conditions. And even though a majority of House Democrats voted to condemn socialism, the right reformists in DSA and at Jacobin cling desperately to the idea that they can magically push that party to the left.

We warned that this would happen when AOC and her cohort were first elected. Far from moving the Democrats to the left, these milquetoast ‘lefts’ moved deeper into the Democrats and have been wholly subsumed by its unapologetically pro-capitalist machine.

The Las Vegas DSA learned this the hard way and has started to draw some conclusions. As they put it:

“This is our lesson, and we hope socialists everywhere will pay close attention: the Democratic Party is a dead end. It is a ‘party’ in name only; truly, it is simply a tangled web of dark money and mega-donors, cynical consultants, and lapdog politicians.”

Millions of others will learn similarly enlightening lessons in the years to come.

Genuine socialists elected to office would base everything they did on absolute class independence. Instead of ‘making deals’ with the class enemy to win a few fleeting crumbs, they would use their platforms to expose the system for what it is, using facts, figures, and arguments.

They would propose sweeping socialist legislation that would infringe directly on capitalist property relations to spark discussion and debate – even if the bills were doomed to defeat in the reactionary halls of power.

All of this would help build momentum for a mass, class-independent socialist party of the working class.

Join the revolution!

So no, the US is far from being a communist country – at least, not yet. It is still dominated by the big banks, monopolies, Wall Street, and a government that operates in the interests of the ruling class. It is still a bastion of imperialist reaction, cynical ‘culture wars’, and divisive identity politics. But its days as a capitalist country are numbered.

Because the communists are, indeed, coming. And they’re coming, not to reform capitalism, but to abolish it. They’re coming by ones and twos, dozens, hundreds, and thousands, shaped by their experience of life in this system.

The International Marxist Tendency is working to organise and train young communists in Marxist theory and Bolshevik methods – in the USA, in Britain, and across the world. Join us in this task!

Are you a communist? Then get organised with the International Marxist Tendency, study Marxist ideas, and fight for revolution in our time!

🔗 Sign up today: https://t.co/b8RxoAirc5 pic.twitter.com/7dPBI3xvEi

— Socialist Appeal (@socialist_app) February 28, 2023

History is on our side, and we have nothing to hide. We are proud to reject the status quo and to fight for a better future for humanity. We are unashamed to echo the founders of scientific socialism as they threw down the gauntlet to this revolting and unsustainable system:

The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win!

This year’s RMT young members conference, held in Hastings from 24-25 February, brought together 50 activists – the highest attendance yet – in a unified and confident mood.

This reflects the enthusiasm built up after eight months of militant strike action, and the desire amongst young members to get involved in, and rejuvenate, their union.

The tone was set by RMT general secretary Mick Lynch in his opening remarks to the conference: “We are far less bureaucratic than any other union. We like to help people find their own way.”

“We should encourage that: informal leaders, pushing forward their ideas to drive the movement forward,” Lynch continued, stressing the leading role that young members can play within – and outside of – the official structures of the union.

Organisation

The conference also heard a motion that testified to this resolve.

The motion, which passed unanimously, supported the union’s “industrial organising document” – the first attempt put forward by the leadership to shake up the structure of the union and reorganise it on industrial lines.

The motion went on to request that the leadership advance concrete measures in this direction.

Speeches in support referred to low branch attendance in many areas, as well as to the resistance of some layers in the union to structural changes.

A reorganisation would therefore allow for better democratic participation of the ranks in the union.

At the 2022 young members’ conference, a motion was passed that had been put forward by a Socialist Appeal supporter. The status of this was also reported at this year’s conference, as it had since been approved by the NEC.

This called for: “The formation of cross-union committees of action, starting at a regional level, which can bring together workers organised under different unions in a joint effort to fight against [the attacks led by the Tories].”

The need for such committees of action is stronger than ever, especially given the growing level of coordinated strikes across the movement. 

Education

The desire of young workers for political education was also apparent at the conference, with two workshops on economics and internationalism, which delegates enthusiastically participated in.

An energetic afternoon of left political economy @RMTYoungMember conference. Plenty of chat, bit of craic, ar aghaigh linn! ✊🏼🚩@S_O_Nuallain @RMTunion pic.twitter.com/XiO6rvZ9bq

— TrademarkBelfast (@TrademarkBF) February 24, 2023

This was complemented by workshops encouraging young members to become militant health & safety reps.

The thirst for theory and political discussion was also evident from the popular demand of the elected vice-chair, who called for more educational courses to be organised throughout the year.

On the first day of conference, Socialist Appeal hosted a well-attended fringe meeting on the lessons of the 1926 general strike.

The discussion covered the background to the general strike, with the long-term decline of British capitalism, which has continued and sharpened up until the present day.

Also covered were the betrayal of the general strike by the TUC leadership, and the way forward for the industrial strike wave today.

Of particular emphasis in the discussion was the need for a revolutionary organisation to absorb these lessons, with stress laid on the necessity of building such a force in advance of the turbulent events that lie ahead.

Dispute

Naturally, a large part of the conference was concentrated with the burning question of the day: which way forward for the national dispute on Britain’s railways?

Mick Lynch spoke on the effects that this the dispute has had on the rest of society, correctly placing it within the context of the wider class struggle. Understanding this is essential, he stressed.

“The RMT has put the big ideas back on the table; the big idea that there are two classes in society: one class which owns the means of production, and another which is exploited and pushed down by it.”

“While we’re in a dispute with the employers in the short term, we need to be looking at the long term,” Lynch continued. “We need a philosophy; a general worldview and outlook [...] And this fight is not just here in the UK, it has to be international. Because we aim for something better than the exploitation, poverty, and war that they are offering us.”

The RMT general secretary also estimated that the Tory government, over the course of the strike, has now spent three to four times more on compensating the rail companies than it would cost to resolve the dispute.

The reasons for this are clear. The Tories want to break the trade unions in general, and the RMT specifically, as our union is in the vanguard of the movement.

Further days of strike action are around the corner, in coordination with other unions. This shows the way forward.

Rail workers may be spearheading the strikes, but we are far from alone, with more unions joining the fray day by day. 

We should make this coordination real at a rank-and-file level. This means forming those cross-union committees, and uniting the struggles at the grassroots.

Offensive

The conference demonstrated that there is a mood of determination amongst the union’s youngest layers to win this dispute.

We must build on the momentum that is gathering in the trade union movement, and prepare ourselves for the next offensive.

In this process, we must continue sharpening and transforming our union to be in the best shape it can be to fight the battles ahead. Young members will be key to this.

The conference ended with the bold target set by the newly-elected young members’ chair, Niamh Ramsey: “I aim to bring 100 delegates to the next conference!”

Last month, on 18 February, a large demonstration of around 2,000 protesters descended on Oxford to oppose the local council’s ‘15-minute city’ and ‘low-traffic neighbourhood’ (LTN) plans.

Such schemes are increasingly being rolled out in towns and cities across the country. Their stated aim is to reduce car traffic in residential areas, in order to lower pollution levels, make streets quieter, and promote cycling and walking.

The hasty implementation of LTNs has provoked a backlash, however. Critics claim that the changes – erecting physical barriers on certain roads to block drivers – only benefit more affluent residents in leafy suburbs, at the expense of those who rely on their car to get around.

In turn, opponents say that rather than lowering traffic, it is simply diverted elsewhere, clogging up other routes in less prosperous areas, and adding to congestion overall.

And there has often been anger towards councils introducing LTNs without proper consultation, adding to the sense that traditional politicians are elitist, out-of-touch, and indifferent to ordinary people’s concerns.

Far-right opportunists

For these reasons, many slogans on last month’s demo revolved around the need to ‘take back democracy’, with marchers claiming that LTNs would ‘turn Oxford into a prison’.

Both the ultraconservative Heritage Party and neo-nazi Patriotic Alternative (PA) also joined the fray, opportunistically attempting to seize upon genuine local discontent for their own purposes.

They mobilised their supporters from far and wide, with some even coming from Wales and Manchester. This added all sorts of confused elements into the mix, including climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists.

And having grabbed the media’s attention in Oxford, there are worries that the far right will now cynically look to jump on this question in other places where LTNs have become a heated issue.

Oxford rise up today in protest against the WEF 15minute city plan!

It’s all about exercising control & Oxford are a guinea pig in this worldwide experiment.
You won’t see this being reported on scum BBC & MSM.#oxford #WEF #15mincities #15minutecities pic.twitter.com/4vU2qK0iN9

— Concerned Citizen (@cotupacs) February 18, 2023

Transport chaos

Oxford is a dense and highly-congested city, with very poor air quality. Travel by any mode of transport is often difficult. Buses are constantly stuck in traffic (when they’re not cancelled due to driver shortages), and there are many points of conflict between vehicles and bikes, so cycling is not for the faint of heart. As a result, many people just go by car, resigning themselves to jams and gridlock.

The Labour-led council has been promising better bike infrastructure for years. But investment has been paltry, and is mostly confined to cheap expedients like lines of paint.

As with LTNs in other parts of the country, roadblocks have been introduced in many neighbourhoods. These are meant to stop ‘rat runs’. But really they just make it more difficult to get around, with few alternatives provided.

To top it off, future plans for Oxford focus on dividing the city into sections, using cameras to track the licence plates of cars passing through various designated boundaries. Drivers who venture outside of their allotted zone too often face fines of up to £70.

This is a real gut-punch for working-class residents who are dependent on car travel, and who are struggling enough already with the cost-of-living crisis and the cuts to public services.

Everyone knows that something needs to be done to resolve these problems. But by foisting the burden onto the shoulders of the working class, the council has helped foment anti-LTN sentiments. These have been brewing in Oxford for several years now – leading to the outburst of anger seen on the 18 February protest, and at other prior incidents.

Culture wars

In the absence of a class perspective, this issue is increasingly being turned into yet another front in the establishment’s culture war.

A growing proportion of people – particularly amongst younger generations – want to avoid driving altogether, and are demanding infrastructure that accommodates this; that allows urban environments to become liveable, breathable, and more easily navigated without a car.

If alternative options exist, people will use them, thereby freeing up road space for those who do need to use their cars. But this requires serious investment in transport and city planning – something that capitalism in crisis is unable to afford or provide.

With none of the mainstream political parties offering a genuine solution, the question is instead being whipped up into a divisive pitched battle about car driving, with right-wing libertarians on one side, and aloof, liberal environmentalists on the other. 

The former includes reactionary media outlets like GB News and the Daily Mail, who actively encourage aggression against cyclists, alongside Tory MPs who publicly denounce car-reduction measures as an attempt to ‘restrict personal freedoms’.

In the latter camp, meanwhile, are reformist commentators like George Monbiot, who passionately defend LTNs and other similar proposals, but without addressing the wider implications or social changes required to ensure that ordinary workers are not thrown under the proverbial bus.

Socialist programme

Events in Oxford show that problems of this size, scale, and seriousness cannot be solved on a technocratic basis. Under capitalism, one way or another, it is the working class who will be made to pay.

The only way forward is a socialist programme that utilises society’s resources in a planned, rational, democratic way, in order to cater for everyone’s needs.

Instead of pestering people with fines and so-called ‘green’ taxes (such as the ULEZ charge in London), which in reality are just a form of greenwashed austerity, the billionaires should be expropriated in order to fund mass investment in public transport, cycle networks, and other vital urban infrastructure.

This should include the reversal of all privatisation on Britain’s bus routes and rail services, alongside the nationalisation of the big banks and construction monopolies, under workers’ control.

Only in this way can we plan and manage transport fairly and democratically; stop the fat cats from profiting from travel congestion and chaos; and reduce traffic and pollution, by providing a real, affordable, convenient alternative to car driving for ordinary people.

Above all, to secure these gains, we need united class struggle, to cut across the ruling class’ manufactured culture war.

Working-class residents, environmental campaigners, and striking transport workers – on the railways, the buses, and the Tube – all share a common interest: to fight against the Tories and bosses; transform society along socialist lines; and improve our communities for the benefit of all.

What began as a trickle soon turned into a floodtide. At 6pm last night, as one shift at the Amazon BHX4 distribution centre gave way to another, a small gathering of striking workers quickly escalated into an impressive crowd.

The strikers – all donned in bright orange hats, the colours of the GMB union in which they are organised – rapidly mobilised themselves into groups at the picket line. Each pack of workers would run up and down the line of cars waiting to go into the warehouse car park, surrounding vehicles and attempting to persuade their colleagues to turn around in solidarity.

This energetic strategy visibly made an impact. Traffic was backed up as far as the eye could see. It wasn’t long before the bosses, clearly rattled, had called in the police to help alleviate the jam.

Nevertheless, those on the picket seemed unperturbed . One worker told us that the queues had been even longer in the morning, for the previous switchover, stretching back for around three miles.

A GMB organiser, meanwhile, said that management had ended the current shift ahead of schedule, letting the workers out an hour or so early, in order to avoid fraternisation between outgoing staff and strikers at the warehouse gates.

“They’re not completely stupid,” the union official wryly noted, speaking about the bosses’ tactics. “They can see the impact that the strike is having. They can see how it’s spreading, and they’re taking sly measures to try and stop this. But it won’t work.”

 

 

 

 

 

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Confidence grows

Indeed, other workers we chatted with were proud to announce that yesterday’s strike was noticeably bigger than the previous walkout earlier this year, on 25 January.

Around 300 workers are estimated to have taken part in the last strike, out of a total workforce of 1,500 at the site. This time, everyone believed that the numbers were much bigger.

“My team of ‘problem solvers’ [who deal with customer requests and returns] normally has 30 staff working at any one time,” said Zeeshan, speaking to us on the picket line, in between successful attempts to convince drivers (workers and deliveries) not to cross the picket line, “but 20 of us are out here at the moment.”

“People are gaining confidence,” stated Jake, one of the hundreds of Coventry workers who was out both in January and yesterday. “Before there was a fear that we might get the sack; that we might be victimised. But now people can see that we won’t get punished if we all strike together.”

“In any case,” Jake continued, “we have to show the way; we have to fight. We don’t have a choice.”

Burnout and exploitation

Along with his friend and colleague Pascal, Jake told us about their reasons for striking. Number one on the list is pay. Everyone at the warehouse, they said, had to put in paid overtime, because the basic rate is so low.

“We’re working 10 hours a day, six days a week,” Jake stated. “Then there’s just one day to cook and clean; to live your life,” Pascal remarked.

Both of these young workers were ‘lucky’; they have been at the warehouse for several years, and are on permanent contracts. But all new employees are only taken on temporarily, with a massive turnover rate of staff.

This isn’t by accident. On the one hand, the business’ entire model – as with many other sectors of the economy – is based on burning through workers, before throwing them on the scrapheap, all for the sake of the bosses’ profits.

“We’re set ridiculous targets, sometimes by the hour,” stated another worker on the picket line. “If we meet them, there’s no praise,” Pascal added. “But if we fail, there is always the threat of punishment – of being dragged into the manager’s office.”

“It’s the knees,” exclaimed Jake, talking about the backbreaking nature of the work. “It’s so painful, constantly bending down to pick up items and crates. A lot of people have to stop working here after a few years, because of injuries.”

Power in the union

On the other hand, by keeping workers in such a precarious position, the bosses hope to prevent a steady, organised workforce from forming.

But clearly their tactics are failing. The Coventry Amazon workers have had enough. And far from being intimidated and cowed, they are gaining a sense of their strength and power.

“They’re joining [the union] in their droves,” asserted Stuart Perry, a regional organiser with GMB, who was leading chants of ‘the workers united will never be defeated’.

And Stuart predicted that this trend would only continue, with another walkout planned for tomorrow (2 March), and a further five consecutive days of strike action from 13-17 March – all of which is inspiring more and more workers to get organised and fight back against Bezos.

It’s been an amazing day and I’ll let the brilliant @GMBMidlands members at BHX4 Coventry message have the last words

Here’s their message for #Amazon bosses#amazonstrike pic.twitter.com/90dmscUVrX

— Stuart Richards (@GMBStuart) February 28, 2023

Spread the strike!

Whereas the bosses were able to keep the warehouse running for the last day of action, nobody thought that this would be possible for yesterday’s strike. And this will have knock-on effects for the entire Amazon network, we were told.

BHX4 is a giant distribution centre, meaning that no goods are actually stored there. Instead, it is a hub – a vital nodal point – for moving commodities from storage units elsewhere in the country to their next destination. A spanner in the wheels here therefore means disruption across the whole supply chain.

Nevertheless, whilst the Coventry workers play a key role in maintaining the blistering pace of Amazon deliveries, they cannot be left to fight alone. To win, the strike must spread.

Stuart said that warehouse management, so far, have been completely dismissive of the workers’ demands, and have refused to engage with the union. But this militant action is forcing the bosses to take notice of the workers, as they make their voices heard.

Shutting down distribution at the Coventry site is an inspiring start. If Amazon workers across the country were to follow suit, however, this would be an unstoppable force.

• Solidarity to the Coventry workers! Victory to the strikers!
• Fight for £15 an hour! For a sliding scale of wages, with pay linked to prices!
• Spread the strike across the Amazon network!
• Expropriate Bezos and the billionaires! Put workers in control!

1 February saw the National Education Union (NEU) take to the picket lines alongside hundreds of thousands of other public sector workers, in a tremendous show of strength. Since then, a campaign of rolling school strikes has swept across the country.

The issues at stake are clear. Working conditions in education are a horror story. Teachers and teaching assistants regularly put in unpaid extra hours, straining to keep up with ever-increasing workloads. Pay rates in the sector have stagnated for decades, even before inflation began to bite.

Overworked and underpaid, turnover in the profession is at unsustainable levels. And all of this is being made even worse by the Tories’ academisation drive.

Students too are being hammered, suffering from poor living and learning conditions, rising child poverty, and a mental health epidemic. The next generation is being stripped of its future.

But education staff are saying: ‘Enough is enough!’ Teachers will not accept these rotten conditions – not for themselves, nor for their students.

Joining the fray

The NEU’s current strike campaign will culminate in further massive days of action. On 15 and 16 March, union members will be walking out together across the country. And they will be joined, once again, by swathes of workers from across the public sector.

Some unions – such as those representing nurses and lecturers – have paused their action since the last unified strike day. But at the same time, others have smashed through anti-union barriers in order to join the fray.

Junior doctors organised in the BMA, for example, have returned a thumping majority for strike action, with 98% of respondents voting Yes on a turnout of 77%. 

It is clear that Britain’s strike wave is not going away anytime soon. Both the government and the employers are clearly feeling the heat. And they would like nothing better than to be able to pick these strikes off one by one. This cannot be allowed to happen.

Unite and fight

What is needed, now more than ever, is to unify the strikes and go on the offensive against the Tories and the bosses.

Upcoming national days of action should be used as a springboard for a campaign of coordinated strike action across the trade union movement, in order to hit the government and employers from all sides. 

This should include serious preparations by the union leaders for a public-sector-wide strike. Such a display of strength would galvanise workers across the whole country; show the Tories that they cannot divide and isolate the trade unions; and demonstrate who really runs society.

Ultimately, we are all battling against a common enemy: the capitalists, their representatives, and their system, which prioritises private profit above decent public services.

We must unite the struggles and fight for clear socialist solutions to defend education, reverse austerity, and make the billionaires pay for this crisis.

Report from the picket lines

AM, NEU member in Merseyside

I am a secondary school teacher in Merseyside, writing this while on strike today.

On the picket line we have seen support from nearly every passing vehicle. Bus drivers have been particularly enthusiastic. Many of them have learned through last year’s successful Arriva North West dispute that strike action works.

A passing ambulance turned on its siren for us, showing that striking ambulance workers are not in competition with teachers for public money, but are united against this decrepit Tory government. 

Perhaps the strongest show of solidarity we saw on our picket line was from an Uber driver, who picked up a teacher planning to scab, and then refused to take them to their destination. It cannot be easy for a gig economy worker to turn down money and risk a bad rating.

We will see more of this sort of working-class coordination, both formal and informal, as class conflict in Britain escalates further. 

Curiouser is the recent case of a TikTok-organised trend for students to walk out of lessons in protest of school rules, such as restrictions on toilet use. The passion and motivation of youth cannot be underestimated, and their questioning of management’s diktats is to be encouraged. 

No teacher that I know delights in strictness. We would not need draconian behaviour policies if we had enough teaching staff (including teaching assistants) to cover class sizes; a manageable level of staff duties to monitor key areas (such as toilets), where the most serious bullying occurs; and enough time to plan lessons we are proud to deliver. 

We have seen many examples of students protesting directly against the impacts of academisation in education – such as at Deyes High School in Liverpool and Newham Sixth Form College (NewVic) in London.

A popular slogan among teachers has been: “Our working conditions are your learning conditions.” Teachers and students are not enemies, but allies, with a shared interest in fighting against the Tories and the bosses.

I encourage any students reading this to help us in our struggle to reverse the cuts to schools.

Towards a one-day general strike! For an above-inflation pay rise for all workers!

The BBC Worklife blog recently hosted a post entitled The companies that churn through young workers. The article describes the harrowing environment that many young employees enter in the UK fashion industry.

Sarah, the subject of the piece, found her passion for fashion quickly curdling in the face of long hours, bad pay, and no prospects of career progress.

This is no isolated phenomenon, but a fact of life for millions of workers in Britain and globally.

In highly-stressful industries like hospitality and retail, over half of those employed report feelings of poor mental health.

Similarly, in the public sector, healthcare and education are experiencing enormous retention crises and staff shortages. Nurses, doctors, carers, and teachers are all painfully overworked and underpaid.

Scrapheap

This culture of burnout is the bitter fruit of rapacious profit-seeking by the capitalist class.

In order to raise their bottom line, the bosses cut wages and fire staff, all whilst increasing the intensity of work for those remaining.

Megacorporations, multinationals, and even entire industries are characterised by this intense exploitation; reliant on a steady stream of precarious, poorly-trained, super-exploited workers.

Blocked from rising up any career ladders, employees in these businesses and sectors are pushed to their breaking points by the capitalists – only to then be callously thrown on the scrapheap and replaced by the next generation of desperate young workers.

Turnover

Amazon is one such company, infamous for its high turnover rates. The e-commerce behemoth reportedly loses at least 3% of its workforce every week.

This is part of an intentional policy that founder Jeff Bezos has pushed in order to “prevent the growth of a stagnant workforce”.

In practice, this means that warehouse staff are frequently sacked without cause, having regularly experienced long hours, backbreaking workloads, and high injury rates.

Internal researchers predict that the company will likely run out of fresh workers to hire and fire by 2024. Yet no action has been taken to revise this ruthless approach.

Unsustainable

This chronic short-termism prevails in large sections of the UK economy. The current strike wave is – in part – a consequence of burnout and dire conditions within both the public and private sectors.

Even criminal barristers and junior doctors, once considered secure and well-compensated professions, have been forced to mobilise and walk out.

The Criminal Bar Association states that 1 in 8 barristers left the profession in 2021, declaring the situation ‘simply unsustainable’.

Similarly, the catastrophic underfunding of the NHS has resulted in 4 in 10 junior doctors planning to leave as soon as they can find another job, while a third plan to emigrate.

Exodus

Hundreds of thousands of workers are now engaging in industrial action in order to improve their pay and conditions. But many more, exhausted and shattered, are simply disengaging from work or leaving the workforce altogether.

Official reports estimate an exodus of more than half a million from the labour market in Britain since the pandemic, with people dropping out of economic activity due to chronic pain, long-term conditions, and mental health issues.

At the same time, 88% of the UK workforce has engaged in ‘quiet quitting’ over the last two years.

Overworked and underappreciated by the bosses, alienated employees are committing to the bare minimum of work stipulated in their contracts – an entirely understandable reaction to capitalism’s relentless race to the bottom. 

Precarious

The explosive growth of the gig economy is perhaps the most dramatic symptom of the capitalists’ insatiable profit-seeking. These precarious sectors are projected to encompass nearly half of the workforce by 2026.

‘Gig’ jobs are characterised by payment on the basis of workers’ output (i.e. for completing specific tasks), rather than for labour time (i.e. an hourly or daily rate).

This chase for piecemeal wages adds further pressure on workers. The result is a greater intensity of labour for employees, and greater profits for the capitalists.

The fragmented, dispersed nature of this work, meanwhile, with many bogusly labelled as ‘self-employed’, has made unionising and organising more difficult, leaving gig workers as raw material for exploitation by the bosses. 

Logic

In Capital, Karl Marx noted that: “It is the absolute interest of every capitalist to press a given quantity of labour out of a smaller, rather than a greater number of labourers, if the cost is about the same.” 

Driven by competition, the capitalists are constantly striving to increase production and expand their markets, all while retaining fewer workers, in order to maximise their profits.

To accomplish this, the bosses can either invest in technology and technique, in order to increase the productivity of labour; or they can seek to intensify work, making employees labour harder and longer for no extra pay.

The latter is increasingly the preferred method of the degenerate, myopic capitalist class in Britain.

This one-sided class war has culminated in mass burnout, a generalised workforce exodus, and labour shortages across the UK economy.

The capitalists and their mouthpieces might complain about this broken state of affairs. Ultimately, however, this is the brutal logic of their system.

Socialism

To make matters worse for the short-sighted bosses, workers are fighting back against real-term wage cuts and intolerable conditions.

From nurses, to teachers, to workers at Amazon: those who have suffered the most from the dog-eat-dog nature of capitalism are getting organised and mobilising against the employers.

The trade unions should link these struggles together; take steps to organise the most precarious layers in the gig economy; and call for militant coordinated action on the basis of bold socialist demands.

Such a programme should include the fight for a sliding scale of wages, with pay linked to inflation; for work to be shared out equally to eliminate unemployment, with no loss of pay; and for a shorter working week, on the back of investment in automation and productivity. 

To achieve these aims, ownership and control must be taken out of the hands of the capitalist class, by expropriating the bosses and billionaires, and by putting organised workers in charge of production and workplaces.

Only a socialist planned economy based on need, not profit, can free the working class from the interminable misery, agony, and toil of capitalism.

¡García! is a 2022 HBO series adaptation of the 2015 graphic novel of the same name. It follows the awakening of García, a Francoist spy, into modern-day Spain after a 60-year cryogenic hibernation. 

Through García’s journey, and frequent flashbacks to the past, the show brings into sharp relief the differences between the Franco dictatorship and today.

The series begins with a young journalist unearthing agent García in the dark recesses of the Valley of the Fallen. This is an appropriate starting point, given that the basilica was built on the bones of those who fought in the Spanish civil war. It was Franco’s resting place up until 2019, and still remains a notorious relic of the dictatorship.

The six-decade-long induced slumber of García, we are told, was directed by Franco in order to create his own superpowered secret service (known in the show as ‘Section IX’), inspired by Nazi pseudo-scientific experiments. 

The plotline then unfolds in post-pandemic Spain, which is wracked by economic and political crises, and on the eve of presidential elections.

Generational divide?

The show hinges on a divide between the younger generations – who are increasingly politically radicalised – and the older generations, who with rose-tinted glasses, look back favourably to the fascist regime.

The show correctly contrasts the supposed time of ‘stability’ and patriotic ‘sacrifice for Spain’s sake’ that this older generation yearn for, with the reality of Franco’s regime, which ruled the country with an iron fist. Mention is made of the labour camps, torture, and murder of ‘rojos’ (communists) and republicans, for example. 

This ‘generational divide’ in Spanish society is overly exaggerated, however. The elderly are portrayed as having blanket reactionary views, in contrast to the youth who are shown rallying behind a left-wing presidential candidate.

The show therefore blurs over the class divide that exists, which is the real basis for the division between the political left and right. For example, the relatively small support today for the right-wing VOX party comes mainly from the middle class, not ‘the elderly’.

What is forgotten is that it was the masses from this older generation that were involved in the revolutionary wave that swept Spain in the 1970s during the dying days of the dictatorship – and whose aspirations were cut across by the manoeuvres made at the top during the so-called ‘democratic transition’. 

Fascism on the rise?

Perhaps unconsciously, the show makes the point that fascism arises off the back of a crisis of capitalism itself. In ¡García!, the stability of the traditional parties is shown as crumbling, as they are weakened by crime and corruption.

And so the fascist Section IX presents itself as the solution to the crisis of bourgeois democracy. These agents of the past whisper in the ears of the establishment like a cartoon devil sitting on their shoulders. 

Sadly, this is to give credence to the liberal fear-mongering that ‘fascism is on the rise’ in Spain and much of the world.

This superficial and shallow analysis follows from the scarecrow of fascism that has been erected around reactionary figures such as Donald Trump in the US, and Marie Le Pen in France, in order to cow people into voting for the ‘lesser evil’ of the likes of Biden and Macron. 

But fascism does not arise, nor do right-wing ideas generally take hold, from a small group of conspirators longing for ‘the good old days’. 

Rather, fascism is the distilled essence of reaction, when the continuation of capitalism is incompatible with the organisations of the working class. It is a last resort of the bourgeoisie, drawing behind it a frenzied middle class.

In this regard, the show brings a typical misconception of fascism to the fore: that it is based simply on charismatic ‘bad guys’ conspiring amongst themselves. This simply plays into the hysteria surrounding the topic today. 

Ghosts of the past

By the end, García begins to reject Section IX, as he becomes more acquainted with modern-day Spain and its values. Even the leader of Section IX prioritises his family over his plot to take over the Spanish establishment, as he is a ‘family man’ before he is a fascist.

But fascist and far-right ideas are not something that can be fought with a change of heart. In fact, these reactionary ideas are fuelled by the complete collapse of the capitalist ‘centre ground’, and the feeling that the system is not working in the interests of ordinary people.

Remarkably, the show does not revisit the period of the ‘democratic transition’ in the 1970s, which sowed the seeds for the conflict and chaos which now engulfs Spain.

From the Francoist 1978 constitution; to fascists simply assuming new roles under the auspices of a democratic regime; to the unsolved national questions bubbling over in Catalonia and other regions: modern day Spain remains haunted by the ghosts of the past.

But with no serious appraisal of the past, the show remains muddled in its political message from start to finish. 

Struggle for socialism

The show’s director has claimed that ¡García! is an ode to liberalism; that in spite of all its flaws, bourgeois democracy is the best we can hope to achieve.

But throughout the show, we see that liberal democracy and faith in the system as the ‘voice of the people’ is sabotaged, not by the conspiratorial Section IX, but by the limits of capitalism itself. 

The woolly premise that a ‘change of heart’ is all that is needed for everyone to realise how good they have it now is as fantastical as it is far-fetched. It will cut no ice for those afflicted by the crises in housing and healthcare, or the high level of youth unemployment.

The future of Spain is not in the hands of a genetically modified super-spy, but of the Spanish youth and working class. It is only through a socialist transformation of society – in Spain and internationally – that the lingering legacy of Francoism will be buried once and for all.

Exactly 12 months ago today, Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine. The anniversary of that event has not gone unnoticed. Indeed, it has occupied many hours of time on television and as many columns in the pages of the press.

Both the President of the Russian Federation and that of the United States of America delivered long speeches on the same subject, although, to judge by the content, they might as well have been speaking about quite different events taking place in a distant galaxy. 

In his State of the Union speech, Putin stated that the war in Ukraine was caused by the deliberate action of US imperialism. This claim was indignantly denied by the western media, which continued to repeat the idea that this was “Putin’s war” – a war caused by the megalomaniacal tendencies – or actual insanity – of the man in the Kremlin.

Replying to the Russian President, Joe Biden assured a multitudinous audience of adoring fans in Warsaw that NATO was not the aggressor, that it was an entirely innocent, peace-loving assembly of noble-hearted lovers of democracy that never threatened anyone. 

“We have nothing against the people of Russia,” he reassured the Poles. We pose no more of a threat to them than would a group of boy scouts who come knocking at your door offering to clean your windows. And so on and so forth in this vein. 

Insofar as this lovable assortment of pacifistic boy scouts are armed to the teeth with every imaginable weapon of mass destruction known to humankind, this is, of course, purely for the purpose of self-defence. For the world, as we know, is full of bad guys who are always threatening to overthrow our democratic way of life. 

A truly heart-warming speech that will have served to soothe the jangling nerves of Biden’s Polish friends. But before we allow ourselves to be lulled into a deep sleep, let us subject the facts to a calm and rational examination.

The information war 

In any war, the ruling class must take all the necessary steps to mobilise public opinion to support its actions. It is therefore a matter of extreme importance to invent a whole battery of arguments that serve to unite the masses behind the war chariot, to convince them, by all sorts of lies and trickery, that ‘we are the injured party,’ and that ‘truth and justice are on our side’ (as well as God, who, by some miracle, is always on the side of every conflicting army).

To this end, it is always necessary to prove that the war was started by the other side. This is not so difficult to do, for if no incident occurs to justify such a claim, it can always be manufactured. And the ruling class has in its hands a vast and powerful machine for propaganda, which is immediately mobilised for that purpose.

As a matter of fact, the question of who fired the first shot, who invaded whom etc. is a trivial one, which tells us absolutely nothing about the real causes and content of the conflict.

All these points apply to the present information war, which in the present conflict differs from its predecessors only in the vastness of its scope and the brazenness of its lies. Needless to say, the actual reasons a war is waged are never mentioned.

“Putin’s war”

For the past 12 months, with tedious monotony, day in and day out, the same message has been repeated by our “free press”. “This is Putin’s war”. The man in the Kremlin is portrayed alternately as a bloodthirsty tyrant with aspirations to rule the world or a man of unbalanced mind, prey to megalomaniacal delusions with whom a psychiatrist could spend a happy half hour in deep conversation. An unhinged “lunatic”, to quote the elegant language of the British defence secretary, Ben Wallace.

But neither of these comforting descriptions can fit the bill. The same man was previously described as a cunning Machiavellian schemer who, from the rank of a humble KGB operator, succeeded in a short time in raising himself to the head of one of the world’s most powerful states. 

Can one really believe that such a man would throw all caution to the wind and stake everything on a desperate gambler’s throw? That would not at all be in character. Nor is there the slightest evidence to support the hypothesis that Vladimir Putin is clinically insane. That label would be far more fairly applied to some of the ladies and gentlemen who at present hold the highest office in the land of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, including Mr.  Ben Wallace. But we will speak on that subject some other time.

Does Putin want to restore the Soviet Union? 

It is also alleged that Putin wishes to restore the Russian Empire, or even the USSR. We can immediately dismiss the second variant as devoid of all real content. The Soviet Union was what we would call a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state. 

Despite the degeneration that it suffered under Stalin, it still retained many of the most important gains of the October Revolution, namely, a nationalised planned economy. 

The fall of the Soviet Union, brought about by decades of corruption, swindling. mismanagement and bureaucratic bungling by a privileged caste of officials, led to the complete dismantling of the planned economy and the liquidation of all that remained of the former workers’ state. 

In its place, what we now have in Russia is a capitalist state in which the means of production are owned and controlled by an oligarchy that is 100 times more corrupt and rotten than the Stalinist bureaucracy ever was. 

There are foolish old Stalinists who live in their dreams, and imagine that Putin is somehow the man who will restore the glory of the Soviet Union. That is utter nonsense. Vladimir Putin is the child of the counter-revolutionary, capitalist regime that arose from the wreckage of the Soviet Union, and he stands for the defence of its interests. In the process he has become fabulously rich. 

Putin is a reactionary bourgeois Bonapartist, whose policies cannot play a progressive role, either in domestic or in foreign policy, either in peace or in war. Any confusion on this question will lead to the most negative results. 

It is true that Putin once called the collapse of the Soviet Union: “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century”.  But he also said: “Anyone who does not regret [its] destruction has no heart; anyone who wants to see it recreated has no brain.”

I would not say that those who assiduously spread the fairytale of Putin’s secret plan to restore the Soviet Union have no brain. They certainly have enough brains to peddle a story that is baseless, yet can deliver excellent results for NATO. And, after all, why let the facts spoil a good story?

The notion that he would like to restore the old, reactionary Tsarist Empire is slightly more credible, but is also based on the flimsiest and most stupid assumptions. A passing reference to Peter the Great is adduced as ‘proof’ for this  theory. 

This outlandish theory has been used to provoke an attack of nerves, not just in the Baltic states and Poland, but also in Finland and Sweden. “Ukraine was just a first step”, a former Swedish minister hinted darkly to The Guardian, “I wouldn’t be surprised if, in a few years, Estonia and Latvia are next in line.”

The neutral Swedes and Finns lost no time in jumping into bed with NATO. It was really no surprise. The so-called pacifism of the Nordic bourgeoisie was always a hypocritical façade, behind which lay concealed the most cynical self-interest. 

It is true that Sweden remained neutral in both world wars. But it is equally true that Sweden derived vast profits from selling war materials to both sides, and grew fat on the proceeds of that blood money. Scratch a Scandinavian pacifist and you will find a frustrated imperialist not far beneath the surface.

The idea that Vladimir Putin’s actions are motivated by some grand design to restore the Tsarist Empire does not correspond in the slightest degree to all that we know about the man.  It seeks to attribute to him a level of delusional historical romanticism that hardly sits well with what we know of his psychological profile. 

This is not at all that of a dreamer with romantic visions of either the past or the future, but rather the cold, patient and calculating mindset of an ambitious professional bureaucrat; a man who had spent his entire adult life patiently climbing the slippery ladder, rung by rung, which leads in the direction of power. 

The Guardian drew the correct conclusion from this nonsense when it wrote:

“Leaving aside the fact that the Russian military is already hard-pressed to achieve even modest successes in Ukraine, an attack on the Baltic states or Poland would bring them into direct conflict with NATO, which is the last thing that Moscow (or the west) wants.” (The Guardian, 22 Aug 2022)

Russia’s declared aims were still quite moderate: basically, to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and to neutralise the regime in Kyiv. Could the West have accepted this? Of course, they could have! They themselves had continually postponed Ukraine’s membership, not just of NATO but even of the EU.

For many years, they had accepted a neutral role for Finland. Why could Ukraine not be in a similar position? From their own point of view, there would be many advantages in maintaining friendly relations with Russia and the West. If they did not accept it, there must have been reasons. And there were very sound reasons. 

An aggressive imperialist alliance

NATO is not a peace-loving organisation whose aim is solely the defence of western democratic values. It is, in fact, an aggressive imperialist alliance that exists exclusively as a cover for the ambitions of its paymaster, the United States, and its aim of total world domination. 

In the 1980s, when the crisis of the Soviet Union forced it to seek accommodation with US imperialism, the then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev only accepted German reunification – over which the Soviet Union had a legal right of veto – because he received assurances that NATO would not expand after he withdrew his forces from Eastern Europe. 

The leaders of the USA, Britain and Germany gave cast-iron assurances that Russia’s legitimate security concerns would be respected on this point. George H. W. Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker, assured his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, that in a post-Cold War Europe, NATO would no longer be belligerent – “less of a military organization, much more of a political one, [so it would] have no need for independent capability”. Or so they said. 

Baker further promised Shevardnadze “iron-clad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward”. On the same day, in Moscow, he famously told the Soviet General Secretary that the alliance would not move “one inch to the east”.

He lied. The promises not to expand NATO only lasted until 1999, when Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were invited into the alliance. In total, 13 Eastern European states have become NATO members since then.

And this peace-loving upholder of democracy and the sovereign rights of nation states pursued its aggressive aims with the utmost vigour and brutality. US imperialism possesses the most powerful military machine in the world. It made use of this power to invade and crush any states that it could not control.

After the collapse of the USSR, the Americans took advantage of the chaos of the Yeltsin years to assert their domination on a world scale. They intervened in areas formerly dominated by Russia, which they would never have dared to do in Soviet times.

First, they intervened in the Balkans, deliberately accelerating the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. They bombed Serbia and interfered in its internal affairs in order to install a pro-western government. This was followed by the criminal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and an unsuccessful intervention in the Syrian civil war, which brought them into collision with Russia.

All the time, they continued to expand their grip on Eastern Europe, expanding NATO by including former Soviet satellites like Poland and the Baltic States. So much for the promises repeatedly made by the West that NATO would not expand “one inch” to the east. 

This brought a hostile military alliance to the very frontiers of the Russian Federation. US imperialism makes use of many different methods to pursue its aim of world domination. 

The argument about national sovereignty, which is now so often used to brand Russia as an aggressor in the case of Ukraine, was conveniently ignored in the cases of Serbia, Afghanistan and Iraq.

These were supposed to be sovereign independent states. But that made no difference whatsoever to US imperialism, which shamelessly violated their sovereignty and bombed and crushed them without mercy. 

Russia and the USA

Russia is more than just a regional imperialist power. Its possession of huge reserves of oil, gas and other raw materials; its strong industrial base and military-industrial complex; along with its powerful army and possession of a nuclear arsenal, all combine to give it a global reach that brings it into collision with US imperialism.

Washington sees Russia as a threat to its global interests, especially in Europe. The old hatred and suspicion of the Soviet Union did not disappear with the collapse of the USSR. Joe Biden is a prime example of the generation of Russophobes left over from the years of the Cold War.

Washington has a very large variety of  weapons in its counter-revolutionary armoury. It uses its vast wealth to meddle in the internal affairs of other countries, blatantly financing and supporting opposition parties, rigging elections and toppling any government that is not to their liking. 

So-called “colour revolutions” from 2003 onwards, brought about what is known as regime change to former Soviet bloc states, thus surrounding Russia with a growing number of states run by governments that were dominated by Washington and hostile to Russia. 

But in attempting to draw Georgia into the orbit of NATO, they crossed a red line. Russia felt  humiliated and threatened, and used military force to bring the Georgians back into line. The military defeat of the reactionary clique in Tbilisi was meant to show the Americans that Russia was flexing its muscles and pushing back at US imperialism and NATO. 

That was a warning to America. But it continued its aggressive policy regardless. And matters reached the tipping point when they attempted to draw Ukraine into the western orbit. 

“The brightest of all red lines”

Western politicians dismiss the Russian’s objections as paranoid. They describe NATO as a purely ‘defensive’ alliance.

They claim that Russia’s decision to go to war was an act of “unprovoked aggression”. It was no such thing. The placing of a NATO member on Russia’s doorstep was a very clear act of unprovoked aggression and a provocation of the most blatant and brazen kind. Moscow could never accept it. This fact was well known to the Americans, who had been warned well in advance how Russia would respond. 

When the possibility was raised at a NATO summit in 2008, that Ukraine should join the alliance as a full member, Bill Burns, (now the head of the CIA, who was then the US ambassador to Moscow) wrote in a secret cable to the White House: “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all red lines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”

And he added: “In my more than two-and-a-half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russia’s interests… Today’s Russia will respond.”

The Americans had forced Putin into a corner and compelled him to react. Putin did respond. In 2014, he annexed Crimea. This occurred with virtually no resistance. That was because it had the support of the overwhelming majority of its population, who identify themselves as Russian. This fact is never mentioned in the western ‘free press’. 

The vicious anti-Russian policies pursued by the reactionary nationalist clique in Kyiv also provoked a separatist revolt in the Donbas. Later, Russia intervened as the rebels faced a savage onslaught by the Ukrainian forces. That was the beginning of a war which, in reality, has continued, with greater or lesser intensity, ever since. 

The farce of Minsk

The war in the Donbas, which started in 2014, was almost completely ignored by the western media. But the Russian-speaking population of that region was subjected to a merciless bombardment by the openly fascist Azov division ever since then.

The total number of deaths in Donbass to 31 December 2021 was estimated to be over 14,000, including non-combat military deaths. Most of the deaths took place in the first two years of the war between 2014 and 2015, when major combat took place before the Minsk agreements. All of this has been met with a wall of silence in the west.

The Minsk agreements were supposed to manage the Ukraine crisis and avoid escalating the conflict. But that was yet another lie. As The New York Post pointed out, Putin felt betrayed by the West: “It has turned out that no one was going to implement the agreements,” he complained. And this was indeed the case. 

The West had not the slightest intention of carrying out the decisions. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has admitted that the Minsk agreement was just a cynical trick. “The 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give Ukraine time,” she told the weekly Die Zeit. “It also used this time to become stronger, as you can see today.”

And yet, these same ladies and gentlemen accuse Russia of being the main impediment to peace and stability in Ukraine. 

The “defend democracy” argument

President Biden said his visit to Kyiv would “reaffirm our unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity”. That makes three blatant lies in a single sentence, which is not a bad result, even by the impressive standards of an American President. 

The argument that the West is “defending democracy” in Ukraine is equally false and hypocritical. The EU has long refused Ukraine’s entry on the grounds that it suffers what they call a “democratic deficit”. 

The Guardian reported that: “Ukraine’s attractions as a model are limited. It is deeply corrupt, the rule of law is non-existent and its billionaire oligarchs wield disproportionate power.”

Opposition parties are routinely suppressed and persecuted. The press is muzzled by strict censorship. Far-right and openly fascist organisations have been incorporated into the state apparatus and armed forces. 

The Communist Party had already been barred from standing in elections, and Communist symbols were banned after the 2014 EuroMaidan coup. Meanwhile, any criticism of the Ukrainian nationalist organisations which collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and carried out ethnic cleansing of Jews and Poles, has been outlawed, as they are considered “freedom fighters”. 

With the start of the war a year ago, a whole series of other parties were also banned. Newspapers and TV stations have been closed down. Censorship and anti-democratic measures affect not only those who oppose the official brand of reactionary Ukrainian nationalism, but also bourgeois nationalist opponents of Zelensky.

In reality, issues like democracy, human rights and national sovereignty are of not the slightest interest to the American imperialists, except as cheap propaganda points. They have always been prepared to back the most bloody and repressive regimes, from the murderous Pinochet dictatorship in Chile to the blood-soaked regime of Saudi Arabia. 

The reason they are interested in prolonging the war, irrespective of all the human suffering, has nothing to do with defending democracy or any other high-sounding moral cause. It corresponds to the cynical aim of weakening Russia, and thus serves their interests as the dominant world power. 

“Politics by other means”

Clausewitz said war is only the continuation of politics by other means. In order to have a clear idea of the issues involved and how they could play out, it is necessary to concentrate our attention on the fundamental processes, and not be distracted by the noisy information war, or by the inevitable vicissitudes on the battlefield. 

The most important point is that this is a proxy war between Russia and US imperialism. Russia is not fighting a Ukrainian army but a NATO army – that is to say, the army of a state that is not formally a member of that alliance, but which is financed, armed, trained and equipped by NATO, which also provides it with logistical support and vital information.

The present war will end when the political ends of the key players are satisfied or when one or both sides are exhausted and lose the will to continue fighting. What are these goals? The war aims of Zelensky are no secret. He will, he says, settle for nothing less than the complete expulsion of the Russian army from all Ukrainian lands – including Crimea. 

This standpoint has been enthusiastically supported by the hawks in the western coalition: the Poles, the Swedes and the leaders of the Baltic States – who have their own interests in mind – and, of course, the wooden-headed chauvinists and warmongers in London, who imagine that Britain, even in its present state of economic, political and moral bankruptcy, is still a major world power.

These ladies and gentlemen have been pushing the Ukrainians to continue fighting until the ‘final victory’. Their most ardent desire is to see the Ukrainian army driving the Russians, not just from Donbas but also from Crimea, provoking (they hope) the overthrow of Putin and the total defeat and the complete dismemberment of the Russian Federation (though they do not often speak of this in public).

They make a lot of noise, however, no serious person pays the slightest attention to the antics of the politicians in London, Warsaw and Vilnius. As leaders of second-rate states that lack any real weight in the scales of international politics, they remain second-rate actors who can never play more than a minor supporting role in this great drama.

It is the USA that pays the bills and dictates everything that happens. And at least the more sober-minded strategists of US imperialism know that all this delirium is just so much hot air. Under certain conditions, smaller imperialist states can play a certain role in the unfolding of events, but in the last analysis it is Washington that decides. But its policies have met with serious problems. 

Sanctions have failed

Mark Twain once famously remarked: “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”. The same is true of the numerous reports in the western ‘free press’ of the alleged collapse of the Russian economy. 

The sanctions imposed on Russia after it invaded Ukraine have been a spectacular failure. In fact, the value of Russian exports actually grew since the start of the war. Although the volume of Russia’s imports plunged as a result of sanctions, a number of countries (China, India, Turkey; but also some which are part of the EU, like Belgium, Spain and the Netherlands) have increased their trade with Russia. 

Moreover, the high prices of oil and gas have offset revenue that Russia lost to sanctions. India and China have been buying much more of its crude, albeit at a discounted rate. Thus, the lost income resulting from sanctions has been compensated by the rising price of oil and gas on world markets. 

Vladimir Putin continues to finance his armies with the proceeds, while the West is faced with the prospect of energy instability over the coming years, with soaring energy bills and rising public anger.

Support weakening

The question is: which side will tire of the war first? It is clear that time is not on the side of Ukraine, either from a military or a political point of view. And in the final analysis, the latter will weigh most heavily on the scales. 

Europe has been hit by a serious shortage of gas and electricity, which is weakening public support for the war in Ukraine. Warmer weather than usual has brought a partial and temporary respite, but every month sanctions continue, the problems will grow. 

American support also cannot be taken for granted. In public, the American ruling class are keeping up the idea of their unshakable support for Ukraine, but in private, they are not at all convinced about the outcome. 

Neither side is in a mood to negotiate anything meaningful at present. But that will change.  Zelensky’s demagogy, constantly repeating that Ukraine will never give up an inch of land, is clearly designed to put pressure on NATO and US imperialism; insisting that the Ukrainians will fight to the end, always on condition that the West continues to send huge amounts of money and arms. 

Yes, Biden would like to prolong the present conflict in order to weaken and undermine Russia. But not at any price, and certainly not if that involves a direct military clash with Russia. Meanwhile, poll after poll show that public opinion in the West around support for the war in Ukraine is slowly declining. 

Ukrainian fatigue

In the first month of the war, the Ukrainians were willing to negotiate with Russia. Since then, Zelensky has rejected the idea of negotiations altogether. He has said repeatedly that Ukraine is only prepared to enter negotiations with Russia if its troops leave all parts of Ukraine, including Crimea and the eastern areas of the Donbas, de facto controlled by Russia since 2014, and if those Russians who have committed crimes in Ukraine face trial.

Zelensky also made clear that he would not hold negotiations with the current Russian leadership. He even signed a decree specifying that Ukraine would only negotiate with a Russian president who has succeeded Vladimir Putin.

These defiant declarations caused much irritation in Washington. The Washington Post revealed that US officials have warned the Ukrainian government in private that “Ukraine fatigue” among allies could worsen if Kyiv continues not to negotiate with Putin. 

Officials have warned that Ukraine’s position on negotiations with Russia is wearing thin among allies who are worried about the economic effects of a protracted war.

In his speeches in Kyiv and Warsaw, Biden reiterated the well-known mantra that the US would support Ukraine “for as long as it takes”.  However, allies in parts of Europe, not to speak of Africa and Latin America, are increasingly alarmed by the strain that the war is putting on energy and food prices as well as supply chains. “Ukraine fatigue is a real thing for some of our partners,” one US official said.

Naturally, the Americans cannot publicly admit to putting pressure on Zelensky. On the contrary, they maintain an appearance of firm solidarity with Kyiv. But in reality, serious cracks are appearing underneath the façade.

For the Ukrainian leadership, acceptance of negotiations would mean a humiliating retreat after so many months of belligerent rhetoric about the need for a decisive military victory over Russia in order to secure Ukraine’s security in the long term.

A string of successes on the battlefield in 2022, first in the north-east Kharkiv region and then with the seizure of Kherson, encouraged Zelensky to believe in the possibility of a “final victory”. But the Americans have a better grasp of reality and they know very well that time is not necessarily on the side of Ukraine. 

Is Putin in danger of being overthrown? 

The western propaganda machine constantly repeats the line that Putin will soon be overthrown by the Russian people, who are tired of the war. But that is mere wishful thinking. It is based on a fundamental misconception. At the present moment, Putin still has quite a wide base of support. He is not in any immediate danger of overthrow. 

There is no significant anti-war movement in Russia at present and what there is is led and directed by the bourgeois-liberal elements. That is precisely its main weakness. The workers take one look at the pro-western credentials of these elements, and turn away, cursing. 

The war has the general support of the majority of Russians, especially the workers, even if there is not much enthusiasm for it. The imposition of sanctions and the constant stream of anti-Russian propaganda in the West, and the fact that NATO and the Americans are supplying modern weapons to Ukraine, confirms the suspicion that Russia is being besieged by its enemies.

The only pressure on Putin comes, not from any anti-war movement, but on the contrary, from the Russian nationalists and others who want the war to be pursued with greater force and determination. However, if the war drags on for any length of time without significant proof of a Russian military success, that can change. 

A significant symptom is the protests of the mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine. These are still small in size and mainly concentrated in eastern Republics like Dagestan, where high levels of unemployment meant that large numbers of young men volunteered for the army. If the present conflict is prolonged, these could be multiplied on a far bigger scale, posing a threat, not just to the war, but to the regime itself.

If the number of deaths increase, we may see protests of mothers in Moscow and Petersburg, which Putin cannot ignore and would be unable to repress. This would undoubtedly mark a change in the whole situation. But it has not materialised – yet.

Russia’s war aims

The declared aim of Russia was to prevent Ukraine joining NATO, and to “demilitarise and de-nazify” the country. Also, at the outset Putin wanted a neutral or pro-Russian government in Kyiv. 

Putin clearly miscalculated in the beginning, and the Russians did not have sufficient forces to achieve these aims. Even the task of holding on to their gains in Donbas proved to be difficult, a fact that was clearly shown by the Ukrainian offensive in early September last year. 

But the failures at the front acted as the necessary stimulus to readjust. They took steps to mobilise the forces needed to do what is necessary. Russia is carrying out a mass mobilisation. The dispatch of a reported 300,000 fresh Russian troops to the front will dramatically change the balance of forces. 

The frequently repeated argument that the Russians are running short of ammunition is entirely false. Russia has a large and powerful arms industry. They have very considerable stocks of arms and ammunition. 

It is not Russia but the Ukrainians and their imperialist backers who are running out of ammunition. The US and its allies have already sent nearly $50 billion in aid and equipment to Ukraine’s military in the past year alone. But the Ukrainians are using up their supplies far faster than they can be replaced.

NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg had to admit in the most recent NATO meeting that both Ukraine and NATO are in danger of running out of ammunition and spare parts for heavy weapons. He said that Western allies needed to stock up their own armouries while ensuring Kyiv received the weapons it needed “to win this war”: 

“We see no signs that President Putin is preparing for peace,” Stoltenberg said. “What we see is the opposite, he is preparing for more war, for new offensives and new attacks.

“This has become a grinding war of attrition and therefore it’s also a battle of logistics. 

“This is a huge effort by allies to actually be able to get in the ammunition, the fuel, the spare parts, which are needed.”

These admissions stand all the stupid propaganda that has been repeated for many months on its head. 

Meanwhile, the Russians continue to pulverise targets all over Ukraine with artillery, rockets, drones and missiles; destroying military command centres, transportation hubs and infrastructure, which will seriously hamper the movement of troops and arms to the front.

World relations

The war in Ukraine cannot be seen in isolation. The world order (or more accurately, the world disorder)  that has existed  for the past 30 years  following the collapse of the USSR, is  drawing to a close. 

US imperialism is attempting to assert its role as the dominant world power. But it is meeting with resistance. Russia is contesting the US-led security order in Europe, while China is challenging it in Asia.

China has also drawn much closer to Russia, as both are in competition with US imperialism. China has recently warned western countries against “adding fuel to the fire” in Ukraine and reiterated calls for peace talks ahead of an expected visit to Moscow by Beijing’s most senior diplomat Wang Yi.

These remarks were interpreted in Washington as a threat that China might supply Russia with arms. The US issued an angry warning to Beijing that this would have serious consequences. That in turn met with an even angrier response from Beijing. Why should America and its allies have free rein to send massive supplies of arms to Ukraine but forbid China to send arms to Russia? 

A very good question, to which we are still waiting for a very good answer. 

A geopolitical transition has begun, resembling the shifts in the tectonic plates on the earth’s surface. And like the latter, it will produce earthquakes.  

From the ashes of the old order, a new balance of power will eventually  emerge. But this will take time to define itself and it will not be accomplished easily or peacefully. A new period of turbulence and upheaval has begun. 

Although a world war is ruled out under present conditions, there will be many “small” wars and proxy wars like the one in Ukraine. This will add to the general volatility and add fuel to the flames of world disorder.

USA and Europe

In Europe, the USA is using the conflict in Ukraine to pursue its aim to force the Europeans to cut their ties with Russia, and thus strengthen the vice-like grip of US imperialism over the whole continent. 

Prior to this, the German ruling class was, in effect, using its links with Russia as leverage to secure at least a partial independence vis-à-vis the USA. 

Its other main lever was its de facto domination of the European Union, which it hoped to build up as an alternative power bloc, capable of pursuing its own aims and interests on a global stage. 

Beneath the appearance of ‘western unity’, there are growing tensions between the USA and Europe, which have actually been exacerbated by this war.  These tensions have resurfaced in the recent protectionist infrastructure bill by the US, which puts additional pressure on the industrial production in the EU.

US tensions with Europe are not new. They surfaced during the Iraq War, and more recently over relations with Iran. The leaders of France and Germany were always suspicious of America’s close relations with Britain, which they rightly regarded as an American Trojan Horse inside the European camp. 

The French, who never concealed their own ambitions to dominate Europe, were traditionally more vocal in their anti-American rhetoric. The Germans, who are the real masters of Europe, were more circumspect, preferring the reality of power to empty boasting.

The Americans were not deceived. They saw Germany, not France, as their main rival, and Trump in particular made no secret of his extreme distrust and dislike of Berlin. 

In order to secure their independence from Washington, the German capitalists entered into a close relationship with Moscow. This enraged their ‘allies’ across the Atlantic, but gave them considerable benefits in the form of cheap and plentiful supplies of oil and gas. 

Being deprived of these supplies is a very high price to pay for keeping the Americans happy. Under Angela Merkel, Germany jealously preserved its independent role. It required a war in Ukraine to make Germany fall into line – at least for the time being. 

For the time being, the USA has succeeded in using the war to tighten its grip on Europe. But it is not at all clear how long the patience of the Germans and other Europeans will last. The contradictions generated by this situation will only become clear when the Ukrainian business is settled.

What victory?

In the present war, above all, it is a mistake to talk of either a Russian or a Ukrainian victory. It is first necessary to define what victory means.

From the Ukrainian side, the answer is simple: to bring about the military defeat of Russia and compel the withdrawal of Russian forces from all occupied territories, including Crimea. But although it may seem simple, most military experts agree that it is an aim that is vanishingly improbable. 

For Russia, things are even simpler. In theory, Putin could claim victory if Russia manages to take control of all of the Donbas and the land bridge to Crimea. But he would certainly like more, for example, to take Odesa and the Black Sea coast. 

That would strangle Ukraine economically, and reduce it to a state of vassalage. It would be a crushing blow to NATO and would expose the limits of US power. Naturally, the Americans will do everything in their power to prevent that. But it is far from certain that they can succeed.

Biden has just announced more aid for Ukraine. But it will not be enough to turn the tide of the war, which is now flowing in Russia’s direction. What Washington wants is to continue supplying sufficient weapons to keep the conflict in Ukraine going, and thereby undermine Russia. 

Despite all the public show of bravado, however, the serious military strategists have understood that it is impossible for Ukraine to defeat Russia. General Mark A. Milley is the 20th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the USA’s highest-ranking military officer. His opinions must therefore be taken very seriously when he says:

“So, in terms of probability, the probability of a Ukrainian military victory defined as kicking the Russians out of all of Ukraine to include what they define or what the claim is Crimea, to – the probability of that happening anytime soon is not high, militarily.”

The imperialists continue to play their macabre game. They are stoking the fires of war, sufficiently to keep them burning, but without providing the Ukrainians with the necessary wherewithal to win.

The fact that this scenario inevitably means the most appalling destruction, misery, death and suffering for countless people is a matter of complete indifference to them. But there are limits to all things.

Unlike the imperialist hypocrites, the working class in the West feels genuine sympathy for the terrible suffering of millions of poor people in Ukraine. They donate money, clothes and food, which they cannot afford, to help the victims of war. They effortlessly open their houses and share whatever they have with homeless refugees. And this is to their credit.

But it is one thing to express solidarity with the victims of war. And it is another thing altogether different to support, directly or indirectly, the cynical policy of imperialism, which is exploiting the misery of millions of men, women and children to deliberately prolong the conflict for its own selfish interests.

Nuclear war? 

The one really new element in Putin’s recent speech was his announcement of the suspension of Russia’s participation in talks on a nuclear arms control treaty. He further announced that new strategic systems had been put on combat duty, and threatened to resume nuclear tests if the USA started first.

Putin’s hint that he might consider using nuclear weapons was almost certainly a bluff, but his words immediately started alarm bells ringing in Washington and Brussels. The countenance of Stoltenberg, the flint-faced Norwegian who likes to call himself the General Secretary of NATO, for once betrayed some faint signs of emotion over Putin’s declarations.  

Whatever the Americans’ intentions are, an actual war with Russia does not figure among them. A direct confrontation between NATO and Russia, with all its nuclear implications, will be avoided by both sides at all costs.

The Americans have no intention of letting things go that far. It is precisely for this reason that the Americans have several channels open with Russia, in order to avert any chance of uncontrolled events that can lead to undesirable developments.

All this will give added weight to the efforts of men like Joint Chiefs Chair general Mark Milley to put pressure  on Zelensky to begin talks with Russia. But this is the kiss of death from  the Ukrainian point of view.

“When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” Milley said. “Seize the moment.”

But if negotiations never materialise or fail, Milley says the United States would continue to arm Ukraine, even as outright military victory for either side looks increasingly unlikely.

“There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably in the true sense of the word maybe not achievable through military means, and therefore you need to turn to other means,” he said. This is a clear warning to Zelensky that the continued support of US imperialism cannot be taken for granted. And this, not the rhetorical declarations of Joe Biden in Kyiv and Warsaw, is what will  ultimately determine the fate of Ukraine. 

There are, in fact, definite limits to the willingness of the US to continue to foot the bill for an expensive war with no clear end in sight. Washington has always been reluctant about supplying Kyiv with the kind of advanced weaponry it has been requesting.

This is intended to send a signal to Moscow that the US is unwilling to provide weapons that could escalate the conflict, creating the potential for a direct military clash between Russia and NATO. 

This underlines the dangers that are implicit if the war is allowed to continue. There are too many uncontrollable elements in play, which might give rise to the kind of downward spiral that could lead to a real war between NATO and Russia.

The danger of such developments was underlined in November 2022, when the world was shocked to hear the Polish president’s statement that his country had been hit by Russian-made missiles, with western media claiming that Russia was behind it.

That lie was soon exposed when it was revealed by the Pentagon itself that the missile that hit a Polish grain facility at a farm near the village of Przewodow, close to the border with Ukraine, was fired by the Ukrainian army.

NATO and the Poles hastened to explain that it was all “a regrettable accident”. But despite the missile being an S-300 anti-air missile with very limited range, which could hardly have been fired from Russia, Zelensky blatantly lied and insisted it was a deliberate attack from Russia.

He hoped it would have given him a powerful lever to demand more arms and money. And in the best-case scenario (from his point of view) it might push NATO into taking retaliatory measures against Russia, with interesting consequences.

If that incident had served to push NATO into action against Russia, it could have sparked off an unstoppable chain of events that might have led to all-out war. There is no doubt whatsoever that it would suit Zelensky very well to see NATO enter the war and thus pull his hot chestnuts out of the fire. 

A general European conflagration would have been a nightmare for millions of people. But for Zelensky and his clique it would have been the answer to all their prayers. It would naturally be impossible for the Americans to stand on the sidelines, warming their hands on the flames.

There would have to be American troops on the ground. Excellent news from the standpoint of the Kyiv regime, but not at all from that of the White House and the Pentagon. That was not supposed to be part of the script!

The prospect of a new Russian offensive fills the men in Kyiv with alarm. This explains the recent intensification of Zelensky’s diplomatic offensive: the sudden trips to London and Washington, and Biden’s melodramatic appearances in Kyiv and Warsaw. 

Zelensky is a desperate man. And desperate men do desperate things. There are clearly elements in the Ukrainian army and secret services who are looking for any excuse to stage a provocation that they hoped would finally drag NATO into direct participation in the war.

The incident of the missile fired at Polish territory by a Ukrainian army unit was a case in point. There is every reason to believe that new, and even more serious provocations are being hatched in Kyiv right now.

Yesterday, Russia claimed Ukraine was ramping up efforts to invade Transnistria, Moldova’s Moscow-backed separatist region, and pledged a “response.” That is entirely possible. Whether it materialises or not, some new provocation is entirely predictable.Whether this can succeed is another matter altogether.

What now?

Napoleon’s saying that war is the most complex of all equations retains its full force. War is a moving picture with many unforeseeable variants and possible scenarios. 

The variant that has been confidently advanced by the western propaganda machine ever since the commencement of hostilities appeared to be validated by the success of the Ukrainian offensive in September 2022, and later by the Russian withdrawal from the western part of Kherson.

However, we must guard against impressionistic conclusions drawn from a limited number of events. The outcome of wars is rarely decided by a single battle – or even by several battles.

The question is: did this victory, or that advance, materially alter the underlying balance of forces, which alone can determine the final result? These fundamental questions have yet to be determined. Different outcomes are possible, depending on how conditions develop both in Russia on the one hand, and Ukraine and its western masters on the other. 

Russia has been building up its forces in the east, strengthening its military presence in Belarus, and intensifying its aerial bombardment of both military targets and the already weakened Ukrainian infrastructure.

Thus far, the Ukrainians have shown a remarkable level of resilience. But how long the morale of both the civilian population and the soldiers at the front can be maintained is unclear.

One thing is clear, however. The next Russian offensive will not be like the previous one that failed so ignominiously. The Russians will attack with all the numbers and firepower at their disposal. And it seems most unlikely that the Ukrainians, already severely weakened by heavy losses and the destruction of their infrastructure, will be able to resist. 

However, that does not signify an end to hostilities. In order to secure a total victory, the Russians will have to go much further, until they have utterly undermined the fighting capacity of the Ukrainian army. Is this possible? Yes, it is possible. Russia has considerable reserves that have not yet been brought into play, and which Ukraine lacks. But it will be neither easy nor quick. 

News of serious reverses at the front will have an effect on morale. Eventually,  splits will break out in the leading layer in Kyiv between the right-wing nationalists, who wish to fight to the bitter end, and the more pragmatic elements, who see that further resistance will only lead to the total destruction of Ukraine and that some kind of negotiated settlement is the only way out.

Whatever the result, there can be no question of a return to the status quo in Europe. A new period of extreme instability, wars, civil wars, revolution and counterrevolution has been born.

Home secretary Suella Braverman recently announced the Tories’ plan to accept all 34 recommendations made in a review of Prevent, one of the main planks of the government’s counter-terrorism ‘strategy’. 

This ‘independent’ review was conducted by William Shawcross, a notorious bigot who previously claimed that Islam is “one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future”. It is no coincidence, then, that the Tory government will now refocus Prevent on tackling ‘Islamist extremism’.

As Braverman put it in the Commons: “Prevent has shown cultural timidity and an institutional hesitancy to tackle Islamism for fear of the charge of Islamophobia.”

Alongside this dog-whistle racism, Shawcross’ recommendations also target climate activists and those fighting against the oppression of the Palestinians. 

It is clear that the Tories intend to widen Prevent’s remit to intimidate and criminalise minority communities, foment xenophobia, as well as to expand their repressive powers for cracking down on the explosive movements of tomorrow.

Safeguarding sham

Since its very inception in 2003, Prevent has ostensibly been a ‘community safeguarding programme’. It was later broadened out to force a ‘statutory duty’ upon workers in communities – including teachers, lecturers, and even doctors – to report those deemed ‘suspicious’. 

The suggested signs of ‘radicalisation’ outlined in the strategy are extremely vague and ambiguous. These include: changes in a person’s ‘style of dress or personal appearance’; being ‘disrespectful towards family and peers’; or simply showing a curiosity in Palestine.

An alarming 29% of Prevent referrals are of children under the age of 15, with 36% of all referrals made in the education sector. 

This includes the referral of a four year-old who was misheard by his nursery teacher to have said ‘cooker-bomb’ instead of ‘cucumber’; or an eight year-old whose parents took him to a pro-Palestine rally. 

Not only does this ‘strategy’ consciously whip up an environment of fear and suspicion, but it fundamentally does not work in its own stated aims. As a 2018 study commissioned by the Home Office found, 95% of ‘de-radicalisation programmes’ were entirely ineffectual. 

This safeguarding sham was never meant to keep children or communities safe. In fact, it simply foments distrust and division, leading to such heightened feelings of hopelessness and alienation that push Muslim youth into the arms of extremist groups.  

Divide and rule 

Prevent has primarily been yet another tool for the British establishment to defend its imperialist interests and horrific actions abroad.

Western imperialism’s adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq blazed a trail of death and destruction. Even at the time, these wars were opposed by millions of workers and youth. 

In order to generate support for this imperialist meddling, the ruling class waged a relentless, racist campaign of open Islamophobia. Fear-mongering of the Muslim community reached fever-pitch, as the establishment sought a scapegoat for their system’s ills, with little-to-no regard for the consequences.

The dark arts of divide and rule continue to be practised by the Tories. With workers from all walks of life struggling arm-in-arm against cuts and crisis, the suggestion that ‘Islamism’ is the real enemy is as transparent and it is deplorable. 

It is no surprise that the Shawcross review has attacked NGOs like CAGE and MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development), who are outspoken on the dangers of Prevent, by accusing them of collaborating with Islamist extremists.

Similarly, Braverman and the Home Office have committed to rebut any criticism of Prevent, tarring outspoken opponents as terrorist collaborators. 

This all feeds into the Tories’ ‘culture war’ agenda. Their aim is clear: to create a stir, bolster their rabid base, and divert public attention by sabre-rattling with human rights organisations.

Ratcheting up repression

Prevent has always been a repressive tool, wielded by the British state under the guise of combating ‘radicalisation’. In reality, it has been used to curtail democratic freedoms and frighten young activists who fight for ideas that threaten the status quo. 

As Ilyas Nagdee, Amnesty’s racial justice director, has stated:

“There is growing evidence that Prevent is having disastrous consequences for many people; eroding freedom of expression, clamping down on activism, creating a compliant generation and impacting on individual rights enshrined in law.” 

Under Prevent’s banner, universities have replaced panel speakers on topics such as the Israel-Palestine conflict, and have produced handbooks encouraging students to spy on peers engaging in political activism. 

But this attempt to silence activists cannot cut across the genuine political radicalisation taking place on campuses; the growing appeal of revolutionary ideas amongst students and youth; or the rising tide of class struggle and industrial militancy.

These developments terrify the ruling class. And in response, the Tories have begun sharpening their weapons of repression for the future. 

This began in earnest with the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act in 2022, with the intended aim of curtailing protests. The Nationalities and Borders Act soon followed, granting the government the ability to revoke citizenship without even informing the people concerned. 

Furthermore, the Minimum Services Bill currently being pushed through Parliament aims to blunt workers’ right to strike. In response, on 1 February, half a million teachers, railway workers, lecturers, and civil servants mobilised up and down the country. 

A clear thread runs through all these examples – from cutting back on basic democratic rights, to restricting criticism of the government’s failed and floundering counter-terrorism programme. All of these are an attempt to cow workers and youth into submission. 

Ratcheting up repression is not a sign of strength, however, but of weakness.

Class war

The ruling class needs to routinely whip up division, demonising minority communities and defaming striking workers, in order to fragment and exploit the working class.

But the Tories’ deliberate and desperate attempts to deflect blame from their system are increasingly failing to cut ice. 

At the same time, we should not have any illusions that a Starmer Labour government would be any different. The flag-waving Labour right wing has consistently shown that it is not on the side of the working class, or the Muslim community, and is all too eager to blame migrants for capitalism’s problems. 

In reality, the democratic rights we have under capitalism are extremely fragile. This becomes acutely clear in times of crisis and counter-reforms.

The only force capable of combating the repressive agenda of the Tories is the organised working class.

The labour movement must deploy the full strength of the working class, and fight the establishment’s culture war with a united class war. No amount of parliamentary bills will be able to stop workers and youth, when mobilised around a bold socialist programme.

Following the magnificent ‘day of action’ on 1 February, the trade union movement is gearing up for another round of coordinated strikes from 15 March onwards.

This date happens to be the ‘Ides of March’ in the old Roman calendar. It is best known as the date on which Julius Caesar was stabbed in the back by Brutus and other senators.

In William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, a soothsayer warns the Roman dictator of impending betrayal with the words ‘beware the Ides of March’. This phrase has become increasingly apt for those at the head of British politics.

For starters, there is Keir Starmer’s refusal to allow Jeremy Corbyn to stand as a Labour MP candidate in the next election. Who can forget the treacherous and deceitful role that the current Labour leader played in dethroning his left-wing predecessor?

There is also Boris Johnson’s manoeuvring against Rishi Sunak, with the former PM inciting rebellion, knife sharpening, and bloodletting in order to thwart his successors attempts to reach a deal over Northern Ireland and post-Brexit trading arrangements.

And then there is the abrupt resignation of Nicola Sturgeon, who, whilst avoiding a Caesarean backstabbing, has exited the stage suddenly, leaving her party and the wider independence movement in disarray.

Struggle below

Whilst this political theatre unfolds at the top, the real-life drama of food banks and class struggle plays out down below.

The industrial landscape is more turbulent than ever, with ambulance drivers, teachers, civil servants, rail workers, posties, and others all gearing up for more strikes. 

More working days are being lost to strike action than at any time since 2011. The current wave of walkouts is far more intense and long-lasting, however. In fact, looking at figures for the last six months of 2022, you need to go back decades – to when the miners struck – for any real comparison.

With inflation at over 10%, and food prices shooting up by even more, workers have no alternative but to fight.

Splitting the strikes

The RCN and UCU, meanwhile, have recently paused scheduled strike action by nurses and lecturers, respectively, as they look to negotiate with the employers.

No doubt the Tories would like to break the current strike movement through ‘divide and rule’, offering improved deals to certain sections of workers in order to peel off individual unions.

Having miraculously found an extra £30 billion down the back of the proverbial sofa, Rishi Sunak has even suggested that all public sector workers could be offered a 5% pay increase, in the hope of splitting the trade unions and ending the strikes.

But whether union leaders can sell such a deal to their members is another matter. After all, for most workers, the latest pathetic pay offers are only the tip of the iceberg. And a below-inflation wage rise (plus other small sweeteners) does nothing to make up for a decade of austerity, attacks, and worsening working conditions.

Political tremors

As the pressure of the class struggle builds up in the depths of society, the political landscape above is trembling.

Outside of Scotland, the situation in the rest of the UK over the last eight years has been fraught, with Brexit, the rise and fall of Corbynism, and continual infighting within the Tory Party.

North of the border, by contrast, the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) seemed to be going from strength to strength. They boasted of Scotland becoming a one-party state, with Labour reduced to the humiliation of a single Scottish seat in Westminster.

Now, with Sturgeon quitting as Scotland’s First Minister, crisis has finally caught up with the SNP.

The Holyrood government has been embroiled in deepening problems, with widespread strike action, cuts and austerity, splits over gender recognition reform, the impasse over independence, and other matters.

The SNP has been forced to postpone its special party conference on independence. This was not only because of Sturgeon’s resignation, but also because of the lack of any coherent strategy for independence, after the UK Supreme Court blocked the Scottish Parliament from calling a second referendum without Westminster’s consent, which the Tories will never grant.

Shaky foundations

Whoever is chosen as leader, the SNP is in a quagmire. One recent YouGov poll provides grim reading for the party, putting Labour just two points behind the SNP, with 27% and 29% support, respectively. Just 30% thought the Scottish government was doing a “good” or “very good” job, down from 37% in November.

If these figures translate into big losses at the next Scottish and UK elections, this will shake the SNP to its foundations.

There are those – the traditionalist, openly bourgeois wing of the party – who want to take the SNP more to the right, suggesting a more ‘evolutionary’ route on independence.

As Mhairi Black MP has warned, however: “It has not been perfect, obviously, but any turn to the right, fiscally or socially, would risk alienating a huge slice of our membership and our electoral credibility.”

Everything points to trouble ahead for the SNP leadership as it tries to satisfy the membership, while sticking to pro-capitalist policies.

Tories in meltdown

The Tories are still haunted by Brexit, meanwhile, as Sunak tries to deal with the deadlock surrounding the Northern Ireland protocol.

Even if he gets a deal, which is not certain, the Prime Minister still faces the prospect of DUP obstinacy, and revolt by Tory Brexiteers in the House of Commons.

Of course, all this is grist to the mill for Starmer, who is clearly aiming to present himself as a reliable alternative for the ruling class, having enjoyed swanning around with the global elites at Davos.

With the Tories in meltdown, Starmer is already preparing his entry into Number 10.

Significantly, the very day Sturgeon stepped down, Starmer announced that Corbyn will never again be a Labour MP.

“That sets a symbolic seal on Sir Keir’s overhaul of the opposition since taking over in 2020,” explained liberal journal the Economist, “whereby he has systematically purged the hard left from the party apparatus.”

The ‘left’ within the Labour Party represents no more than a frightened shadow. They are responsible for the right’s victory.

When they were in control, they were terrified of clearing out the Blairites, as we argued for. Instead, they talked about ‘unity’ and a ‘broad church’. Now they are paying the price for their spinelessness.

Government of crisis

Starmer is clearly in the pocket of big business. He will do their bidding. Nevertheless, workers will likely vote for his party without enthusiasm, holding their nose, so as to get the Tories out.

The Labour leader will act no differently than the Tories in putting the interests of capitalism first. This means austerity. This will bring him into conflict with the working class, however, which has now been aroused.

Starmer’s government will be one of crisis, as opposition mounts on all fronts. The fact is that capitalism can no longer afford the reforms of the past.

Given the suffering of the working class, as well as the middle classes, all hell will break loose.

More and more will experience the rottenness of capitalism, suffering from inflation, wage cuts, and economic slump. Not one of the problems facing the working class can be solved within the confines of this broken system. On the contrary, the situation on the ground is getting worse by the day.

Revolutionary task

A new chapter is opening up. Impressionistic liberal commentators like the Economist proclaim – or dream of – a new era of “calm” and “moderation” in Britain. But instead, the coming era will be one of increasing turbulence and class war.

Millions will be radicalised, having gone through the ‘school’ of Sir Keir Starmer. Many will draw revolutionary conclusions.

There are those who scoff at the idea of revolution. But events are pushing us in that direction. The crisis we have today is only a foretaste of what is to come.

Under these conditions, the ideas of Marxism will gain a wide audience. Our task must to build up our forces today for the events that impend.

We must prepare a Marxist leadership that is ready and willing to go all the way, and not to capitulate under pressure.

The Ides of March has arrived for capitalism. This is no Shakespearian play, but the daily experience for millions of working people.

The time has come to plunge the knife into capitalism, and to bring about the socialist transformation of society. Join us in this historic mission.

The cost-of-living crisis is pushing millions of workers and youth into poverty. Facing the biggest squeeze of living standards in a century, working-class households are struggling to cope with soaring bills.

As a result, many are now turning towards ‘Buy Now Pay Later’ (BNPL) loans, offered by companies like Klarna and PayPal to help ordinary people make ends meet from day to day.

Borrowing surge

According to a survey by the Centre for Financial Capability, 54% of 18-24 year-olds expect to take out a loan over the next 12 months – a six percentage point increase on the previous year. 

The same survey also revealed that the use of BNPL among UK adults rose from 29% in 2021 to 36% in 2022.

It isn’t just young people using these services. In fact, in 2021-22, the increase of over 65s using BNPL outpaced that of 18-24 year-olds. Among this elderly age group, the number who have used or intend to use BNPL in the near future has almost doubled – from 10% last year to nearly 20% this year.

This credit isn’t being used to splash out on new trainers or the latest smartphone. Worryingly, almost half of those in the over-65 bracket said that they use BNPL to spread out payments and manage rising living costs.

Similarly, a report from the University of Edinburgh found that 60% of public sector workers are relying on BNPL loans to cover increasing costs. Thanks to Tory austerity, these workers – including nurses and teachers – have seen their wages stagnate for the last 10 years, while inflation has soared.

Debt trap

Using apps like Klarna might seem like a quick solution to financial problems. Indeed, these services are advertised as allowing users to split-up or delay payments, without incurring interest.

But as the old saying goes, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. And the problems start when people cannot keep up with their debt repayments.

Take the example of Julie, a care worker in Scotland, who was forced to resort to BNPL out of desperation.

Last summer, when she was interviewed by the Financial Times, she explained that: “Splitting a payment into three chunks made sense, so I could spread the cost of some new school uniforms.”

But once Julie had paid off the uniforms, she was faced with another bill for a school trip. Julie used BNPL loans for that too, as well as to pay for energy bills and groceries.

After missing a £5 payment, she was charged a £6 fee. And since she was already short on money, the debt quickly escalated. By the time she reached out for help to a non-profit community lender, Julie had charges of £325 and a BNPL debt of £400.

Julie is not the only one facing difficulty when it comes to repaying short-term debts. According to debt charity StepChange, 45% of adults in the UK are struggling to keep up with at least one bill or credit commitment.

Far from offering a ‘quick fix’ for cash-strapped consumers, these parasites are literally feeding off of poverty and misery.

Ticking time-bomb

At the same time, the deepening economic crisis has created serious challenges for BNPL firms. Many within the ruling class are therefore watching these consumer-credit companies with a sense of unease.

For starters, revenues for these moneylenders are likely to slow amidst a recession, since their main customers are generally on low incomes and will be reining in their spending.

At the same time, default rates are going to increase, as people find it increasingly difficult to pay back their debts. Consequently, there is a serious possibility of the BNPL bubble bursting. 

Klarna – who have not turned a profit since 2019 – announced in May last year that they would be sacking 700 workers due to the company’s financial difficulties.

Not only has consumer spending dried up, with pockets squeezed, but central banks are drastically raising interest rates in an attempt to fight inflation.

This is effectively pulling the rug from under the feet of speculative tech companies like Klarna, which (ironically enough) rely on cheap credit. 

Klarna’s valuation has therefore nosedived recently – from $46 billion in June 2021 to $6.7 billion in July 2022. This reflects a general concern amongst investors about the long-term viability of BNPL businesses.

Regulation?

This house of cards has led to growing calls for greater oversight of BNPL companies. After Klarna’s valuation dropped, the Financial Times wrote:

"If there is one message for policymakers, it is this: Klarna does not make comfy sofas and warming meatballs like your favourite Swedish box retailer. BNPL operators are money lenders, pure and simple. It is time to regulate this industry properly before it blows up in all our faces."

Evidently, the ruling class are concerned about the added pressure that these lenders are putting on already-struggling workers, heightening the possibility of social explosions.

Reflecting these worries, the Tory government recently announced that they intend to bring in regulation of BNPL companies.

This new legislation might make it seem like the Tories are on the side of ordinary folk. At the end of the day, however, their proposals will offer little protection for consumers. All that is being suggested, after all, are toothless measures to ensure that lenders conduct adequate credit checks.

For planning, not profit

Even at its best, regulation can only treat the symptom of the problem, not the disease.

Ultimately, the rise of BNPL loans is a reflection of the dire situation that working people have been forced into by the crisis of capitalism. 

As long as we live under this exploitative, dog-eat-dog system, workers and youth will continue to be pushed into poverty, and will have to resort to ever-more desperate measures in order to put food on the table and a roof over their heads.

As long as there is profit to be made from putting people in debt, these predatory companies will exist in one form or another – whether it’s traditional credit cards, payday loans, or BNPL.

Only by expropriating the big banks and financial monopolies, and putting the economy under the democratic control of the working class, can we end the deprivation and distress of capitalism.

The RMT has announced its next round of strikes at Network Rail (NR) and 14 train operating companies (TOCs), with a rolling campaign of action set to begin from mid-March.

Workers in all 15 companies are set to strike together on 16 March. This will be followed by walkouts on 18 March, 30 March, and 1 April for TOC staff, and alternating overtime bans over six weeks for NR members.

After a period of discussion in special branch and regional council meetings, called by the RMT leadership to discuss the bosses’ offers and the way forward for the disputes, members voted to reject the most recent pay deals, which came with strings attached.

The response was overwhelmingly against these deals – which did nothing but tinker around the edges of the previous unacceptable offer – and in favour of further strike action.

Militancy

The RMT leadership, in turn, has responded with militancy.

“We know senior figures in Network Rail think we ‘should have tried harder in school’,” general secretary Mick Lynch stated in a strike circular, “but do they really believe RMT members are gullible enough to think the latest offer is an improvement on the offer that was already voted down?”

“Do they think operations members will be prepared to accept the dangerous precedent of paying for our own rises through productivity in talks for 2024?” Lynch continued. “They have made the mistake of underestimating our resolve.”

The circular concludes: “Let’s stick together and keep fighting!” 

These words of defiance must be followed with militant, escalated action. And positively, in this respect, the 16 March strike is set to be the opening of what Lynch described as the “next phase” in the campaign. 

This date has been explicitly set in coordination with the joint strike action of teachers and civil servants taking place on 15 March (to allow strikers in other unions to travel by rail to demonstrations on this day).

Coordination

This is a welcome move towards greater coordination across the labour movement.

‘Days of action’ are becoming more frequent. These are helping to direct workers’ anger against the Tory government, which is waging attacks on the entire public sector, at the same time as it threatens our right to strike with draconian legislation. 

These struggles must be funnelled into a movement with bold political demands, and with the clear aim of toppling the Tories.

Involving the union’s ranks in decision-making is essential for escalating our strike. Similarly, the ranks of different unions should be coordinating action on the ground. 

There has been a lot of talk about the potential for a general strike. A one-day public sector general strike is within reach. This would be the logical next step after the 15 March day of action. 

But this cannot simply be talked about or called from above. It needs to be consciously organised and built from below. 

This requires militant workers to come together and form cross-union strike committees at a workplace, city, and regional level.

Democracy

The democratic discussion that has taken place within the union over recent weeks also points the way forward. 

As the strike escalates, and the bosses continue bandying with incremental changes, it will become increasingly necessary for union leaders and reps to keep in touch with the mood amongst the grassroots. 

The more the rank and file is involved in discussing the strategy of the strike, the more confident and united our fightback will be.

Rather than special branch and regional meetings called for a limited period, we should actively form or consolidate existing strike committees, with elected representatives from every workplace.

Such bodies could provide constant feedback to the leadership about the mood amongst the membership, while also building support for strikes in workplaces.

Where next?

There is a renewal of confidence in the RMT’s ranks, following the period of special branch meetings and the fighting response of the leadership. 

The aims of the strike are clear. As stated by Mick Lynch regarding the negotiations at NR: “We are seeking an unconditional and improved pay offer, as well as the withdrawal of their modernising maintenance plans.” This, correctly and positively, is uncompromising language.

Nonetheless there needs to be complete clarity throughout the union with regards to the strategy. It is not clear, for instance, why the action following 16 March has been split up differently between TOC, NR maintenance, and NR operations members. 

Whether or not this is tactically justified, the reasoning must be clearly presented to the ranks. Furthermore, members want to know answers to key questions: Where next after the next round of strike action? How will we achieve these high aims that we have set?

Workers’ control

The bosses, together with the Tories, clearly have a belligerent, intransigent position with regards to their attacks. At the same time, they have exposed themselves repeatedly through their lying propaganda and delaying tactics. 

The rail strikes must be escalated with every round, and united across the 15 companies – and with the wider labour movement – to give confidence to the ranks.

In turn, to raise the stakes, the membership must be emboldened with broader, political demands.

We are, in essence, fighting a defensive struggle for our jobs, pay, and conditions, and for the preservation of Britain’s railways. 

But the attacks we are fighting against are evidently not isolated to a single boss, or even just to our industry. They are part and parcel of the logic of capitalism as a whole, with the bosses aiming to maximise their profits at our expense.

Our response must be: Down with the fat cats and their system! Nationalise the monopolies without compensation! Let workers inspect the books and propose their own budgets! For democratic workers’ control of industry!

The British Museum, the largest museum in Britain, and a major attraction nationally, closed its doors recently, with staff at breaking point.

The museum’s workers are striking for better pay, pensions, and working conditions amidst the cost-of-living crisis, as part of a wider campaign being waged by the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS).

Similarly, PCS members at other cultural institutions – including the Wallace Collection, Historic England, National Museums Scotland, and the National Museum of Liverpool – are also taking action.

In a recent national ballot, more than 86% of voting PCS members across the country said Yes to strike action.

PCS members at the British Museum (BM), mainly consisting of security staff and employees in the visitor services teams, walked out from 13-19 February, coinciding with school half-term holidays. 

The museum was heavily disrupted by the week-long strike, having to cancel its planned half-term programme, which consisted of various public events and activities.

Initially, entry was only available for pre-booked ticket holders. By the fifth day of action, 17 February, the museum had closed its doors entirely.

Day 5 of our strike at the British Museum over low pay. The museum is completely closed! ✊ Picket until 11:00, come down and support the strikers! #pcsonstrike pic.twitter.com/JQuQwZ4pjT

— PCS Culture Group (@PCSCultureGroup) February 17, 2023

Pay and conditions

Joined by civil servants working for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport (DCMS), the mood on the picket lines outside the British Museum could be summed up in two words: optimism and solidarity.

Socialist Appeal activists spoke to the BM strikers, who are fighting to have their voices heard.

Pay is the primary cause of the strikes. The museum has offered these staff a paltry 4.3% pay rise, far below the official inflation rate of around 10%. Faced with this massive real-terms wage cut, culture workers in London are struggling to make ends meet.

Security guards and front-of-house workers at the BM have had enough of low- or below-inflation pay rises.

“The past decade of austerity has eroded the pay of museum workers across the UK,” stated PCS culture group president Gareth Spencer, commenting in an interview with The Art Newspaper.

“The government would rather use the museums sector for confected culture war talking points,” Spencer continued. “We want a fair deal for all our members across the UK’s museums, galleries, libraries, and for culture workers in the civil service.”

🏛 We’re going on strike this week at British Museum, DCMS, Sport England, Wallace Collection, National Museum of Liverpool and many more branches 🏛 Join us on the picket lines 🏛 #pcsonstrike pic.twitter.com/DHYREDN5Fb

— PCS Culture Group (@PCSCultureGroup) January 29, 2023

Workers on the picket lines also spoke about the horrible conditions they face. Extreme weather, such as the record heatwave in July 2022, has led to high indoor temperatures and poor air quality inside the museum.

In the words of Humza, the vice chair of the PCS British Museum branch:

“People come to the museum with interest. But it’s a shame that there is such a high turnover rate in this sector because of the poor pay and harsh working conditions.

“We share our knowledge with visitors. But the government is not valuing our work in the culture sector. We are custodians of culture and history, and will fight to be heard for our future generations. More people won’t be able to access culture and will be kept out if this continues.”

Culture under attack

Responding to the strike, BM director Hartwig Fischer publicly stated:

“I respect my colleagues’ right to take this action, but I am disappointed that the British Museum is being made a focal point for a dispute about wider public sector terms and conditions which are beyond its control.”

By contrast, the British Museum strike has received enormous support from fellow trade unionists in the UCU, RMT, and NEU, who also engaged in struggle against the Tories and the bosses.

This latest wave of action in the culture sector follows similar strikes by PCS members at the Tate Group, the V&A museum, and the Southbank Centre in recent years.

Everywhere we look, art and culture is under attack – suffering from the same austerity and cuts affecting all public services.

To fight back, workers must take militant coordinated action, and demand fully-funded public services and institutions, free from profit and privatisation, as part of a bold socialist programme to transform society.