“For sanity’s sake, don’t let a class-war zealot destroy our economy.”
There’s a lot to find tragic in today’s gobshite Daily Mail editorial: the spurious epithet ‘Red Ed’, the ironic placement of a story on NHS crisis right below the headline in question, and perhaps worse still, the laughably wishful “our economy” – evoking the ‘we’re all in it together’ mantra of tabloid oligarchs holding hands with nurses, bosses indulging their workers in a bit of friendly banter.
But the most tragic part of media coverage like this – and it’s a popular genre – is the sad reality that these are the only mainstream political spaces where concepts like class get any airing outside of the trade union movement.
To a Daily Mail editor, the thought of the crass, uncouth c-word actually resonating with people on the receiving end of this country’s massive problems is beyond conception. How could class politics accurately map out the motives underscoring the cuts, or the gathered pace of exploitation across the economy, let alone the actions of their friends at Citibank? This is a frightening thought for the people whose growing stock portfolios depend on the quiet sublimation of ugly truths under grand veneers ranging from “the national interest” to “there is no alternative”.
At the moment we’re witnessing the slow motion transformation of our society, a movement the Institute for Fiscal Studies recognises as “a fundamental reimagining of the role of the state.” What this has meant so far is already of colossal significance for the most vulnerable in society – cuts to welfare have meant a new minimum sanctions period of four weeks. That’s a whole month without income as a bare minimum, even applied to people just minutes late for appointments at the Jobcentres whose employees themselves have quotas for sanctions, with the bosses of workfare companies constantly in their ear. The list of abuses goes on and on. Sometimes the worst of the cuts affect services that a lot of us are privileged to not rely on, things like child protective services.
All day tomorrow, many people will be going to polling stations without an awareness of the alternatives on offer. This is excusable by the fact that few parties offer anything like a comprehensive understanding of what austerity actually is: a class war. For three decades, the entire world has witnessed a pronounced decline in the share of total income returned to the working class, and the poorer you are, the poorer you’ve got. If you exclude the 1% from the average earnings figures, there has been absolutely no recovery for wages. And if you hone in on this 1% you see a group whose wealth has quadrupled and continues to do so on the backs of everyone else.
Cuts to public services and the erosion of protections for workers secure the best outcomes for capitalists. Regardless of whether we end up with a non-Tory government next week, we will still see those outcomes. Blairite will cut, as they pledge to, the SNP will cut, as they already have, and the Greens will cut, as their sister parties across Europe do and as their hypocrisy in Brighton makes sadly apparent.
The alternative for workers across Europe is class politics. In the UK, this is the trade union left. The only way to break from austerity is to break from the economic logic privileging the banks and international capital. This logic threatens to wreck the economy if the conditions set by bankers and bosses aren’t met – the answer, then, is to control the banks, who we’ve already paid for through countless debt-causing bailouts, into democratic ownership in order to run the economy according to public need.
Don’t let the real class war zealots destroy our economy.
I’m sorry, but this isn’t okay – whoever sanctioned such socialist bullshit to be published in a newspaper funded largely by YUSU grants, and by default the university, and by default again by the tuition fee which funds the university has acted irresponsibly. There is a big difference between a free press and and irresponsible press, and this article defines the line.
I’m rather unimpressed about the lack of completely outraged right wing comments on this yet. Vision, are you quite alright? What’s happened to you?
Alright Harry simmer down, just because you disagree with the article doesn’t mean it’s “irresponsible press”. Maybe get in contact with Vision and ask to write an article presenting a different point of view if you feel that strongly about it.
Sorry Harry, didn’t realise opinions that don’t chime with yours are ‘irresponsible’.
What’s depressing is that Harry’s probably the sort that vociferously proclaims ‘Je suis Charlie!’ (whose publications were, arguably, highly irresponsible, not that I’d ban them) whilst otherwise ignoring that the rights to free speech mean a right to express opinions that you might not like.
@Harry Do you want to offer some actual criticism of the article’s content or are you too busy being angry because it offends your view of the world? If this “isn’t okay” perhaps you should provide an actual reason that doesn’t come down to just plain not liking it. You want a free press so long as it espouses your views I suppose?
‘For three decades, the entire world has witnessed a pronounced decline in the share of total income returned to the working class, and the poorer you are, the poorer you’ve got.’ This simply isn’t true. Overall household income has risen continuously since the 1970s – you’ve rightly identified that the share of total income has decreased in some cases, but to say that ‘the poorer you are, the poorer you’ve got’ simply is not true. What you’re basically saying is that you would rather the poor were poorer providing the rich were less rich. Capitalism has driven global prosperity since the second world war, lifting billions of people out of poverty in the process. Socialism died in the eighties. A return to class politics benefits no one, in particular those who you claim to speak for. Class war sets class as a fixed category, and therefore reduces social mobility. Its exactly this kind of anti-aspirational crap that was so pleasingly rejected by the electorate last Thursday.