SEEING today’s headlines on economic growth figures in the ruling-class and state media, you would think that Britain had just entered a period of economic boom, unprecedented for decades.
But as working people can plainly see from their daily lives, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The just perceptible 0.6 per cent rise in GDP might be enough for Tory spin doctors to harp about exiting recession in the run-up to the general election, but it means nothing for working people who continue to be ground down by stagnant wages and the spiralling cost of living.
Taking out inflation and population growth, GDP is actually lower than two years ago and working people remain financially much worse off, even according to bourgeois public servants and statisticians.
The reality is that capitalism in Britain isn’t just stagnant, it’s circling the drain.
There has been no major economic recovery since the 2008 financial crash — the biggest capitalist crisis since the destruction of the USSR and the Eastern bloc.
Since then, British capitalism has become increasingly parasitic and unstable. What little remained of any productive industry has been continuously eroded.
Our public services have been vandalised and carved up by privateers at every level. This has been a massive source of profit for the leeches but a drain on the lifeblood of working people and our quality of life — both in terms of the wages and conditions of workers employed in these services and for the communities reliant on these services.
The much-celebrated “financial services” sector in the City of London is said to be the cornerstone of our economy — but their success is our poverty. When they “succeed,” working-class people see nothing. Profits in the City just mean more money going into Swiss and Caribbean bank accounts.
But not content with parasitism, the ruling class has become more and more cannibalistic in its drive for profit in recent years.
The profits of the arms manufacturers have become more and more central to Britain’s economy. These profits are directly siphoned from the blood of tens of thousands of victims of the ongoing Israeli genocide in Palestine and of the dead conscripts strewn across the still-raging battlefields of Ukraine.
This is why our bought-and-paid-for politicians in Westminster are so keen for the slaughter to continue.
All the while working people here in Britain face more poverty, ever-declining living standards and a grim outlook for the future under capitalism.
Keir Starmer’s Labour Party tells us our wages will rise while the economy grows but when its plan to do so is virtually identical to the Tories and the best the Tories can muster is nothing at all, that seems like a tall order — and nothing that working people can rely on.
The left and the labour movement have to be clear with ourselves and with our class that the only way to raise our wages is to attack capitalist profits — the source of which is in fact our stolen wages to begin with.
Advancing the struggle for pay rises across the public and private sectors will be an immediate priority in the coming period — one which can also build and galvanise the trade union movement as we have seen in recent years.
Winning the fight for massive investment in public services and for public ownership, which can guarantee secure jobs with higher wages and quality services, in the face of Starmerism will be another.
But the writing is on the wall. Capitalism in Britain is a decaying system which is dragging down working people with it.
Only a socialist society can offer a dignified life for working people. In the struggles of today, we must keep our eyes on that horizon.
