Employment Post-Covid

The Covid-19 pandemic has transformed the situation in many important and devastating ways for The Working Class - all of which are strongly and consciously Anti Working Class, and primarily to the great advantage of the wealthiest Groups, at the top of this Society.

Changes have been made, and are increasingly being implemented, that the Ruling Class have desired, but never dared implement for a truly vast period of time. And, the changes are many and various, and are being pursued at an accelerating rate, as all the many layers within the Employing classes, increasingly realise the favourable conditions now emerging for them all - but only as long as they quickly implement all their many opppurtunities for maximising their ever greater advantages over the Workers!

Don't get me wrong! Most of the Employing Class were, at first, increasingly terrified! But the Government kept many of the Organised Workers quiet with Furlough Pay and their prodigious Loans to the bigger Companies to help see them through.

BUT, the promised "return to normal" has not only failed to materialise, as promised, but has also engineered a vast series of detrimental changes ALL OVER SOCIETY - especially to the detriment of Workers, but also to the disabled, the old and even radical changes in the vital Nationalised Services of the People.

And, as more, and indeed most, of the power echelons of the Employing Class began to realise their advantageous opportunities, they are now pursuing them with increasing vigour!

In the UK, because of the Shut-Downs, the increasing diminution of the Possibilities and Efforts of Working Class Organisations, such as The Trades Unions, and the Left around the dismissed Corbyn Leadership in the Labour Party, the rump of that Party in Parliament have moved ever much more to the Right, including installing a Knighted ex-National Prosecutor as Labour Party Leader!

And as the "NO CASH" transactions increasingly replace cash means of paying, everything moves inexorably OUT of people's direct control into an all embracing IT System fraught with possibilities for the dishonest!

And have you noticed Inflation, beginning to mount?

That is yet another way to move more and more day-to-day financing into being covered by Credit, while at the same time house prices soar - but sold as a means of making house owners richer without doing anything, but in the end ONLY really benefiting the money-lenders and Mortgage providers!

As furlough comes to an end and the economy struggles to recover, millions will lose their jobs, for automation will add to all those NOT re-employed after the end of Covid: and the banishing of the Eastern European pickers and temporary Farm Workers will usher the newly unemployed into those low paid jobs, unorganised by Trades Unions - clearly ideal areas for the Employers!

And the real major hits, clearly unavoidable in the coming period, have not yet clearly established what they will mean for the Working Classes. But, it wont take the experienced commentators on the Left very long to realise the full consequences of the wholly new changes, and if they too Sell Out, as has been the norm in such circles in the past, the necessary Cataclysm of Country-wide Action, involving all the hardest-hit Groups - including the Unemployed, the newly created indigenous Poor of Farmworkers, the disabled, the old, and the students, will not elicit the necessary Fight and a New Dark Age will increasingly establish itself Worldwide!

Why was there NO Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)?

Surely, in a dangerous pandemic, the number one priority has to be a vast increase in the provision of PPE, both to protect the as yet uninfected, and to isolate the infected, to prevent ever more general contagion?

Why didn't that happen in the UK?

Well it wasn't for the reasons given at all!

Imagine if large amounts of such PPE had been made widely available. All NHS staff would be suitably equipped. As would all those care workers looking after the elderly and infirm in Care Homes. All those still having to be involved in all forms of Public Transport would also be equipped and protected! Any lockdown would only need to be temporary as small local areas could be provided with the right Protection, to allow a local raising of the Lockdown.

And a sequence of short term Lockdowns - followed by fully PPE-equipped free movement areas could have been instituted! The worldwide Pandemic could have been controlled and even greatly minimised in its most disastrous effects!

So why was it not quickly established as The Priority Policy from the Start?

It is obvious why didn't it happen! It was because the ideal place to lock up the entire population was in their own homes ON PAIN OF DEATH!

Otherwise safe behind appropriate PPE, The People could be ON THE STREETS DEMONSTRATING - and that, for the Powers that be would be the Worst Case Scenario!

Even the avalanche of deaths, particularly of the old (and even if a majority of those are reliable Tory voters) would be a better outcome for them than armies of masked and angry citizens taking to the streets.

Instead of being isolated from each other and limited to their own homes, they would be meeting outside their places of work, or demonstrating in enormous joint actions demanding the safety of workers be put first. 

Low paid key workers would finally realise their power and number.

They would walk out of places of work which were dangerous to their health! New organisations and groups would spring up out of Trades Unions and Political Parties.

NO! There are far too many of them! Such a crisis as this could be what triggers a World-Wide REVOLUTION, and the Many could finally replace the Few!

It could be the End of Capitalism!

Better to keep the lockdowns and restrict PPE than risk that...

Who is to Blame?

Billionaires. Whether we blame them directly, or the system that creates them, they still have to go....

Who do we immediately identify as the perpetrators for our despair?

On studying the evolution of Capitalist Economics today - some 140 years after Karl Marx's magnificent effort to explain it ended with his death - the many major crises, the World Wars and the increasing acceleration of mounting state and personal debt, have elicited various (although always temporary) "solutions", that simply defer, but never solve, the ever-mounting problems with the economy. And these "solutions" constantly construct innumerable extra barriers to ordinary Workers being able to see any kind of solution of their own!

And, the protectors of that System, have compounded the felony, with their Divide-and-Rule policies, involving their loudly apportioning blame to some different, and hence easily-identified, section of the population, as well as diverting the problem, again purely temporarily, by facilitating a vast increase in the Debt Mountain, to finance some kind of apparent alleviation.

In consequence, the real causes of these crises become ever more opaque and impenetrable, and an increasingly worried population begins to look round for identifiable culprits, which, in addition, to the everywhere identified "foreigners" which are blamed (use Brexit and Trump as case studies, if you must), they were also directed to other targets, much-closer-to-home, such as their own personal inadequaces, for example, or those of their spouses! For, a brief check upon the men of their extended family, by financially-harassed wives, could reveal the severely curtailed abilities of them all to provide what is needed for their respective families: "they become the problem, and are told so in no uncertain terms!"

Families are decomposing everywhere! But, in doing so, it only compounds the difficulties, multiplies the problems, and hides the real causes ever more effectively.

These problems are not due to the personal failings of workers. Ordinary people are not to blame.

In the past, the immediate causes-and-consequences used to be much more easily identified, and the solutions were equally obvious: workers were organised in Unions, and could act together in a Strike. In some circumstances a whole Industry could be involved, or even a nation-wide General Strike of all workers.

But successively, every Capitalist downturn was cleverly used by employers and their political allies, to dismantle, bit-by-bit, the power of the Unions, by both exporting jobs abroad, as well as bringing in various Anti-Union Laws, so that today, what jobs are available are low-paid and usually un-organisable by Unions.

The situation is rapidly becoming insurmountable economically.

And, the old ways of fighting against this exploitation no longer work. 

Even the British Labour Party, in spite of its current Left Wing Leadership (AND Party Membership) is being dismantled by the pro-Capitalist Labour MPs in Parliament, who increasingly side with the Tories against their own movement.

The only old way left is agitation in the streets!

Bring the People out in Mass Demonstrations - BUT crucially they must be well-armed with an understanding of what is really wrong, along with a supported programme to end it!

There will be very strong opposition to this but

WE are the MANY

&

THEY are the FEW

The time has come to go onto the streets

Mondragon: Cooperatives without Socialism?

After listening to a very interesting account of the splendid Mondragon System of Worker Cooperatives in Northern Spain, by an actual participant in that system of Worker Coop Enterprises, I was not only able to see the clear advantages over the alternative of privately owned Capitalist enterprises, but also got a clear idea of its limitations. For, in spite of its remarkable successes, such enterprises cannot change the World!

They have to survive, in the interstices, within a worldwide dominant system that is not only economic but actively political-and-belligerently-coercive, and has a frequently-used solution to challenging problems, via not only local, but indeed World Wars of devastating proportions. Indeed, that now-dominant, alternative economic approach too was once itself a challenger to a prior system, and only brought about the transfer, via a series of bloody Revolutions, resulting in the establishment of a very different political system - conducive to its preferred capitalist economics.

It wasn't merely a matter of choice! Every status quo is the result of the victory of one dominating Class over the rest: and to achieve Power politically they have always to have the resources and the alliances with other, also repressed Classes, to have any chance of bringing off the solution they require.

You can no longer find local solutions economically! For, production and consumption are now not only unavoidably social, but already global too, acting upon a truly world scale. And, how that is organised and controlled are unavoidable questions.

Indeed, several important revolutions have occurred to kick out the capitalist owners, and replace them with a Socialist State. After the Second World War, the whole World was dominated politically, by what has been termed the Cold War between the emerging Socialist States and the still dominant Capitalist States. And a series of hot, local wars have been undertaken by the Capitalist Powers to prevent further Socialist Revolutions. Clearly, despite the achievements of the Cooperatives, the building of such enterprises alone cannot change the World in this regard.

Abandoned: Royal Arsenal Co-operative Society Department Store

In the United Kingdom the Cooperative Wholesale Society (CWS) after being a dominant service to the Working Class has been defeated and dismantled by its capitalist competitors via undercutting prices by super exploitation in Third World countries.

It isn't a "level playing field" at all!

So, I'm afraid all the purely non-political routes are certain to fail. For, once the "powers-that-be" decide that they present a real challenge to their dominance and wealth, they will be dealt with.

So, the nettle must be grasped!

But what kind of Socialism is actually required? Is it like Russia used to be, or China is now, or even North Korea?

NO! For it hasn't worked! Three vital questions just have to be seriously addressed:-

ONE: What kinds of political parties must be built to fight for the Change?

TWO: What must be their objectives to achieve the necessary transformation?

THREE: What kind of State will be the desired result?

Mankind has been trying to address these questions for 200 years, and none of their means, from Democratic Socialist Parties, to even those fighting for violent Revolution have been effective.

Social Democratic Parties have achieved only very temporary gains, while Revolution, necessarily requiring nationwide organisations, and even armies, have inevitably produced powerful, self-maintaining and self-empowering Bureaucracies, while the lot of the mass of people has remained one of powerlessness!

Clearly, these Cooperatives are addressing powerlessness in the workplace, but not yet the other vital political questions.

The informing historical equivalent has to be the Failure of the Trades Union Movements, for in spite of growing to prodigious proportions (even in the USA) they did not address the vital political questions either, and they are now powerless to even do their admitted task of defending jobs or even working conditions.

The political tasks are vital! But do we agree what they are?

Politics, Unions and Worker Coops

International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) address a crowded hall at Madison Square Garden, 1958.

Transforming Society Root and Branch

Listening today to a Democracy at Work talk on the Internet by Professor Richard Wolff, concerning Trades Unions and Worker Coops, it was crystal clear to me that his direct comparison of the struggles of today with those in the 1930s in the USA, involving the Alliance of the Trades Unions with the Socialist and Communist political parties, was NOT an appropriate comparison, and the new suggested alliance, alone, would never be a sufficient policy now!

We must not forget what the Labour Threat presented to Franklyn D. Rooseveldt was in the 1930s...

For it was,

"Give us Justice now, or we will carry out a Revolution!"

And, that was no idle threat! And, even then, the Unions alone would never have come up with it. Indeed, it had to come from the political parties, who had also been vital in building those Unions.

This may not be currently popular with today's left, but, the Unions, without such a political leadership, could never dispense with Capitalism. And, like it or not, neither could a movement for Worker Cooperatives! They are too limited in both their purposes and their power, to naturally address what is required to finish and replace Capitalism permanently.

Purely Union v. Capitalist, or even Worker Coop v. Capitalist, struggles alone would always end in victory for the Capitalists! There would have to be society-wide unrest AND active Revolutionary Parties - addressing the necessary questions, to inform, motivate and educate the masses, against the massive tide of misinformation and lies of the media-dominating Capitalist Class, so that, instead, the vast preponderance of the whole People-in-Revolt could smash the status quo, for a Future they could both see and deserve. And, that crucially necessary component is clearly, currently, totally absent!

Indeed, it is also absent within the Unions and the Worker Co-ops, in the form of politically-equipped leaders, who understand the political necessities - not only for Society at Large, but also in formulating the appropriate policies necessary - even those concerned with the restricted objectives of their own organisations.

For example:-

1. How do Coops relate to each other?

2. How do they relate to the Local Political Democracy - within which they exist?

3. How are leaders and external representatives elected, mandated and removed?

4. How, exactly, are the absolutely-necessary society-wide objectives to be arrived at, and then implemented?

5. What about Social Services, Schools, Hospitals? Universities, infrastructures and nation-wide Transport that all need to be organised and controlled?

I could go on, but clearly, even within these essential organisations, there also has to be an awareness of a much wider political context, not only for removing Capitalism, but also for establishing, running and maintaining a Socialism-for-and-by-the-People!

Political Parties of-and-for the People, with clear objectives, and indeed worked-out policies, beyond Capitalism, are absolutely essential. Clearly, neither the Republican nor the Democratic parties in the USA could ever deliver what is required in this regard: for they are both in-hock up to their greedy necks, via large financial contributions from the Billionaire class. 

Communist Party, USA

And, even the tattered remnants of the old socialist and communist parties are too compromised, in successfully ensuring their past survival, for them to ever be capable of mounting a credible and revolutionary assault to win the forces necessary from the mass of the People.

Currently, the absolutely essential revolutionary political force is still wholly absent, and the experiences of Greece, and even the Arab Spring, demonstrate clearly the inevitable outcomes, when such appropriately-equipped organisations are not in place.

Is not Revolution the only solution?