Some of these “barriers” to surplus capital, and to capital
accumulation, are in fact laws and social institutions, such as the NHS, that
was founded through decades of class struggle by the working people of Britain.
The NHS as well as other welfare state institutions in effect reduce the cost
of social reproduction of labour (the cost of living) on the worker through
higher taxation of the corporations. Capital is now reducing this responsibility
and cost with TTIP, through trade laws that allow for privatization, placing
the cost of healthcare as part of social reproduction on the shoulders of the
working class itself. This is yet another way that the exchange value system of
capitalism is undermining access of the working class to use-value services
such as the NHS by placing a price tag on it.
TTIP will also make it easier for big business to bypass
food, environmental and safety legislations in Europe. For example the US food
regulations, which are far less strict than the EU (with 70 percent of foods
having genetically modified ingredients), will be brought to Europe to open
doors for big business to sell/make their products in Europe which currently do
not allow any genetically modified foods on the shelves. Other attacks of TTIP
on safety laws include the use of pesticides, and growth hormones which have
links to cancer and are also banned in the EU.
Other effects of TTIP include allowing corporations to sue governments
for lost profits (if a law is passed outside of the corporations interests).
This was the case where a Swedish energy company (Vattenfall) sued the German
government for billions of lost profit when the nuclear power plants were
shutdown in Germany in the wake of Fukushima. Capital will also be in a far
better position to further repress working class wages since the US has a cheaper
and less organized working class for the corporations to exploit.
TTIP is another instrument of the neo-liberal accumulation
by dispossession of the working class. TTIP is an assault on the working class
wages, benefits and social services and the all-around standard of living. By
undermining wages and increasing the cost of social reproduction of labour,
capital is in part cutting its own effective demand and realization in the
market which is highly contingent on the working class disposable income. TTIP
is a short-term method to extract every ounce of profit from a system that is
crisis prone and collapsing. It is only the organized working class that can
shift the balance of inequality and take a stance against big business with a
true work-class representative party.
Chia Barsen
www.chiabarsen.com
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