The election of Jeremy Corbyn as the Labour leader in the UK,
and the political position of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential
candidate race, both serve a similar purpose in the wake of working-class
struggle against global austerity (class war). Both these men are proposing to be
the remedial solution to capital’s untrammelled growth that has come at a ruinous
cost to human beings and the natural world. Both these politicians are
pretending to be the people’s voice within the neo-liberal politics.
For over thirty years since Thatcher, Raegan and Pinochet, Capital
has reduced its responsibility for reproduction of alienated social labour and
has passed this cost on to the working-class itself. No matter which government
was elected, Labour/ the Conservative in the UK or the Democrats/the Republicans
in the US, each subsequent government has reduced taxes for the capitalist
class. What was once a 70% and above tax rate for the big business is now
around 20% and lower. The role of the state as the manager of society (in
addition to its role as enforcer of capitalist class interests and managing the
money supply) has now become strictly the manager of economy. The stream of
cash that once came from the taxation of the rich, the 1%, that poured into the
coffers of the working-class, in order to pay for such social provisions like education,
housing and healthcare, has now gone dry. As part of a total class-war and the disempowerment
of the working-class, unions and working-class associations were also set
against insurmountable pressures of global trade (globalization). Capital lowered its variable cost of
production (increasing the rate of exploitation of labour) by sending jobs
overseas in order to pay lower wages and benefits to the workers. This is the
same world that Karl Marx described in his book Das Capital, in the chapter called “The Working Day”, is the
reality now in the sweat shops in South East Asia (such as in China, Thiland
and Cambodia).
Since the 2008 economic crisis, government in the UK and the
US have not stopped the unpalatable neo-liberal class-war on the working
people. In fact, austerity measure “creating a good business climate” via lowering
taxes of the rich, has increased. Large portions of social service
infrastructure (such as the NHS) in the UK are being sold on the private
market. While wages have remained stagnant over the last 30 years, secondary
exploitation has dramatically increased (in the form of rent, cost of food,
education and healthcare). Whatever the working-class was left with after
primary exploitation via the process of realization of profits (service sector
jobs) is taken via secondary exploitation in the form of cost of living. Every government
that has come and gone in the UK and the US have continued this neo-liberal
path.
Capital does not have another way out crisis. No matter the
government that comes into power in the UK or the US, it will be unable to
escape capital’s mathematical profit formula: it can only procure profit from the
demand or the supply aspect of social production.
From the end of WW2 until the era of Neo-liberalism (mid-1970),
capital’s penchant for large profits was fulfilled by the demand side of production
in the economy (working-class consumption). This demand (working-class
purchasing power), is essentially the working-class forcing the capitalist class
to reduce its exploitation at the workplace (by increasing wages) and outside
of the workplace (secondary exploitation, by increasing the tax on the rich to
pay for social provisions such as education, housing and healthcare) that came
from decades of national and international class-struggle. From the mid-1970 (neo-liberal
era) until today, capital’s penchant for profits has been generated through the
supply
aspect of production. Supply, in the form of reducing the cost of production
for the capitalist (via lowering taxes and sending jobs overseas to places without
a unionized working-class and workers associations).
Both these men are introduced in the media as “socialists”,
despite the fact that their economic plan does not have a modicum of socialism
in it. Using the above macro-economic logic it helps to understand Jeremy
Corbyn and Bernie Sanders political platforms and promises they are making to
the working people. Both politician demands are essentially Keynesian
economics. Jeremy Corbyn “10 point plan” includes providing better funding for
the NHS, nationalize the railways, and reduce the cost of housing and the
abolition of student fees. Bernie Sanders has made similar promises and has
openly said that he wants to increase the taxation for the rich. Both men are
making vacuous promises based on the demand
aspect of the economy (increasing the working-class disposable income to
spend in the economy), and to go back to the pre-neoliberal era. However, due
to the almost direct ownership of the parliament and the congress by lobbyists,
special interests and corporations, in addition to the globalization of trade,
it is impossible for any neo-liberal country (especially the UK and the US) to
go back to pre-1970’s economics: any attempts to do so would result in large
capital flight and crisis.
Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders represent the pressure valves
in today’s class struggle. The working-class as a whole has shifted to the left
globally. These politicians are capitalism’s vacuous response to an ocean of marginalized
and disenfranchised youth teeming with revolutionary spirit, who are targeting capitalism
as a system. Hoping to release some of the pressure that has accumulated
through decades of neo-liberal class-war and austerity waged on the working
people, capitalism is attempting to legitimize the state and re-consolidate its
hegemonic grip on society by using empty promises of “equality”.
Chia Barsen
www.chiabarsen.com
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