Austerity is working! Austerity is working! It works for the big business bosses, bankers and bureaucrats who run Britain.
The average chief executive now earns 145 times more than the average worker’s wage.
The burden of this capitalist crisis falls on the working class with the poorer half of the population receiving just 12p of every pound of GDP – a 25 per cent fall since the late 1970s.
At the end of 2012, the real value of wages was more than £50 billion a year lower than in 2008.
Austerity isn’t working for workers. Adjusted for inflation, the real value of pay has fallen by 7% since the start of 2008 costing the average worker £7000. But super rich incomes soar. The proportion of GDP going to profits has soared by 4%. Boardroom pay rises above inflation, while the downward pressure on wages is unrelenting. Since the 1980s, top bosses have seen pay rises as high as 4,000%.
The ConDem government is using the crisis of their system to enforce permanent austerity, slash public services and break with the welfare state brought by victory in 1945. Austerity policies shift wealth directly and indirectly from the people to the big monopolies and to the rich. The masters of the capitalist system – buttressed by the World Bank, the IMF and the European Union – want the people to pay for the crisis. Workers’ rights are under attack while the debt crisis is being used to drive down wages, cut public services and privatise public assets.
But now its payback time for the ConDems
A general election is on the way. The ConDem government is discredited and paying the price for its attacks on the NHS, public services, workers’ rights and civil liberties while the Tories and the Lib Dems are increasingly split.
The Communist Party is at the centre of this fightback. The party _ and the Morning Star – play a key role in initiating and sustaining the People’s Assembly movement and in the unions and peace and solidarity movements.
At the same time we face a crisis of political representation with Miliband’s attack on the working class character of the Labour Party and the failure to offer a real policy alternative to attacks on working class livings standards.
The Communist Party plays an unique role in working for a broad, united antimonopoly alliance and is an unrivalled force for unity in action.
The fightback is growing. The People’s Charter is gathering wide support. Four thousand delegates from trade unions and community campaigns attended the People's Assembly Against Austerity and backed the call to make Britain ungovernable by the ConDems. Unions are preparing strike action for jobs and pay and to defend the NHS, education and public services.
And on the left the party is unique in Britain in having a programme for the transition to socialism and a clear concept of working class political power. The working class and labour movement as a whole is strengthened by a bigger, stronger and more influential Communist Party able to intervene more decisively in the key debates and mass actions that will drive the Con Dems from government and put in place an alternative that can end austerity policies.
What can you do? What can you give?
What is to be done? H You can take your place in the fightback by joining and becoming more active in your union and the many community organisations that exist to defend services.
What does the Communist Party do with your money?
H You can read the Morning Star – daily newspaper of the left – available every day from your newsagent.
It trains working class activists to organise and campaign.The party needs more money to fund its training programme for working class activists, the annual Marxism in the 21st century festival of ideas and debate, for more Marxist education classes and for its theoretical magazine Communist Review.
Pound for pound one of the most effective ways to strengthen the fightback is to sustain Britain’s revolutionary party of working class power and liberation.
The party publishes dozens of pamphlets, briefing documents, leaflets, broadsheets and posters plus a special Unity! newspaper for trade union events and mass mobilisations.
By donating to the Communist Party’s 2013 Fightback appeal you can make a real difference.
It needs more resources for website development, for election campaigns, to help develop rural campaigns, practical international solidarity actions and help new branches to grow in the service of the working class.
Every penny of the Communist Party’s resources is dedicated to the fight to place the working class to the fore in politics and open the way to socialism and working class state power.
There is no better use for your money. Give as much as you can.
Communist Party ÂŁ15,000 appeal Two ways to boost the fightback! Make a donation yourself. And ask you friends, workmates and family if they can help raise ÂŁ15,000 for the fightback. Just complete the form below and return it to the Communist Party, Ruskin House, 23 Coombe Road, Croydon, London CR0 1BD. Cheques payable to the Communist Party. Name e mail Donation