Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials - 7 November 2018

Stampa
Workers' Fight workplace bulletin editorials
7 November 2018

So, Tweeting Trump got his comeuppance.  His anti-migrant scaremongering campaign failed to get US voters to rubber-stamp his administration's reactionary, pro-business policies - as he’d hoped.
    Not only did they turn out in record numbers - with one third more voters than in the last midterm elections - but they deprived Trump of his majority in the House of Representatives.  And if his party managed to retain control of the Senate, it is because only a fifth of the seats it held were up for re-election.
    Will these elections result in any significant change for the US working class?  No, of course not, because elections which only replace one set of pro-capitalist politicians, with another set of the pro-capitalist politicians, can't do that.
    But they did expose Trump's boast of being "the president of all the people" for what it really is - a fraud, based on heaps of lies.  And a majority of the US electorate have now shown they're no longer prepared to buy it.

From US-exit to Brexit

However, there are similarities between the situation of the American working class and what we, workers, are facing here, in Britain.
    Trump made a last ditch attempt at rallying votes for his party by portraying the desperate march towards the US border, of thousands of Guatemalan and Honduran refugees, fleeing poverty and dictatorship, as an "invasion of criminals".  Never mind that the situation these refugees are fleeing was created by US multinationals' plunder of their countries and their propping up of puppet military regimes to protect their profits!
    But beyond his immediate electoral objective, Trump's policy of scapegoating refugees, migrants or Muslims, has another, more fundamental aim.  It is designed to divide the ranks of the exploited, by setting up white American workers against black American workers and against Latinos, the better to turn the screw on the working class as a whole.
    How is that different from May's "hostile environment" against migrant workers here, or from the Westminster Brexiteers blaming the collapse of public services on EU workers - when, without its migrant workforce, the NHS would be unable to function at all!
    Likewise when it comes to Trump's "America first" rhetoric, his US-Exit from all past agreements and his threats to impose sanctions on virtually every other country.  What is behind this aggressive posturing, if not a policy designed to get the US working class to line up behind a so-called "national interest" which is supposedly threatened by the rest of the world?
    In what way is that different from the British politicians' calls for "putting Britain first", "reclaiming sovereignty from Brussels" and going it alone against the rest?

Fighting this crisis-ridden system

These are striking similarities - and they are not a coincidence.
    Whether it is Trump or May, the politicians of the capitalist class are frantically trying to find ways to protect their capitalist masters' profits during this ongoing economic crisis.  And to do so, they are preparing the ground for a much more drastic turn of the screw on the working class.
    This is what their nationalistic nonsense is really about and this is why they make such strenuous efforts to try to divide our ranks.
    And this is why it is in our interests to refuse to fall for any of their crass nationalist grand-standing or their whipping up of anti-migrant feeling.
    The capitalist system has been in crisis for a long time already.  But it is now sliding deeper into even worse chaos.  The fact that this system is unredeemable is illustrated by the policies of its most vocal proponents.  It is no coincidence if, in their desperate attempts to protect the profits of their respective capitalist masters, Trump and May are also threatening the system itself!  Yes, Trump with his trade war and May with Brexit can only make for greater instability!
    This is because capitalism is already in a state of terminal degeneration.  Contrary to what the likes of Corbyn and McDonnell claim, it cannot be patched up with the cosmetic measures they propose.  It is too far gone.  If capitalism survives, it can only cause more devastating damage to humankind and the planet we live on.
    For us, workers, this can only mean that our future lies with fighting this unviable, unaffordable profit system - in order to replace it.  And this begins with standing up against the attacks that we are already facing, whether it is rising prices, stagnating wages, jobs cuts or collapsing public services, by imposing our collective control on the capitalists and their political agents, at every level of society.