Such is the depth of the crisis in British capitalism that even the ultra-loyal Tory press can no longer pretend that the working class is not on the verge of insurrectionary revolt and that capitalism is on its last legs.
This was made clear in an article in the Daily Telegraph yesterday by their assistant comment editor Sherelle Jacobs headed: ‘A catastrophic energy crisis will fuel a revolt against our failed elites’.
Jacobs’ article starts with the warning: ‘This is the summer before the storm. Make no mistake, with energy prices set to rise to unprecedented highs, we are approaching one of the biggest geopolitical earthquakes in decades.’
As she explains, ‘carnage has already arrived in the developing world’ as across the globe in countries like Sri Lanka where the economy has been shattered, workers and small farmers driven into destitution are rising up and have forced their president to flee the country.
But Jacobs has a dire warning for all those who believe that revolts and uprisings to topple the political representatives of bankrupt capitalism are restricted to the ‘developing world’.
She writes: ‘But the West is not going to escape this Armageddon. In fact, in many ways, it looks set to be its epicentre – and Britain, its Ground Zero.’
She states: ‘In the wake of the financial crash, the establishment just about managed to convince the public to submit to the purifying rigours of austerity, persuading voters that we all shared the blame for the crisis and must all play a role in atoning for the country’s mistakes.’
But, she warns: ‘This time, elites cannot shirk responsibility for their fatal errors … the establishment simply has no message for voters in the face of hardship.’
Ascribing the decade of austerity after the world banking crash of 2008 to some fatal error by the ruling elites is very wide of the mark.
In order to prop up the banks from a crash that would send the entire world capitalist economy crashing down, the ruling class turned on the money printing tap and flooded the world with trillions in valueless paper money.
This massive debt was paid for by the working class internationally through savage austerity – it was no error on the part of capitalism but the only desperate way they had out of an historic crisis.
It fuelled the massive inflation that is ripping through the world and has created the revolutionary crisis for the ruling class that Jacobs is warning about.
And, as Jacobs writes: ‘The UK may well be the tinderbox of Europe’ given the political instability that accompanies the virtual collapse of the Tory government and a powerful working class that is refusing to accept being thrown into acute poverty to keep the bosses and bankers from crashing into bankruptcy.
She is worried that millions of workers and their families will simply be unable to afford to pay energy bills of nearly £4,000 in January and will not sit back and see their gas cut off while the energy companies wallow in massive profits.
Jacobs ends her article with a sober warning that the game is up, writing: ‘This may sound like a grim prognosis, but particularly in Britain it does feel as if we just may have entered the final act of an economic system that has patently failed. It is clearer than ever that the emperor has no clothes and has no more stories to distract us with.’
An article stating that the economic system of capitalism has entered its final act appearing in the paper of the ruling class must be a wake-up call to workers and trade union leaders who cling to the illusion that concessions over pay and inflation can be wrung from a capitalist system that can only survive by driving the working class into the ground.
The immediate issue is to ensure that this is the final act of capitalism, by workers demanding the TUC immediately organise a general strike to kick out the Tories and bring in a workers’ government and a socialist planned economy.
This will act as the tinderbox for the European socialist revolution.
Only the WRP and YS fight for this revolutionary programme – join today.
