THE price of gold has touched $1,000 an ounce for the first time in six months, more than three times greater than what it was when the then Chancellor Brown sold off almost half of Britain’s gold reserves, saying they were just an out of date symbol.
Brown went on to declare that under his regime of unlimited supplies of credit he had managed to separate capitalism from its historic crisis, thus putting Marxism into the dustbin, as an out of date, out of place theory.
Instead, he agreed with the old statement of bourgeois economy that ‘the value of a thing is just as much as it will bring’. Gold could be disposed of at will, since there was no intrinsic value. Value was something that was relative, transitory and constantly changing.
Since then the crisis has erupted as a massive force of nature, bringing down what seemed to be great banks and the biggest industries in the world, taking both the US and the UK to the brink of bankruptcy, and revealing the backwardness of Brown’s economic theories.
The continuing flight out of paper money into gold will continue. The price of gold is expected to pass the all-time record of $1,032 an ounce reached in March 2008 in a few days. This tendency is a declaration by the capitalists that paper money is becoming worthless, and those who hang onto it risk the ruin that we saw in Zimbabwe.
It also demonstrates the conviction of the capitalists that the financial and economic crisis has just begun, and that its political implications are just emerging, particularly the sharpening of the class struggle in all of the major capitalist states, putting the rule of the bourgeoisie into the balance.
Chancellor Darling’s speech yesterday is an indication that Labour, after handing the banks £1.3 trillion in gifts, loans and guarantees, can no longer hold back on tackling the massive state indebtedness that its determination to save the banks has created.
The banks are to be saved – the working class and the middle class are to be ruined!
Chancellor Darling said yesterday that the government will have to ‘cut costs’ and ‘shift resources to the front line’ – ie it will have to continue to spend billions more on propping up the banks.
He said ministers would have to look at selling off ‘non-essential public sector assets’ and shift resources to ‘where they are needed most’ – ie the banks.
Darling was speaking after the McKinsey report had been handed over to NHS senior health managers, complete with NHS logo.
The secret, then leaked, report recommended that the government sack 137,000 workers from the NHS, including tens of thousands of consultants, doctors, radiographers, paediatricians and maternity specialists.
Apparently, the NHS has become a ‘non-essential public sector asset’, that is to be slashed to pieces and privatised, to save billions and save capitalism.
Darling reiterated in Cardiff that his government was prepared to make the ‘tough choices necessary’ while continuing to build a ‘fair society’.
He did not explain what is fair about mass unemployment, wage cuts, pension cuts, and privatisation, all to keep the bankrupt bankers and bankrupt capitalist system going.
It is now becoming crystal clear to workers that rescuing capitalism from its crisis requires the complete destruction of the Welfare State and the NHS, and mass unemployment with the future of youth completely blighted, while tens of thousands of families are to lose their homes – all to save the bankers and the bosses.
Since this is the case, the working class is left with only one alternative. This is to overthrow capitalism, to bring in a socialist, nationalised and planned economy, where the bankers and bosses will be history and the working class and the youth will have a future.
What is required in the UK is the organisation of a general strike to bring down the Brown government in order to bring in a workers government that will carry out socialist policies. Only the WRP fights for this perspective. Join it today.
