EARLIER this week, Apple was priced on the US stock market at $2.3tn (£1.7tn), more than the combined ‘value’ of the entire FTSE 100.
The UK itself is bankrupt, with the UK government debt rising above £2 trillion hitting £2.004 trillion for July. This debt is £227.6bn more than last year.
Meanwhile, the same companies that have powered US stock markets to record heights – Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook all crashed between 4% and 8%, last week, while gold for the first time ever reached a valuation of $2,000 an ounce.
Analysts said fears about the economic shock of coronavirus and a possible second wave prompted the sell-off of the current stock market giants.
Carmaker Tesla, whose shares have soared this year, tumbled 9% last Thursday after falling sharply in the previous two sessions. Another tech heavyweight, Nvidia, ended 9.3% down. Apple’s 8% fall meant $150bn (£113bn) was wiped off the value of the iPhone maker.
There is no doubt that the capitalist world is dreading the US presidential election in November. Whoever wins, the class war is set to explode as the winner seeks to dump the whole of the US crisis onto the backs of the US workers.
In the UK, the Tory government which was elected to get the UK out of the EU, under Johnson produced a policy of ‘levelling up’ to seek to keep the millions of working class voters who vote to leave the EU ‘on side’.
All ideas of ‘levelling up’ have now been ditched.
There are going to have to be cuts and savage cuts imposed on workers. Tory ministers and officials have been discussing scrapping the scheduled increase to the minimum wage which was expected to rise from £8.72 to £9.21 an hour in April.
As well, the pensioners triple lock, to ensure that their pension keeps up with inflation is also another key target for Tory MPs. To rub salt into the wounds the minimum age for receiving a personal pension is to rise to 57.
Meanwhile, the jobs massacre continues, with worse to come as furloughing is brought to an end. Virgin Atlantic has announced another 1,159 job losses.
Unite assistant general secretary Diana Holland has spoken about the just-announced sackings saying: ‘This announcement by Virgin Atlantic is another serious blow to the UK’s aviation industry and is a searing indictment of the cavalier way that the government has treated the aviation sector, which is key to the health of the British economy.’
She is very understanding about the ‘plight’ of the Virgin bosses saying: ‘Virgin Atlantic has done all that could be expected of it by arranging a £1.2bn rescue deal through the private sector, without government help.’
She added: ‘It is high time that chancellor Rishi Sunak and transport secretary Grant Shapps recognised that the UK aviation sector is facing devastating problems with thousands of job losses across many airlines already – and more on the cards …
‘We need a tailor-made financial package of measures to tide the industry over the next 12 to 24 months – and Unite stands ready to take part in constructive talks to achieve that goal.’
She concluded: ‘We desperately want to avoid a second wave of aviation redundancies and the knock-on impact it will have on the wider economy.’
Instead of a call to action, Holland added: ‘Unite will be seeking urgent meetings with the Virgin Atlantic management to mitigate the effects of today’s announcement on our cabin crew members.
‘Unite, as the leading union in the aviation sector, won’t stop campaigning for a support package from the government designed to throw a lifeline to the sector which is crucial for the UK’s recovery in the post-pandemic global economy.’
The Unite leaders can see no further than the Tory government. Under this kind of union leadership it is back to the Hungry 30s with a vengeance.
Trade unions leaders who refuse to fight to bring down the Tories and replace them with a workers’ government that will nationalise the banks and the major industries under workers’ control, as part of a planned socialist economy must be sacked and replaced by leaders who will.
To bring down the Tories the revolutionary leadership of the WRP must be built in all of the trade unions.
British capitalism is already bankrupt. It has only an imperialist super-exploiting past. At present it is completely bankrupt and has no future.
The trade union leaders with their policy of Tory-worshipping and their refusal to mount any kind of struggle are revealing themselves to be what Lenin called ‘The labour lieutenants of capitalism,’ whose job is to keep workers quiet and then betray them.
The situation that is emerging in the UK is a revolutionary one. The masses need a planned socialist economy where the bosses and bankers have been expropriated and replaced by a planned socialist economy. Join the WRP today to organise the British socialist revolution.
