SWEDEN AND FINLAND are expected to apply for NATO membership on May 17th, and no doubt they will be welcomed with ‘open arms’ since Finland is on Russia’s doorstep, with Leningrad (now St Petersburg) – which withstood and defeated the great siege by the Nazis and drove them back – now facing a new threat.
The US and the UK which not so long ago were refusing to supply aircraft to the Ukraine and saying that they were not involved, are now pursuing, in Foreign Secretary Truss’ words, ‘our war’ with resolution and enthusiasm, discounting the huge risks involved, and sending billions of dollars and pounds of military aid into the Ukraine.
What has happened is that capitalism is now facing its greatest ever crisis with huge economic and financial collapses taking place on a daily basis while its political parties are in an even bigger crisis.
If they cannot first weaken and then lay waste to Russia and China, to gain a new lease of life, their goose is cooked. Likewise, if they cannot drive back and defeat their own working classes.
A feature of this situation involves starving the working class at home! Taking on Russia through the Ukraine has shut off the world’s granary from its customers as well as creating an oil crisis.
This has already seen massive price increases in food and oil, plus major financial crashes and catastrophes, all over the EU, Asia, the USA and the UK.
The message from the Tories to workers is that they will just have to bear the hunger and the strain of the shocks that are already piling up.
The UK, US and EU ruling classes are not just willing to fight to the last Ukrainian, they are willing to starve and humiliate the working class men, women and children. For them the main enemy is at home, and the fight that the Ukrainian fascists are waging against Russia has given them an opportunity to batter the working class at home.
The Johnson government says it opposes the massive ongoing pauperising rise in prices, and follows it up by announcing that it will sack 91,000 civil servants!
91,000 civil servants are to be pauperised overnight so that the UK ruling class can hand over millions of pounds of arms and ammunition to the Ukrainian fascists. This treatment of civil servants is not going to be an exception, it is to be the rule.
Yesterday, The Sunday Telegraph was working itself up into a frenzy saying that petrol, power and food shortages are on the cards and it is workers trade unions not the government that is responsible for the crisis.
The Telegraph singles out the RMT transport union saying: ‘Britain’s businesses are raising the spectre of empty supermarket shelves, petrol pumps running dry and power blackouts as rail unions plot to bring the economy to a standstill with the ‘‘biggest strike in modern history’’.’
The newspaper continues: ‘Downing Street is preparing to lock horns with union barons who are demanding double digit percentage pay rises for staff and blocking plans to reduce the multi-million pound burden of running the railways onto the taxpayer.’
The bosses want wage cuts and not wage rises. They want to starve the working class into line so that they will work for one meal a day for their families.
This is the new deal for workers. According to the bosses they must get ready for a one meal a day existence, as the only way that capitalism can keep going. Meanwhile, they plot for war with Russia and China to rebuild the capitalist world on the bones of millions of workers.
The truth of the matter is that capitalism has reached the end of the road and it now must be buried by socialist revolutions. The only way for workers is to join the WRP and build a huge section of the Fourth International in the UK.
Lenin pioneered the correct tactic.
He advocated turning the 1914-18 world war into a civil war and he organised the Russian Revolution, bringing the war to an end and establishing a planned socialist economy in Russia.
The massive demo called by the TUC for June 18th must be turned into an indefinite general strike, to bring down the Tories, and bring in a workers government that will nationalise the economy and put it under workers control and management. This is the way forward!