The class struggle and tax credits
- This topic has 48 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated 8 years, 12 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Is the opposition to Tory reform to reduce tax credits and therefor workers wages at the expense of profit worthy of socialist support?
There is plenty of others who are more capable of that sort of opposition than ourselves and i'm not just talking about political parties, plenty of NGOs have made their disagreement with it clear. But they won't be attacking it from a socialist stance. Our task is slightly more harder and complicated…to demonstrate that austerity policies are inherent within the capitalist system and particularly during its crises… Thus we have to be more radical and revolutionary in our solutions…such as a money-free, market-free private-property-free and wage-free world. For sure, we will not gain a mass audience for that message …but perhaps we can gather together the odds and sods floating about who have reached a similar conclusion that mere reformism has been tried and has failed …
This is not a simple and straightforward issue as tax credits are, and were intended to be, a subsidy to low-paying employers. They can pay below market wage rates knowing that the government will top up this. The trouble is that the reduction in tax credits won't lead to the employers compensating for this. From a trade union point of view, it was probably better not to have gone down this route but tried instead to negotiate higher wages. Easier said than done of course, especially as the workers affected are notoriously hard to organise.
Vin wrote:Is the opposition to Tory reform to reduce tax credits and therefor workers wages at the expense of profit worthy of socialist support?Vin, did you have anything particularly in mind, regarding support?
Not really SP. I agree we should spend most of our time propagating socialism but we should not dismiss workers struggle to defend immediate attacks. Especially as the 'demonstaters' and opposition are likely from all over the political specrum. We can offer verbal support while maintaining our independence as a socialist party. Playing devil's advocate, tooi personnally believe we should take part in anti austerity demos, arguing revolution not reform. If we have the members. Circumvent the attack that we sit on the sidelines. Not that we do.
The Lords voted to delay the Tories reforms of tax credit giving a small breathing space to desperate working class families, despite the attempts of parasites such as Lloyd Webber et all. Indeed there is talk of a rethinkDoes anyone think the working class struggles, demonstrations and the rise of support for the left in the form of Corbyn had anything to do with it?
Not necessarilly, the main factor is the absence of a Tory majority in the House of Lords, and the Lib-Dem contention that they are not bound by the Salisbury convention (added to the fact that the tax-credit cut was not specifically in the Tory manifesto). Any Labour leadership would have used the opportunity to make trouble, especially a right-facing one that wanted to throw the membership a bone.
Maybe to some extent except where were the "working class struggles"? Party political factors, including within the Tory party, seem to have been more important. Ironic from a leftist point of view that once again (as over preventing the bombing of Syria a year or so ago) parliamentary action should have been more effective than demonstrations.
ALB wrote:where were the "working class struggles"?Are you being serious?Workers and capitalists stand in "constant opposition to one another, [carrying] on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight…." The position presented in the two posts above would appear to suggest there is no class struggle. It was all about the conflicting interests of sections of the capitalist class!While workers did nothing to defend themselves.Anti-austerity demonstration by the workers had nothing to do with it.?
Arguably, tax credits are inheretly against working class interests. As this document indicates:https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/personal-tax-credits-statistics
Quote:Tax credits are a flexible system of financial support designed to deliver support as and when a family needs it, tailored to their specific circumstances. They are part of wider government policy to provide support to parents returning to work, reduce child poverty and increase financial support for all families. The flexibility of the design of the system means that as families' circumstances change, so (daily) entitlement to tax credits changes. This means tax credits can respond quickly to families' changing circumstances providing support to those that need them most.It is a system of cheese pairing and making sure that only as much state assistance as is deemed necessary is guiven (rolling, constant means testing). It's the re-distribution of poverty on crack. teh issue is the level of personal income, not support for tax credits as such.
Vin wrote:ALB wrote:where were the "working class struggles"?Are you being serious?
Yes. Of course every single worker is involved in the class struggle every day whether they realise it or not, but as this is a constant it could be invoked to explain everything or nothing. I thought you had in mind something more conscious and organised than this such as strikes. As even the Trotskyists are lamenting, unfortunately there is no organised industrial struggle going on against austerity. Most workers seem to accept the capitalist necessity for austerity at the present time or don't think there's much they can do about it.If there had have been "workers struggles" against it the government might not have tried to cut these payments in the first place, let alone later modify them (and it remains to be seen how, probably some transitional arrangement for those already getting them with new claimants getting less as originally envisaged).And of course enough workers voted Tory in the general election a few months ago, including at least one on tax credits who protested on Question Time the other day and said she had, to return a Tory government with a mandate for further austerity. I think it was Eugene Debs who said that the sound of a policeman's truncheon on the head of a striking worker was an echo of their vote for one or other capitalist party.To be credible we need to respect the facts and reason logically..
Again me thinks you are dancing around the subject
Class war continues with the 1%. It's not that clear cut. If tax credits are a means of partly administering the wages system through the state, then it is also a way in which low labour (and 'high productivity') sectors are made to subsidise labour intensive sectors (while at the same time trying to ensure that the working class only get just enough for their needs, smoothing out the costs of childcare so they don't enter into the general wage calculation and thus go to childless workers.Undoubtedly, removing the tax credits will impoverish some of the worst off famillies, and coupled with attempts to restrict union activity it is certainly part of a general push to lower wages and increase exploitation, but the remedy is not to join the Labour party in supporting the redistribution of poverty, but standing by unions.
Young Master Smeet wrote:but the remedy is not to join the Labour party in supporting the redistribution of poverty, but standing by unions.Who suggested that? You can march, demonstrate, strike etc against capitalist attacks without joining a reformist organisation. You don't give up struggling when you join the SPGB. You are also assuming that the money saved will be redistributed to other workers. The money is being distributed to the 1%'Opposition to austerity', 'Tories out' are slogans of revolutionaries. Or do we not want the tories out and do we not oppose captalist austerity?'Redistribution of poverty' is fallacious argument
Vin wrote:'Opposition to austerity', 'Tories out' are slogans of revolutionaries. Or do we not want the tories out and do we not oppose captalist austerity?Absolute piffle; they're slogans of reformists. And we don't want the Tories out merely for them to be supplanted by Labour or another party committed to running capitalism and imposing austerity which is virtually inevitable when the economy is in a downturn.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.