En Passant

Is there an alternative to rising unemployment? Because unemployment is built into the capitalist system, we will have to fight the bosses and government to stop it. That means using our industrial muscle to stop the bosses sacking us and forcing them to pay us more than pittance wages.

Let’s be fair. Hockey is partly right. With his government increasing unemployment – it jumped from 6% to 6.4% last month – and denying those under 30 the dole for 6 months, young unemployed people won’t be able to buy food let alone drive anywhere.

Forcing the unemployed into extreme poverty is an important part of the government’s wage cutting strategy. It is time for our unions to defend the unemployed and their own members. Stop work to stop the bosses’ Budget.

Can unemployed workers and others being conscripted into the green army organise and fight back against this rotten exploitation? Absolutely. Will they? Well, since they aren’t covered by industrial laws, withholding their labour won’t be illegal.
If there were a lead from the ACTU and other unions, perhaps they would take action, supported by other workers industrially and financially. If not, then the downward spiral of wages is likely to accelerate under the impact of Tony Abbott’s slave wage green army.

A spectre is haunting Australia; the spectre of unemployment. Because this is a crisis of profitability in the developed countries, pussyfooting around and kowtowing to capital won’t work. In the words of the BLF: If you don’t fight, you lose.The time to fight unemployment is now, not when it hits six or seven or eight percent. A 30 hour week without loss of pay would be a start.

The last few days have shown us that the Liberals are scapegoating immigrants. Labor is scapegoating the unemployed. Both scapegoat refugees. None of these people are to blame for the crises of capitalism. Fight the system, not its victims.

We live in an unjust society. This is a society where bosses take as their own the profits we create. Labour creates value, not capital.

The owners of capital are the real bludgers. But Gillard won’t attack them. She is, like the rest of the ALP, their servant.

People weren’t voting for the Republicans in Massachusetts. They were voting against Obama’s business as usual administration.

Obama now heads the racist machine. As he destroys the illusions millions had in him, the lesson seems clear. Change comes not from changing who runs the system but from changing the system.

While we face increasing unemployment and less working hours, the bosses party. What a sick society. What a rotten system.