On a weird week in politics...

I was going to post a comment on Lenin's Tomb, that ever fascinating and engaging website, the acknowledged home of internet Bolshevism (thank you: that'll be my usual fee), but something seems to be up with the comment boxes. Here's what I was going to say on the Tories Retreat... what's the odds it's going to be impressionistic and downbeat?

What an odd situation. The big battalions of class struggle supposed to fight these contests seem confused, enervated and perhaps paralysed. This leaves room for little flying squads of electricians and trotskyists to score victories. The trouble is irregular detachments struggle to alter the big picture. The NHS Bill is still alive, the breakup of comprehensive education is still going ahead, the housing benefit cap is still being fitted. Workfare may not be compulsory any more for 16-24 year olds (great!), but it's still compulsory for the long term unemployed and the sick (who can be asked to give unlimited slave labour).

Ye gods, it's going to take a lot to bring down this zombie government.

Wow, it was what the world was waiting for, wasn't it?

What is it actually about?

See below: this is what workfare means, the sacrfice of the young, the vulnerable and the sick to pointless, degrading toil and to almost ritual insults from managers and bureaucrats. Workfare is destroying talent, breaking spirits and wasting time; all to prop up big business profit margins.

Asa Dawson was made to work at Poundland’s Bridlington branch last October. He is 18 and has qualifications in IT support, but was told he had to do it.

“The jobcentre said once it was offered to me I didn’t have the choice to refuse it".

“They said it’s ‘voluntary’, but if you refuse they cut your jobseekers’ allowance. And I’m using that to pay my rent.”

Tim Knight-Hughes says his experience was similar when he was made to work unpaid for door-to-door sales firm JM Enterprise in Norwich.

“I was told it would be ‘minimum wage’ with ‘commission based bonuses’,” he said.

“It was a lie. After completing three rounds of interviews I had to sign a contract saying I would work for free for a trial period without a guaranteed prospect of a job.

“If I walked out in disgust it would threaten my benefits.”

This is workfare in a nutshell:

Tim says the vast majority of people who worked for free at the sales firm didn’t get jobs at the end of it either. “After the ‘trial period’ I complained to the jobcentre that this job wasn’t really a job at all".

If there is work to be done let it be done, fine, but let it be done for a wage.

This is the attitude of our overlords:

“I was reprimanded by the jobcentre manager—and told that ‘beggars can’t be choosers’.”

You are not a human being with talent, verve and energy, you are not entitled to help, to dignity or respect; you are a beggar, be grateful for your scraps.

Workfare is a menace, to the employed as well as the unemployed, as it depresses the job market at a time of recession. No wonder the government is afraid of a tiny band of gimlet-eyed dialecticians (insignificant yet strangely able to bring major corporations to their knees). If the government is willing to go this far to grind working people down, how far are working people going to go to shake them off? Who knows? It can't come too soon.

You and Me vs the world

Or, let's be clear, the right-wing press. Socialism is trending on Twitter, apparently, thanks to a spasm of fear, the usual wave of panic anytime there's the possibility of a left-wing challenge to austerity; only this time it's not simple trade unionists (don't they seem tame now?) but The Reds, the real out and out Reds. Dun, dun, duh!

We might find it amusing to suddenly be the subject of the news but this is red-baiting going on, and red-baiting is bad news (remember: baiting does not succeed through logic or clarity but volume, and the Tory press has plenty of that). Though it's great to have the government on the back foot we should demure ever so slightly, not claim all the credit because: (1) many, many other people are campaigning against workfare slavery, not to mention many more are opposed it - it would be simply untrue to suggest socialists are behind it all (2) the government would like to suggest it's all part of the international communist conspiracy because it suits them to make people choose between the government and the SWP.

Jobs without wages... happy now?

Wages: JSA + expenses. Hours: TBC. Duration: permanent. Yes folks, we have slavery, legal slavery in Britain today. You happy, you fine with that?

Jim Crows again...

The state of Alabama has passed a law making immigration all but a crime in itself. The same law also allows private prisons to use prisoners far more extensively for work. A Guardian writer wonders where this is going?

The difference between Alabama and adjoining states is that it is willing to go further down this track. Recently, John McMillan, agriculture commissioner, proposed that the farm work left behind by immigrant workers be supplied with inmate labor. Decatur, a private detention center about 50 miles to the north-west of Alabama, which had been unable to find jobs for inmates, has now witnessed record numbers of requests for labor (for an estimated 150 detainees a day).

So, here is how it goes. First, the state passes a harsh immigration law. Then, it detains large numbers of immigrants. Third, private prisons (LCS, CCA, GEO) receive fresh inmates. And finally, the artificially created labor shortage is supplied by the new inmates. Does this sound like modern-day slavery to anyone?

It has been well observed that the American prison industry is huge. The justice system is a racist system, the cutting edge of a racist society, disproportionately punishing ethnic minorities. Work is effectively forced. Slavery has effectively been restored.

But the relation of work to compulsion and control. We are all wage slaves. We don't need a whip, merely an alarm clock to make us fall into line. We don't have to work for anyone in particular, but we have to work for someone. What the capitalist class wants is, in effect, labour like water. It can turn the tap off and on as and when it needs to.

The capitalist class's plan, it's only plan, for dealing with the current depression is to hold down costs, especially wages, and export. Individually this makes sense, as a collective this is madness, but competitive accumulation drives this system, the first point of view must dominate. Racist laws such as the one passed in Alabama are not just an attack on a people but a class, an experiment in setting a new, lower baseline in working class life. A portion of the working class will go from working for next to nothing to all but nothing, a further downward pressure on all working people, at least in Alabama. It is another illustration why the working class, if it is to be a class for itself, for its own interests, must be staunchly anti-racist.