Let "reckless militancy" reign

Thousands of fire fighters in London are set to strike from 10am on November 5 to 9am on November 7, in a dispute over new shift patterns and management bullishness over the matter. Naturally, the bosses they're challenging and the politicians that serve them aren't happy.

The action, we are told, is "cynical" and "reckless." It has prompted fears, predictably stoked by the Daily Mail, of "a new wave union militancy."

Fire authority chairman Brian Coleman asked "what sort of union orders its firefighters to go on strike over Bonfire Night?" Clearly, the man needs a lesson in the history of the labour movement, and exactly how exercising your labour power as leverage against the employer works. Or, more likely, he is a wilfully ignorant buffoon trying to force his staff into accepting the race to the bottom.

Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi, of Parliament’s All Party Fire Safety and Rescue Group claimed that the firefighters were "endangering the lives of people for the sake of a change to their shift patterns." This became the flimsy excuse to call for no-strike laws on firemen.

He "would support anti-strike legislation if it stops putting people’s lives in danger." The idea that not trying to impose unfavourable conditions on those saving said lives might be a far better solution appears not to have crossed his mind. Not that we would expect it to, for the only consistent principle on the right is that the bosses must be favoured over the workers, at all costs.

Personally, I would hope that there is a return to "old fashioned, militant muscle," as Tory fire minister Bob Neill put it. Especially now, it is vital that workers stand up for ourselves.

Likewise, reports that striking firefighters responded to scabbing with direct action is to be welcomed. According to the BBC, "footage has emerged showing a group of people surrounding a fire engine returning to the fire station at Southwark Bridge Road, south London." At the same time, "images and names of some of the contract workers were put on a Facebook page set up in support of the strike."

Initiating violence against anybody is unacceptable, and I in no way advocate a return to the days when scabs were attacked and even murdered by pickets. But naming and shaming them, or blockading them so they cannot act as intended, is not even close to such a scenario.

Those who cross the picket line are not neutral parties. By doing so, they side with the bosses, and far more needs to be done to directly impede them in that effort.

More broadly, it appears that the firefighters' strike has thus far exemplified what pickets should be. The Socialist Worker reports that "at the picket’s peak more than 200 firefighters and supporters were gathered outside the fire brigade’s Southwark Training Centre in south London." This is exactly the kind of rank-and-file mass participation and solidarity that organised workers need on all picket lines, especially as the struggles intensify with the cuts.

The bosses and politicians, along with their mouthpieces in the media, are right to "fear" the militancy of the working class. It is a threat to them and their ability to use us and dispose of us as they see fit. That is exactly why I welcome it and say bring on the fight.

Of "austerity hypocrites" and strawmen

Writing for the First Post, Brendan O'Neill has branded "liberal, left-wing and green-leaning commentators" who oppose the measures in the Comprehensive Spending Review as "hypocrites." This smacks of a deliberate attempt to divert attention from the real issue. At best, it is callous idiocy.

O'Neill makes his case thus;

So don't be fooled by their crocodile tears today - they laid the cultural foundation stones for this age of hardship.

These austerity hypocrites have short memories. This week, the Guardian's George Monbiot wrote an angry piece about the Tory-led cuts agenda, claiming that it will help the rich and hurt the rest.

"When we stagger out of our shelters to assess the damage, we'll discover that we have emerged into a different world, run for their benefit, not ours", he said.

This is the same Monbiot who wrote a piece in 2007 titled 'Bring on the recession'.

"I hope that the recession now being forecast by some economists materialises", he said, because only a recession could give us "the time we need to prevent runaway climate change".

A recession would hurt poor people, he acknowledged - but that was a price worth paying to halt out-of-control economic growth.

Inspired by Monbiot, in 2008 some deep greens kick-started a campaign called Riot 4 Austerity - which says it all.

Their reactionary demand, dolled up in radical garb, was for a 90 per cent cut in carbon emissions - a move which would have a far more devastating impact on people's daily lives than any of the slashes Osborne has come up with.

This is just one example of how, apparently, "the cultural zeitgeist today says that wealth is bad, frugality is good; abundance is destructive, austerity is eco-friendly; wanting stuff warps us, giving things up is pure." Thus  these "liberal prejudices, propagated by the well-off" are as responsible for the current situation as Osborne.

Firstly, I must point out that I am neither a liberal, nor a member of any "intelligentsia." I am certainly not "well-off." Nor are many of the others worried about the cuts, such as those who blog at Where's the Benefit.

We're ordinary people, and we're worried by and opposed to the austerity measures of the present government. Go figure. Some of the worried are even disproportionately affected by the measures as disabled people, women, or single parents. How weird is that?

Being kind to O'Neill, we might assume that he's not referring to us, but only to the media commentators, the Labour party opposition, and/or various champagne socialists. I don't - I think he's an insincere arse looking for a stick to beat everyone who opposes the cuts with - but others may. Even on that basis, he's arguing on the basis of a cheap, over-flogged strawman.

I don't doubt that Monbiot said what he did. There are two strains of the green movement, alas dominant, which I dislike: the primitivists and the privileged. Both have a tendency to anti-humanism and the latter especially to pretend that class has no bearing on things whatsoever.

But Monbiot is not the left. He's not even the green movement. He's a single individual, paid to write for the Guardian, who many on the left - including MediaLens and anarchist Climate Campers - are critical of. And yes, that includes his "emphasis on guilt as a precursor for individualistic lifestyle change." If he demands austerity, there are many more on the left who challenge that.

But others attacked in the piece deserve no such criticism. Johann Hari, who O'Neill says "called on the government to enforce wartime-style rationing in order to save the planet from almost certain fiery doom" did nothing of the sort.

O'Neill presents Hari as believing that the government "must "force us all" to live more frugally and sensibly." When, in fact, his article stated that "green consumerism is at best a draining distraction, and at worst a con." Yes, he's advocating state action of a sort that I disagree with, but he wants the state to "force us all" to live greener, not "more frugally."

Hari, though I have disagreements with him on a variety of issues, at least aims for consistency in what he says and has certainly not called for the kind of brutal austerity that we're seeing now.

The other point to be made is that, more broadly, anti-capitalism doesn't equate to saying that "we must learn to live with less "stuff"." This is an idiotic strawman. The vast majority of anti-capitalists are not primitivists, and we don't yearn for everyone to go back to living in mud huts any more than we want a brutal, totalitarian state in the model of the Soviet Union.

What we do want is an end to a specific socio-economic order, wherein ownership is divorced from labour and intertwined state and corporate power conspire to maintain the power and privilege of a minority on the back of everyone else's labour and at our expense. In fact, we believe that replacing that with worker and community self-management would increase prosperity more broadly and end much injustice. And what George Osborne is implementing is the opposite of everything we stand for.

The "new age of austerity" is not the result of any "cultural Zeitgeist," and the blame can not justifiably be lumped with those who oppose it and those who suffer from it. But we will need to keep restating this point in the face of propaganda by the ideologues and the wilfully ignorant.

The Comprehensive Spending Review and the prospect of actually doing something about it

Today, George Osborne revealed the outcome of the Comprehending Spending Review (PDF). The document did not bring the world to its knees, or cause the complete destruction of everything we hold dear. But it remains an important landmark in the escalating class war waged by those at the top.

The welfare budget is to face an additional £7bn of cuts. This is on top of the £1.8bn cuts in housing benefit, announced in the June Budget, and £11bn of other welfare reductions announced previously.

Bendy Girl, over at Where's the Benefit, expands on just one impact of this decision;

One of the quietest announcements in today's Comprehensive Spending review was that the High Rate Mobility component of Disability Living Allowance will be removed from those resident in care homes. On the face of it that might seem a sensible place to save money, after all if someone lives in a care home surely they don't need to worry about transport, but this is certainly the nastiest, pettiest cut of all. Petty because the numbers of people resident in care homes is a very small proportion of the overall awards for high rate mobility meaning the sums of money to be saved are minimal. But downright nasty, disdainful and cruel because people resident in care homes are far more likely to use the mobility component of their disability living allowance to pay towards the phenomenally expensive specialist wheelchairs they need rather than a vehicle. 

This is not the only area in which the most vulnerable will suffer either. I have previously written about the poverty and hardship that the disabled and families with disabled dependants face. The CSR looks set to exacerbate that, and no doubt more details will emerge as its recommendations are put into practice.

On the public service front, the government has promised to "prioritise the NHS, schools, early years provision and the capital investments that support long term economic growth." Thus, health spending will see a 1.3% real terms rise by 2015, including an extra £2bn for social care.

The positives of this settlement are as follows;

• real terms increases in overall NHS funding in each year to meet the Government’s commitment on health spending, with total spending growing by 0.4 per cent over the Spending Review period;
• an additional £1 billion a year for social care through the NHS, as part of an overall £2 billion a year of additional funding to support social care by 2014-15;
• a new cancer drugs fund of up to £200 million a year;
• expanding access to psychological therapies;
• continued funding for priority hospital schemes, including St Helier, Royal Oldham and West Cumberland; and
• capital spending remaining higher in real terms than it has been on average over
  the last three Spending Review periods.

Unfortunately, more broadly, the news is not as positive. About 490,000 public sector jobs are likely to go, with the knock-on effect to consumer spending resulting in at least as many job losses in the private sector.

This will pull people further into poverty by stretching an ever-reducing welfare budget across more people, whilst the increase in VAT to 20% will drive up a cost of living which is already increasing far faster than most workers' wages. The end effect of which will be to drag the country back into recession and perhaps even depression.

But this is not news. We all knew that the CSR would be an attack, and that the government's agenda was class war, making us pay for the rich's crisis, etc. We expected that - and have been saying it since before they took power. All that I've done above is stick figures to arguments I already knew.

The important question, long overdue an answer, is where we take those arguments and what we do about the problem at hand. Other, that is, than offer up endless bluff and bluster.

I went to an anti-cuts demonstration outside the Royal Liverpool Hospital today. It was lively, and the people there were sincere enough, but what I saw there - and the evidence of similar scenes across the country - doesn't exactly fill me with confidence.

There were lots of flags and banners. People chanting and making lots of noise. Various Trot organisations hiding behind their newspapers or getting people to sign up to mailing lists under the guise of a "petition." And absolutely no indication, whatsoever, that a coherent strategy exists for anything beyond getting people to join The Party^TM, to sign up to the appropriate front group, or to at least buy a copy of the paper.

Myself and other comrades from the Solidarity Federation have been all but banging our heads against a brick wall trying to make the argument for something more effective.

We are not a political party, and we only offer membership to those who agree with the aims and principles of anarcho-syndicalism, so this is not a recruitment drive. Our paper is free, so it's not about making a sale. Our only goal is to advocate a class struggle rooted in and led by the rank-and-file of the working class, with an open and democratic structure so that resistance cannot be demobilised from above, and an emphasis on effective actions rather than legal ones.

This is not a position unique to anarcho-syndicalism, either. There are many others, anarchists, socialists, and working class people concerned about what's happening, who take a similar line. But this is not a line supported by those who declare themselves our "leaders."

The Labour Party is only willing to shout and kick up a fuss now that it's in opposition. In power, it offered similar cuts, and even now "Red" Ed Miliband warns against strikes or serious action to combat the cuts. Let alone to challenge capitalism. The unions are stifled by a bureaucracy keen to keep its seat at the top table and terrified of illegal strike action. And the various far-left parties offering themselves as our vanguard suffer the same top-down demobilisation combined with an absurdly insular world-view.

The problem is that, beyond this spectacle, there are untold numbers of people with an acute, first-hand awareness of the problems of capitalism. Many willing to do something about it. But it is easy to see why, faced with the "scene," many of those who do get involved soon wash their hands of the whole thing. And why so many others avoid it all together.

The challenge is to make the argument that organisation and resistance is possible whilst by-passing all that bullshit, and building enough momentum to actually put it into practice. Especially as the fallout from the CSR looms large.

500 pickets arrested in India, international solidarity needed

 Via Ann Arky, I have come across the following news on Labour Start;

Over 500 workers employed by Foxconn have been arrested and jailed in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The jailing follows a dispute with the company, which signed an agreement with a union belonging to the ruling party in the state -- a union which had no support at all among the workers.

Meanwhile, the strike continues and the union is holding solidarity demonstrations and rallies all over the state. They have called for international support.

As Ann Arky points out, "if India as one of the worlds largest industrial areas can lock up strikers without a murmer from the rest of the world it will become the pattern." We cannot allow that to happen.

The ongoing crisis of capital is global, as is the class war being waged against the workers for the power and profit of a few. In response to that, our struggle also has to be international and where we know of it we cannot let the plight of our fellow workers pass unremarked.

This is why there have been international actions in support of 35 trade unionists sacked for organising in Peru. (See here and here.) It is also why this latest injustice deserves a response.

Foxconn, also at the centre of the recent worker suicides in China, deserves especially to be on the receiving end of our ire. As In These Times notes, their "militaristic model is perfectly suited to the evolving workplace culture of the global economy—homogenized, disciplined, robotically efficient."

They are providing a model for industry which crushes workers underfoot with untold efficiency, and it is in the interests of every member of the working class worldwide to fight that.

Gillett and Hicks may be gone from Liverpool, but football's capital crisis has barely begun

Liverpool Football Club has been bought by New England Sports Ventures (NESV). Fans are, justifiably, glad to be rid of Tom Hicks and George Gillett. But is this really the fresh new beginning that they were after?

The most immediate problem - namely, the threat of Liverpool's holding company going into administration and the club being docked 9 points - is likely to be averted. According to the club, "the transaction values the club at £300m and eliminates all of the acquisition debt placed on LFC by its previous owners, reducing the club's debt servicing obligations from £25m-£30m a year to £2m-£3m."

So, on that front, fans can breathe easy. But the idea that simply changing owners will do anything to address the broader issues facing LFC (and, indeed, all football teams) is wishful thinking. Contrary to chairman Martin Broughton, the sale doesn't "comprehensively resolve" anything.

Football 365's MediaWatch section puts Broughton's comments in perspective;

"This is a great day for Liverpool Football Club and the supporters...I just hope we can deliver what we have set out to do. We have found the right owners. There will be money to invest in the squad" - Martin Broughton on John W. Henry, October 6, 2010.

"This is great for Liverpool, our supporters and the shareholders - it is the beginning of a new era for the club" - Rick Parry on Hicks and Gillett, February 6, 2007.

"NESV wants to create a long-term financially solid foundation for Liverpool FC and is dedicated to ensuring that the club has the resources to build for the future, including the removal of all acquisition debt" - A statement from New England Sports Ventures, October 6, 2010.

"We have purchased the club with no debt on the club. We believe in the future of the club" - George Gillett, February 6, 2007

"Our objective is to stabilise the club and ultimately return Liverpool FC to its rightful place in English and European football, successfully competing for and winning trophies...NESV wants to help bring back the culture of winning to Liverpool FC"- NESV, October 6, 2010.

"The Hicks family and the Gillett family are extremely excited about continuing the club's legacy and tradition. We are particularly pleased that David Moores and Rick Parry will have a continuing involvement in the club. For us continuity and stability are keys to the future" - A joint statement from Hicks and Gillett, February 6, 2007. 

The fact is that the major problems facing football remain. It is still operating on a business model which sees the sport and the fans who follow it as the absolute last priority for clubs. The danger that dangerously high wage costs will collapse clubs still remains.

In over a decade, wages for footballers have risen by 550%, whilst revenue has oly grown by 400%. This is hitting the clubs' bottom line, and driving up prices for tickets and merchandise. One result of this is that the cultural connection between the sport and the working class - as a result of families following teams across generations - is being torn apart by cost.

Meanwhile, competitiveness on the pitch is dying. Clubs with the most money claim a monopoly on the best players, the best coaches and training facilities, and thus the best performances. At the same time, the emphasis on buying in talent makes it more difficult for youngsters to go into the game.

None of this will be impacted by Liverpool getting a new owner. The reduced debt will not see ticket and merchandise prices go down, nor reduce the gap between the football club and the supporters which are now a market rather than a community. And the detrimental effect on local economies of turning teams into moveable franchises is an increasing problem.

The solution is the same as that in employment and communities more generally - taking the power away from a detatched board of executives and the capitalist class, and returning it to workers and local communities. In essence, the Spirit of Shankly union's ultimate goal of supporter ownership of LFC.

Unfortunately, it looks as though Liverpool fans will have to learn the hard way. There can be no "nice" capitalism, and changing the boss doesn't remove the underlying issues.

A year after the "fair tips" law, restaurant workers are still being robbed

In December last year, I commented on how changes in the law on tips paid to service sector workers hadn't prevented abuse by employers. This remains an ongoing issue, and has recently sparked protests from members of Unite the Union a year after the ineffectual change in the law.

The Brighton Solidarity Federation offers a fuller report and analysis;

The beginning of October saw the first anniversary of a change in the law designed to give waiters 100% of their tips. It was brought in because many café and restaurant owners were routinely taking advantage of a loophole in the law which allowed them to use their workers’ tips towards the wage bill. Despite being rewarded by customers with extra money for their hard graft, waiters were being paid only the minimum wage by unscrupulous managers.

The then Labour government, prompted by campaigns by Unite the Union, passed the law on 1st October 2009. But one year on, there are still problems front of house. According to Dave Turnbull of Unite, “There are still too many employers who regard tips as a subsidy for low pay and who see the tips and service charge money left by customers as a pot of cash to which they are free to help themselves.

“Unite members working in restaurants, hotels and bars across the country have seen establishments increase the percentage of service charge they deduct from their pay packets.”

Unite’s response to this is to propose further campaigns to get the government to act to put pressure on employers. Some of their members protested outside the Business Department last week, supported by no less than John Prescott, famous ex-shop steward and waiter in the merchant navy – now Lord Prescott.

However, what this demonstrates is the fact that the law is a paper tiger. For a year now the law has demanded that waiters get all of their tips – but employers know that they can find ways to get around it. The law also says that workers must be paid in full for work done – but as the Solidarity Federation has learnt recently rogue employers in Brighton are ignoring this and using the recession as an excuse not to pay up.

No amount of pleading to the government will change this situation. The only sure way of getting what we are legally entitled to is to demand it directly from our bosses in our own workplaces. Workers facing this kind of threat to their livelihoods need to stand together to demand their full wages and tips. This should be backed up with the threat of industrial action appropriate to the situation.

Brighton SolFed offer support to workers in their area looking to enact such threats, and they are not the only group willing to give a hand to workers trying to organise for the first time. The Industrial Workers of the World are also worth contacting, offering a wealth of knowledge, and experience to fellow workers in struggle.

Now, more than ever, we need to build a culture of solidarity across the working class, so that when the ruling class mess with one of us, they’re messing with all of us.

Why unemployment is not caused by worker organisation

In a 2003 paper (PDF) for the London School of Economics, Christopher A Pissarides argued that "the decline of trade union power" is one of the reasons for falling unemployment in Britain. Seven years later, this has been dredged up with much glee by the "Libertarian" blogosphere.

The Devil's Knife sums up the basic reasoning behind this;

Unions, in this day and age, exist to do only two things: inflate wages and protect their members' jobs (regardless of ability or need).

High wages reduce the number of jobs that are created—especially as technology becomes cheaper—and making it difficult to sack people not only means that jobs can be occupied by those who are not best suited to them, but also reduces the willingness of employers to take people on in the first place (thus reducing the available jobs).

This isn't exactly rocket science, is it?

It's not rocket science, indeed. But then it's not a science at all - it's economics, which is the business of blinding people to the obvious to suit the interests of certain classes.

I have already, previously, torn down the Devil's argument that worker organisation has no place or purpose in the present day. It is, quite simply, an absurdity and I feel no need to labour the point here. Suffice to say that workers, without organisation, face only a race to the bottom.

In fact, you will find this by going back to the writings of Adam Smith. Whilst workers "are disposed to combine in order to raise" wages, bosses are equally disposed to combine "in order to lower the wages of labour." More than that, "the masters can hold out much longer" than the workers if employment ceases. They can exist "upon the stocks which they have already acquired" from the labour of others.

The difference is that, in Smith's time, there was "a certain rate below which it seems impossible to reduce, for any considerable time, the ordinary wages even of the lowest species of labour." The "wages must at least be sufficient to maintain" the workforce.

With the advent of cheap credit, that is no longer the case. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (PDF), "a couple with two children needs [to earn] £29,200" in order "to afford a basic but acceptable standard of living." But many don't earn that. And many more have to work multiple jobs and live hand-to-mouth in order to barely scrape that figure.

Add to that the casualisation and ever cheaper labour that comes from un-organised workers, and the idea of a level below which employers cannot reduce wages quickly vanishes. Compared to previous generations, we are working for less - and harder.

Returning to the argument that strong unions increase unemployment, this may be true to a certain extent. But if lower wages mean more jobs, at what cost does that come? Talk to those stuck in precisely the casual work that such a market creates, such as Chugging, and you will see that trapped is exactly the right descriptor to use.

They have no base wages. They have no statutory entitlements. Attempts to assert their rights or to combine will see a target on their back and their arses out the door. They endure appalling conditions, for pitiful return, and often can find nothing better because of the declining standards of work.

Is this really an acceptable alternative to unemployment? Is this really the alleged prosperity created by the free market and the employers enjoying an unopposed monopoly of force?

The idea that high wages and job security leave those not employd out in the cold is an argument put forward in the past by Milton Friedman. In Free to Choose, he argued that unionisation frequently produces higher wages at the expense of fewer jobs, and that, if some industries are unionised while others are not, wages will decline in non-unionised industries.

But, from the left, this is a point that the Industrial Workers of the World (amongst others) make - in favour of more universal organisation!

One of the major left-libertarian criticisms of craft or trade unionism is that by organising along the lines of specific crafts or trades rather than across entire industries it creates a two-tier workforce and improves conditions for one group of workers only at the expense of another.

The alternative to this is not to get rid of organisation and equalise everything with a race to the bottom. That only benefits the bosses and makes the problem more acute.

Rather, the answer is to organise workers as a class, to unite everyone in any given industry under the same banner, and to challenge the broader injustices of the wage labour system. Rather than defending one insider group to the detriment of everybody else.

Part of which would involve pushing for greater investment and employment, both inside the workplace and outside through the organisation of the unemployed, to challenge exactly that issue.

But none of this increases the power and privilege of the ruling and propertied class, and so you won't here the right-wing (least of all self-styled "Libertarians") arguing for it. As Adam Smith noted so long ago, the combinations of the masters go unremarked upon, viewed as entirely natural, whilst the combination of workers is derided and scorned as the physical manifestation of evil or madness.

Unemployment is the product of an economic system built on theft and artificial scarcity. Those who would have us believe that combining to challenge that system is the real fault do so only because of ideological dogma. And, to be frank, they can fuck right off.

Putting a new spin on "bank robbery"

Via Ann Arky, who tips her own hat to Politics in the Zeros, I today came across this truly astounding story from the States;

In yet another sign that the foreclosure crisis in the US may be getting out of hand, a Florida woman has gone to the press about having her home broken into -- by an agent of her mortgage bank.

Nancy Jacobini of Orange County, Florida, says she was three months behind on her mortgage payments, but not in foreclosure, when she heard an intruder breaking into her home. 

Panicked, she called 911 and spent 10 nervous minutes on the phone with a dispatcher only to discover that the intruder was an agent of her mortgage company, JPMorganChase, who had come to change the locks on her home.

"Someone is breaking ... somebody broke into my house!" a frightened Jacobini can be heard saying on a 911 tape obtained by WTFV channel 9 in Jacksonville.

Now, I'm hardly a legal expert, but I know for a fact that this was an illegal act not only on the part of the burglar, but also the bank that hired them.

In Britain, even with a repossession order, bailiffs cannot force entry into your home. They must be invited or go through an open door or window. In America, I don't know if that same protection applies. But certainly, when a home is not in foreclosure and there is no possession order, they have no right to be there.

As Politics in the Zeros comments, "it’s getting so hard to tell the difference between organized crime and bankers now."

The solution recommended by Tickerguy is to "buy guns." He points out that in such a situation, many Americans "have every right under the law to stop him, up to and including the use of deadly force." I'm not sure I'd go that far, but there certainly is a case for greater community self-defence.

To cite a point I've made previously;

Groups such as Neighbourhood Watch are nothing more than gatherings of curtain twitchers, thinking they can make a community safer by putting stickers on lamp posts or acting as killjoys towards local kids. But there is no reason that people couldn't organise their neighbourhood along more radical lines, resisting thugs and repelling burglars without treating all kids as villains or getting embroiled in "keeping up with the Joneses" nonsense. Likewise, we need to advocate a defence of posession rather than or private property, recognising that defending your home and attacking private property are not oppositional acts but both a part of working class self-defence.

If we've reached the point where banks are willing to hire people to break into your home before they can lawfully repossess it, then this argument only becomes more urgent.

Graduate tax off, but students still about to be screwed

Back in July, business secretary Vince Cable proposed to solve the problem of tuition fees with a graduate tax. Needless to say many, including my other half, thought this another way of pricing the poor out of higher education. Now, it seems that the government has responded to this feeling.

However, as so often in politics, the good news is just sugar-coating for the bad;

Vince Cable has admitted the government will not make any move towards a graduate tax to fund universities.

Tory and Lib Dem members are to receive an e-mail explaining the decision in a move that will be seen as preparing the ground for a hike in tuition fees.

Lord Browne's review of fees in England is expected to recommend more than doubling fees to about £7,000 a year.

Yes, because lord knows that students don't come out of university in enough debt as it is. The figure is currently set to reach an average of £25,000 per student, and will only grow exponentially as fees are hiked up.

We should add to that the fact that it is especially low-paying and casual jobs, i.e. those frequented by students to make extra cash, are seeing pay freezes or below-inflation rises, both of which amount to a cut in pay. Thus, whilst the money they will owe out is rising, the money they can rake in is steadily falling, which will further mount up the debts.

All of which is compounded by the fact that after university graduates are no longer able to make up for that by entering lucrative careers. Many are among the one in five workers who are trapped in low-paying employment, even long after they leave university.

This is a slap in the face to all those students who (naively) supported the Liberal Democrats for their tuition fees pledge. But it is also another example of what is really happening in the economy - with universities dragging more money out of students whilst cutting what they can get in return. The only beneficiaries of this will be those raking in the cash, as ever.

When the graduate tax was announced, the National Union of Students urged a "critical mass" to mobilise against the fees as "the arrogance of vice chancellors and the supine response of spineless politicians in the Labour and Tory parties must not go unchallenged."

But this is not just about students, as employees of the universities are affected by the same cuts. This is, in fact, a microcosm of the wider class struggle, wherein the interests of the workers and of the broader community don't simply overlap: they are virtually identical. It could also provide a model for how workplace and community resistance could work in tandem.

University staff need to get behind the students and support their actions, especially more radical ones such as occupations. At the same time, students must refuse point blank to cross a single staff picket line. It is only with solidarity, and coordinated militancy, that any victory can be won.

"National interest" - the salad dressing for class warfare

In his speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham today, David Cameron invoked a chestnut much beloved of governments and political leaders. "The national interest." Meant to rally the people in the spirit of nationalism, it becomes the totem behin which injustices lie.

The injustice in the present, of course, being the cuts agenda and the ramping up of the class war. But as so many face increased hardship, we need to bear it with "broad shoulders."

Or as the slogan-ridden rhetoric would have it;

So come on – let's pull together. Let's come together.

Let's work, together, in the national interest.

Which is rich, coming from a smug bastard whose wife can afford to ponce around in a £750 Paul Smith dress. If "those with broader shoulders should bear a greater load," why are people on benefits affected at all? And where is Cameron's pay cut?

This is yet more inane, infuriating drivel from the man who coated concessions to private tyranny in the language of the libertarian left with his "Big Society."

On which subject, Cameron patronises us with "the spirit that will take us through" to that Society;

It's the spirit of activism, dynamism, people taking the initiative, working together to get things done.

Sometimes that spirit gets taken a little too far. I got a letter from a six-year-old girl called Niamh with a pound coin stuck to it. And there was a note from her mum, which said: "Dear Mr Cameron ... after hearing about the budget, Niamh wanted to send you her tooth fairy money to help."

There we are, George – nearly there. Niamh: thank you.

Niamh Riley is, alas, very real. And she - or rather, her parents on her behalf - really did send David Cameron £1 in a card to "make the country better and pay for jobs."

Aside from being cringeworthy to the nth degree, this demonstrates exactly the kind of misinformation the public are receiving about what's going on. Cameron had to send back the pound because of strict rules on accepting donations to Number 10. But if he hadn't, it wouldn't have been spent to save jobs.

Indeed, part of the problem we face is that - after spending billions to prop up institutions to prop up institutions which created the present crisis by gambling with a bubble non-existent money - the government are unwilling to spend any money to keep the real economy afloat. The consequences of which can be seen in the utter fiasco now faced by HM Revenue & Customs.

Our pay will freeze, our jobs will go, our benefits will be cut, and our services will crumble. Meanwhile, the amount we pay in tax will increase with the VAT rise. And the profits and bonuses for those at the top will continue to grow.

The problem isn't that there isn't enough money to invest in jobs and "make the country better." It's that, with socialism for the rich and capitalism for the poor, those in power don't want that.

When David Cameron tells us that "your country needs you," the next three words (unspoken) are "to bend over." The "national interest" is nothing but short-hand for the interests of the ruling class, which are served at the expense of everyone else. It's time we came together against that.

Industrial action and the law

Mayor of London Boris Johnson has added his voice to that of the CBI's calling for tougher laws governing strike ballots. This comes as a second 24-hour strike grips the London Underground, and it is a perfect demonstration of everything that is wrong with class struggle in this country.

Of course, it is only natural that employers and politicians want to reduce the power of the working class to resist them. Indeed, those that didn't quite simply wouldn't last very long in their positions.

As such, it's a lost cause pointing out the hypocrisy of the proposals. Applying Boris's wish that "unless at least 50% of union members in a workplace take part in a ballot" there can be no strike to political ballots would see us without a parliament or a mayor for London. But even if there a way to do so, reaching him with this point would not see him change his mind.

Likewise, the CBI "wants a minimum of 40% of union members balloted to be in favour of a strike." Applied consistently, we could ask why no democracy whatsoever exists on the management side of industrial relations. But this would not for a second make them reconsider their position.

The fact is plain to see that the laws currently in place for strikes are unneccessarily restrictive. And that, whatever their flaws, workplace ballots offer workers a chance to make the decision for themselves rather than (as in parliament) simply choose somebody else to make that decision for them. Because being able to withdraw your labour when unhappy with working conditions is a fundamental right.

But, as far as the bosses are concerned, the rights of the employer and proprietor should match those of a monarch. If we can think, organise, and act in our own interests, then we are violating their "property rights." On the right, liberty needs property, and those without property can be denied liberty.

This is why responding to the persistent attack on hard-won rights by appealing to their sense of reason is a lost cause. Concessions are not handed down from above out of good will.

It is for this reason that, though offered with the right intentions, the Lawful Industrial Action Bill will not address the issue at hand. In the first instance, its main purpose is to prevent employers from using the courts to block strike action "on minor technicalities." This may put an end to the recent trend of strike bans, but doesn't address the bigger hurdles that Boris and the CBI want to strengthen.

Secondly, it is a bill that never even emerged in 13 years of Labour government, and is unlikely to pass under a Tory one. Cynicism suggests that its purpose isn't even to become law, but to rebuild the old myth of Labour being a party for the working class.

Not to mention that it will be the subject of intensive lobbying by exactly such groups as the CBI.

If we need to affirm how out of touch with even the basic principle behind a strike, we need only turn to CBI deputy director-general John Cridland. He believes that it should "be business as usual, even during a strike." And so "firms must be allowed to hire temps ... to provide emergency cover."

He offers the caveat that "workers have the legal right to withdraw their labour," clearly thinking that conceding that whilst returning to the early 20th century practice of bussing in scabs to break strikes is an acceptable compromise for both sides. Which in effect proves the IWW's point that "the working class and the employing class have nothing in common."

We cannot appeal to the ruling class's sense of reason. Any legal actions, even if effective in the short-term, will act only as a stop-gap in the face of the long term onslaught of the class war.

If we really want to end repressive anti-strike measures, and to stop the business lobby in their efforts to roll back every hard won right and privilege of the last 150 years, there is only one conclusion. We need to break their laws and stand together in struggle - no matter what they throw at us.

From anarchism in Manchester to fighting fascism in Liverpool, reflections on an interesting day

As I mentioned in a previous post, today I went to the Anarchist Bookfair in Manchester, as well as a PCS anti-cuts demonstration nearby. Meanwhile, the BNP returned to Liverpool City Centre. Luckilly, I caught the end of that particular event - and it was little short of epic.

The Bookfair was a fairly laid-back event. Lots of groups and lots of comrades were present, the aim being to promote solidarity and the ideas of anarchism.

As well as stalls containing books, pamphlets, and merchandise from various organisations - Solidarity Federation, Anarchist Federation, Class War, The Commune, The IWW, Manchester Anti-Fascist Alliance, etc - there were a variety of interesting talks on. It also offered, as I mentioned in the week, a reprieve from activism whilst still being around people of like mind.

The only downer was that whilst there I learned of the BNP being in Liverpool. I rang around a few others to spread the word, but being so far away was frustrating to say the least.

The PCS demonstration was also something of a muted affair. There were a number of speakers including a rather interesting socialist rapper and (shamefully) a Labour councillor. But it was more about encouraging people to get involved and doing something than making a scene, which was good.

Taking a leaf from that book, I took the opportunity to hand out free copies of Catalyst, and make the argument to my fellow PCS members for a more radical, i.e. anarcho-syndicalist approach.

Though, in hindsight, referring to Mark Serwotka as a "bloated bureaucratic gasbag" may have been far too inflammatory a closing remark. I stand by the point within it, but occasionally passion (not to mention a couple of pints) numbs my sense of tact and diplomacy. Oh well.

I got off the train to Liverpool at quarter to six, and headed into town to see if the fascists were still around. What I saw was truly astounding to behold.

Two weeks ago, when the BNP tried to hold a stall in the City Centre, they were met with spontaneous resistance from over 200 people, more considering that people came and went during the day. As a result, last week they retreated to their comfort zone in Huyton, but today they tried once again to claim the streets of Liverpool for the far-right. What a mistake that was.

As two weeks before, phone calls and text messages saw local antifascists mobilise in opposition. And once again, their ranks were swelled by great swathes of the public, particularly young people.

However, today far eclipsed the events of a fortnight ago, and the police were unable to prevent the fascists from being entirely surrounded and blocked from public view.

Earlier on in the day, activists from Liverpool Antifascists gave out several thousand leaflets to largely receptive passers-by. Some people did angrily reject the leaflets - only to come back and apologise when they realised they weren't BNP!

They also received genuine thanks from people, especially those from ethnic minorities, for the work we were doing. 

There was some trouble later in the day when fireworks were thrown. One exploded on the BNP's stall table, collapsing it. Another exploded within the ranks of antifascists. Fortunately, nobody was seriously injured. BNP "super-activist" Peter Tierney hurt his foot, though given that he attacked an antifascist from behind with a camera tripod, we find sympathy difficult.

The thrower of the fireworks, a silly and incendiary act which I could have gotten any number of innocent people hurt, was not identified.

 

The BNP, however, were on top form.

Their activists got in the faces of teenagers and youngsters, with Andrew Tierney at one point breaking ranks to chase a young girl, only to be physically restrained. One fascist shoved a man holding his young daughter in has arms. And Jamie Luby was seen telling the same young girl to "find him in O'Neill's" if she wanted to fight him.

Most telling of all, however, was Andrew Tierney's threat that - because an unknown individual had thrown fireworks (one at antifascists, we hasten to add) everyone who opposed the BNP was now "fair game."

Organiser Mike Whitby also promised that when they took pictures of those opposing the BNP, they would end up "on a site far worse than Redwatch."

This shows that the BNP have far from outgrown their violent roots, and that they are still more than willing to intimidate and attack opponents. As Peter Tierney, of course, showed us when he picked up that camera tripod.

But the threats didn't work on local people. Even children, some no older than eleven, stood up to the thugs. At one point, they jumped on a raised podium to block Andrew Tierney's view of the girl he had been shouting at when he tried to take a picture of her.

Eventually, the BNP gave in, packed up and loaded their propaganda into two cars, to much jeering. But this time, people did not simply watch them go. Motivated by the success of the day, and antagonism from the fascists, people surrounded the police and the cars and literally ran them out of town.

This really was one of the best things I have ever seen, and it made my day. It also demonstrates without a shadow of a doubt that militant direct action is the greatest weapon against fascism.

The myth of "the cuts that aren't cuts"

In timely fashion, the Devil's Knife has proved my point about the authoritarian tendencies of the "libertarian" right with a post called "Time to kill the unions." He opens the post with something else common across the right: the idea that talk of cuts is being blown out of all proportion.

He links to the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) - a think-tank which has nothing to do with the real Adam Smith - who tell us why we should "take a deep breath, look at the numbers, and then calm down."

In their own words;

the government's proposed cuts are pretty small beer. In nominal terms, spending will rise every year. In real terms (assuming 2 percent a year price inflation) this equates to small cuts in 2011-12, 2012-13 and 2013-14, followed by small rises in 2014-15 and 2015-16. Compared to the c.60% real terms public spending rise that took place under the previous government, this is, frankly, insignificant.

...

What the coalition's spending plans really amount to is a five-year, real terms freeze of current expenditure, combined with three years of significant falls in capital expenditure. The overall impact of that is a a very small, real terms drop in TME [Total Managed Expenditure] (roundabout 1.5%) between now and 2015-16.

Although "you would be forgiven for thinking that the coalition government's planned public spending cuts are every bit as swingeing as the BBC would have us believe," the "fuss the unions are making" blows things out of all proportion.

So there's no need to go jumping out of windows just yet. Or so the ASI and DK would have us believe.

The main problem with the ASI's figures is that they'll go tits up with the comprehensive spending review. This is where the bulk of cuts come in, with a target of 25 - 40% reductions.

Before that arrives, we have promises of 800,000 claimants being thrown off incapacity benefit and £4bn being cut from the welfare bill. Cuts in housing benefits put 200,000 people at risk of homelessness, at a time when construction of social housing will slump by 65%.

In the workplace, the GMB union estimates there are nearly 150,000 job losses are already in the pipeline. The Sunday Times doubles that, whilst the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development expects the final tally to be closer to 725,000. Which, of course, gives the most conservative estimate to the "fuss-making" trade union.

Compared to the stale, impersonal figures of the ASI, this paints a more credible picture because it is a human picture. The economy doesn't exist in abstract, after all.

As I noted earlier this month;

Back on planet earth, it is the real economy which produces actually existing wealth, and upon which genuine economic stability is built. After all, it is no good having vast quantities of imaginary wealth if you can't keep your family fed and clothed and a roof over your head.

But the British government (among others) want austerity. That is, they want cuts in jobs, benefits, and public services. Even within the parameters of the existing economic system, this is little short of madness.

As workers, our labour power is reduced with less of us working. As consumers, our purchasing power is diminished with less money to spend on the goods being produced. Each impacts on the other, and production and consumption are driven into a downward spiral.

Thus, the real economy contracts. The effects of this, based upon the tangible rather than on generated figures, is far more damaging than of a recession in the financial markets.

But, of course, pointing this out makes me a "deficit denier." I could probably also be labelled a union thug for recognising that people will want to defend their livelihoods. And a filthy commie for not believing in the joys of capitalism or the self-evident divinity of "the market^TM."

In which spirit, I gladly ignore the ASI's advice to "take a breath," and will continue to organise against attacks on my class. No matter how bland the number crunchers make those attacks look.

The Taxpayers' Alliance - an alliance of capitalists and scabs?

According to the Telegraph, the Taxpayers' Alliance has seen its membership grow by 70% to 55,000 people. It has also been seeking advice from FreedomWorks, a Washington-based organisation connected to the US Tea Party movement. At the least, these developments should raise a few eyebrows.

Like the Tea Party movement, the Taxpayers' Alliance is a grouping of conservative/pseudo-libertarian right-wing reactionaries. On its website, it claims to be about "committed to forcing politicians to listen to ordinary taxpayers." In reality, it represents the interests of the more privileged sectors of society and the agenda of at least one segment of the ruling class.

This is evident in the fact that the rhetoric used by the organisation - for example, on welfare reform (PDF) - is almost perfectly in tune with that used by the conservative government and the Daily Mail.

Another case in point is its attitude to trade unions. It has strongly attacked facilities time for trade union reps in the public sector, claiming that the arrangement costs taxpayers £85m per year. The potential cost-benefits, from negotiation which prevents strikes to representation which resolves disputes before they reach employment tribunals, isn't examined. Funny, that.

But, for all that, they remain another right-wing lobby group amidst many others calling for a tune to which the government is already dancing. The real problem arises when their opposition to workers and trade unionists - i.e. the real ordinary taxpayers - becomes physical. Which it is seeking to do.

In yesterday's Guardian Matthew Elliott, founder of the TPA, said this;

You could say our time has come. Take the strikes on the London underground this week and how much they annoyed and inconvenienced people. Couldn't we get 1,000 people to protest that?

Perhaps they could. They'd certainly get a lot of take up from the scabs of this world, braindead, class-traitor scumbags that they are.

This would be a great boon for the government, able to emulate America by obfuscating class war with a manufactured culture war. Thus would an army of the ill-informed take on the government by attacking their fellow workers and shoring up the state that is attacking their livelihoods.

In response, the working class need to rebuild the culture of mass participation and solidarity that once defined the labour movement. Our picket lines need to be brimming with people fighting for their livelihoods, not staffed by six "official pickets" whilst everybody else uses the "day off" to go shopping, as is often the case at present.

If we can't do that, then the emergence of a "British Tea Party" would be a crushing defeat. We cannot allow that to happen.

Some simple economics

A poll conducted by the BBC has found that six in ten people questioned were i"n favour of taking steps to reduce the deficit." No doubt, that will be enough for the government who will take this  a public "endorsement" of their programme. But, even without context, this result is hardly vindication.

It would be a surprise if the majority of people thought any other way. Before the election, all three main parties took a virtually identical line on the "need" for cuts, and the media has continually parrotted the propaganda line with consistent attacks on public sector workers in order to justify robbing the poor to pay for the rich.

With the ideological line being hammered home so consistently, it is no wonder that people believe that we need to take action to reduce the deficit. But this doesn't mean that they agree with the Tories that their basic standard of living needs to come under fire.

In fact, as the BBC found, they believe quite the opposite. Hence why "some 82% of 1,000 people surveyed were against education and healthcare cuts."

But then, these people (that is, the majority of ordinary people) are "deficit deniers." They simply don't understand economics or what's good for them. The working class need to understand that their being able to sustain themselves adequately would "set the economy on a road to economic ruin."

This is the great lie about economics that so many happily perpetuate - it is not a science, and it is not a specialist area that you have to study and understand. It is, in fact, an extremely simple thing to grasp.

What those who spend years studying it learn, in essence, is the bluff and bluster which goes into masking the subject's simplicity and keeping it out of the reach of ordinary people. Economists are little more than the high priests of capitalism.

Thus, the "deficit deniers" don't actually deny the deficit at all. We simply recognise that it is not our deficit, but the ruling class's deficit, borne of gambling and lending on the back of stolen wealth.

The working class constitute the vast majority of people on this planet, and it is from us that all the wealth of this world comes. Through our labour power as workers, we produce every necessary, valuable, or saleable product. Through our purchasing power as consumers, we drive trade and give money its value.

This is the real economy. But whilst the workers drive it, on the back of our labour it feeds a small minority of parasites in the top strata of society: the capitalist class.

The capitalist class punch above their weight because, right back to the feudal era, the monopoly of violence enjoyed by the state has enforced the illusory "right" of private property, allowing the few to control the wealth of the world and claim dominion over those who produce it.

The financial markets, meanwhile, are merely the mechanism by which that class gamble with money which isn't their own, against "indicators" whose parameters they define, to multiply their wealth to entirely fictitious levels. The money being played with during the financial crisis and bailouts, for example, did not exist until central banks declared that it did and "injected" it into "the economy."

All that the "stability" of banks and the financial markets, much vaunted as the basis of economic security, guarantees is the ability of the ruling class to create money out of thin air.

Back on planet earth, it is the real economy which produces actually existing wealth, and upon which genuine economic stability is built. After all, it is no good having vast quantities of imaginary wealth if you can't keep your family fed and clothed and a roof over your head.

But the British government (among others) want austerity. That is, they want cuts in jobs, benefits, and public services. Even within the parameters of the existing economic system, this is little short of madness.

As workers, our labour power is reduced with less of us working. As consumers, our purchasing power is diminished with less money to spend on the goods being produced. Each impacts on the other, and production and consumption are driven into a downward spiral.

Thus, the real economy contracts. The effects of this, based upon the tangible rather than on generated figures, is far more damaging than of a recession in the financial markets.

All of which is obvious on the basis of simple observation. Ordinary people are aware of this, even if on an unconscious level, which is why acknowledging the deficit doesn't equate to accepting the government's "fix" for it.

Propping up the financial markets at the expense of the real economy will bring down both. Maybe when that happens, the market ideologues will start listening to the deficit deniers.

The flaws in the tax system and the falsehoods of the cuts agenda

HM Revenue & Customs have revealed that their new computer system has identified discrepancies in nearly 6 million tax records. At the same time, the revelation adds to the case that, if the government genuinely wants to reduce the deficit, it is aiming in entirely the wrong direction.

According to BBC News, 4.3 million people have overpaid tax and are due a rebate, whilst a further 1.4 million have underpaid at an average of £1,500 each.

Considering that there are around 30 million taxpayers in Britain, this is actually a relatively low margin of error. Moreover, it is one caused by the change in peoples' working patterns and the routine of modern life rather than an explicit error.

As the BBC explains;

Discrepancies arise when the amounts deducted in tax and National Insurance by employers using the PAYE (Pay as You Earn) system do not match the information held on HMRC records.

This most often occurs when individuals change jobs, have more than one job at the same time, or because employers are using the wrong tax code.

Obviously, this is occuring more often now with the casualisation of labour, employment becoming less permanent or long-term, and more people having to take multiple jobs in order to survive. It is, quite simply, becoming harder to keep a roof over our heads or remain in stable employment.

As a result, "the new computer system was introduced by HMRC in 2009 to cope with changing working patterns."

A blog for computer weekly, from January, explains the changes;

Disparate tax records on the old Fujitsu-based COP [Computerization of PAYE] mainframes have been brought together on the more modern Accenture/Capgemini National Insurance Recording System (NIRS2), based at Newcastle.

Since NIRS2 holds one record on every individual in the UK, information on various employments can reside in that file.
So, for the first time, HMRC's tax officers are able to see at a glance when a person has more than one employer.

As such, the discovery of these discrepancies should be the first step towards perfecting the PAYE system and avoiding such errors and over/underpayments in the future.

But the new system was dogged by errors from the start.

Computer Weekly cites the Chartered Institute of Taxation, who tell us that "HMRC is issuing around 25 million tax coding notices this year, double the number issued last year." Which would be fine, except that "a significant proportion of these are wrong."

A month later, the BBC received word from anonymous Revenue employees on the reason for this;

Frontline Revenue staff who use the new system have told BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme how bad the problems are.

They said that the computer cannot be relied upon to generate the correct tax codes in numerous cases.

One employee - who spoke on condition of anonymity - said the situation is getting worse

"When it first started, we were all getting terribly frustrated with the new system, and we didn't know if it was us or it that was the problem," she said.

"But as it's gone on and on it's evident it's the system.

"We're waiting to see if things are put right in April.

"But none of us believe that they will be, because we've heard it all before."

Pensioners could over-pay

Another Revenue worker who deals with customer problems said more than half a million people who started claiming their state pension this tax year could automatically have too much tax deducted from their income, next tax year.

The system assumes the pension was paid for a whole tax year, rather than for part of one.

It then concludes that not enough tax has been taken, and collects it by reducing the tax code in 2010/11.

The Revenue said it has now fixed this problem and corrected affected records. However many people will have already received an incorrect tax code.

Marriage allowance at risk

The employee also said that married couples and civil partners aged 75 or more - who can still get a married couple's allowance - may find it dropped from their tax code.

"If our computer doesn't have their partner's name or national insurance number, as soon as it recodes for next year, it's taking the marriage allowance out.

"We've then got to write to these people to ask for their partner's name and national insurance number." 

In 2008, the National Audit Office predicted (PDF) that "MPPC" - the "Modernisation of PAYE Processes for Customers" - would cost £140m up to 2011, and deliver £93m savings over that period.

But the value of the savings may be exaggerated, given the volume of work that the new system has generated. It is, after all, the staff within HMRC who will be finding and issuing the over and underpayments of tax. All that the system itself can do is generate work items.

As John Stokdyk of Accounting Web notes (via the delightfully-named HMRC is Shite);

The capability to reconcile many of these discrepancies within the new system was not available until the third phase of the project in April 2010, which meant that more than 7m over- and underpayments were unreconciled when it came to run the 2010-11 annual coding exercise. These records will now be processed from August 2010, although it is not yet clear how many cases will clear automatically and how many will be left for manual working.

When the new system encountered an employee that it could not match to existing employment data, it automatically generated a new, erroneous employment record. So many new items were appearing that when HMRC processed 2008-09 data on the system, it exceeded its 12.5m capacity for open items. The 7m work items arising from 2008-09 returns had to be removed from the workflow queue rescheduled for processing in August 2010.

Thus, whilst the likes of Tim Worstall might presume that "if you’ve just automated some function you simply do not need as many people as you used to," the reality here is quite different.

He is delighted that the government can sack Revenue employees, allowing them to "go off and do something else" as he puts it. But whilst they join an ever-growing dole queue created by austerity measures, the tax affairs of those still working become ever more fucked up.

If there is a drain on resources in HMRC, then surely it senior management. They have fostered a low morale which saw HMRC score lowest of all government departments on the 2010 civil service People Engagement Survey (PDF).

As the 2009 Capability Re-Review noted;

Current efforts by the senior leadership team to tackle poor staff engagement and improve visibility and communications are not working and this is affecting the productivity of staff. HMRC has a very high rate of sickness absence.

The result is not only a decline in the health and performance in the staff, but also in the service offered to taxpayers. Since it is the staff, if anybody, who will be sorting out the records of the 6m people not paying enough tax, this doesn't bode well at all.

The sensible alternative to this mess, and the dogma of "cuts, cuts, cuts" which has brought us to this point, is to make sure that there are enough staff to get things right first time.

This would help to put the tax system right, ensuring in the future that several million people aren't faced with a tax bill they can ill afford. But it would also mean that the deficit could be addressed without having to attack the working class with job, public service, and benefit cuts.

Richard Murphy argues this point in much more depth in Tax Justice and Jobs: The business case for investing in staff at HM Revenue and Customs.

But we should be under no illusion that we can argue for such a situation using reason alone. The government's agenda is driven not just by a desire to reduce the deficit, but by an ideological need to make the working class pay for the crisis of the rich.

That is why the PCS union are leading the fight for tax justice, lobbying and campaigning for the closure of the tax gap over the closure of tax offices. It is a laudable aim, which in the short term could help countless working class people cling onto their livelihoods, and keep a roof over their heads and food on their table.

At the same time, we need to be sure that we don't lose sight of the long term. Ultimately, there is no such thing as "fair" capitalism. As long as the working class are under the heel of the state and capitalism, the welfare state is our only (weak) protection and the threat of its removal will be ever-present.

Lobbying, petitions, and campaigns such as the one for tax justice need to be the beginning of our fightback, not the end. Ultimately, our only real defence will be in direct action.