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Debt Slaves

18/06/08

With a failing world economy and what economists are saying is a down turn in the financial markets, will governments look to the very same markets for solutions and fall back on the old reliable answers – raised taxes for workers and exemption for the fat cats?

Or will the people crushed by the down turn in the capitalist market begin to force the long awaited changes needed to create real and lasting economic security at the national and global level?

Over the last number of years the major companies and banks of Europe and, in particular, Ireland and Britain have made enormous profits for which they have paid little or no tax. The people who have worked for these same companies and made their profits for them are now looking into the abyss of further debt and negative equity.

Whilst the majority of the world struggles and starves to death, talk of credit crunches and global recession/depression is on the lips of every working class person in the ‘West’.

Despite the carefully fostered impression that the ‘squeeze’ is transcending all classes there are, as always, those who are able to make a profit. These are the very banks and institutions whose greedy economic philosophy has created the current crisis.

It is the working class – teachers, builders, fire fighters and shop assistants – who will really feel the squeeze. Those of us who bought homes and materials on the basis of credit and the promises of banks and moneylenders are now on the cusp of serious problems in family and working life because of the vast debt accumulated.

Over the last 4-5 years, banks lent 100 per cent and 180 per cent mortgages to people to get them on the ‘property ladder’, knowing that every sell was a profit and, in essence, every mortgage was money in the bank. For a large number of working class people, the major difficulty will be attached to mortgage problems and there will be no let up on the part of the debt collectors.

These people are the very same workers whose productivity built the ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy in the Twenty-Six Counties and allowed the major industries and banks to amass their vast profits. These institutions will not feel the crunch, as their friends in government will provide better deals to maintain their profit margins.

Governments including Leinster House and Westminster’s Six-County institution, are currently putting together packages to help out the business sector, while those who are hardest hit receive no ‘tax breaks’ or ‘financial incentives’. This can only lead to an exacerbation of the crisis.

The reality for those on the average wage in Ireland is that their houses will be worth less, their public services will cost more, their work will be valued less and their cost of living will cost more.

All of this perpetuates an age-old result of capitalist economics – wage and debt slavery. Where the vast majority of people live to work, rather than work to live, whilst a small few skim massive profits off their labour and live lavish lives, unimaginable to the majority of us.

Any reasonable government which understands the reality of being tied to global (imperialist) financial institutions and the cycle of famine and feast (or simply famine in many cases) which characterise the global capitalist economic trend, would begin today with the building of real alternatives.

Global markets have ebbed and flowed in such a way since the onset of industrialisation and massively so since the introduction of so-called free market economics. Economics that are based upon profit for businesses in competing markets rather than wealth for the nation and its citizens yield inevitable negative results.

Within such systems business and business barons become the elite of society, to be preserved at all costs, and the worker, the number on the factory floor, or the teacher in the classroom, becomes a dehumanised component of massive industries, whose sole purpose is to create money rather than essentials.

It is absolutely inevitable that the lowest rung of the ladder in such a profit chain – the worker and consumer – will be hardest hit by the equally inevitable economic crises manifested by the same system. What is also inevitable is that people will resist and, when oppressed, they will resist 10-fold.

Therefore, as the economic reality of a flawed system of false wealth dawns upon the workers of Europe and the impoverished of the world, new ideas have and will continue to emerge and movements have and will continue to push for a lasting system of politics and economics premised upon the priority of people and our collective welfare.

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