Workers at British ports have become the latest group of workers to join millions more of their brothers and sisters across the globe to strike for higher pay, to try to keep up with soaring prices. A victory for one group of workers is a victory for all workers. We need to do all we can to ensure such victories.
In Britain, tens of thousands of workers are already taking industrial action in support of pay claims to try to catch up with double digit inflation that would otherwise eat into their living standards, and reduce real wages. The talk from the bosses, from government and from the Tory media about a wage-price spiral is utter rubbish and obvious lies. With wages having been kept low for 40 years, following the defeat of the miners in 1984-5, with hourly wage rises over the last year, being at best in the region of 3%, and for millions of workers, particularly those employed by the capitalist state, being zero or near zero, it is clearly just a blatant lie to blame wages for the double digit inflation that Britain, like other western countries is currently suffering. Its also, an equal lie to claim that in simply trying to catch up with those price rises, rising wages would add to that inflation.
The reason for the high level of inflation has nothing to do with wages. Inflation is a monetary phenomenon. The current high inflation is due to huge amounts of money tokens having been printed by central banks, and used to fund the furlough and other income replacement schemes of governments, which they introduced during the idiotic lock downs. Money is universal labour, the equivalent form of value to all of the commodities produced and to be circulated in the economy. If the total value of commodities rises, because either the same quantity are produced, but more labour is required for their production, or because a greater quantity of commodities is produced, then their money equivalent increases accordingly, and vice versa.
If the total value of commodities had remained constant between 2020 and 2022, then their money equivalent would also remain constant. In which case, printing huge numbers of additional money tokens, could only have the effect of reducing the value of each token, as their total value could not exceed the amount of money they represent, i.e. total social labour-time. But, in fact, because of the idiotic lockdowns, the quantity of commodities/services produced, the amount of additional value produced, fell by 20%. In fact, therefore, money equivalent of that value also fell, and so the quantity of money tokens in circulation should have been reduced, not increased. The inevitable consequence of printing additional money tokens, on a massive scale, at a time when the amount of value produced was significantly reduced, could only be to massively devalue each of those tokens, manifest in rising prices - inflation. Workers and their wages had nothing to do with that!
That inflation was created throughout the globe, because central banks everywhere did similar things as governments in many places implemented the same kinds of idiotic lock downs. So, its inevitable that the inflation also finds its way into the costs of production of many commodities across the globe, including things like energy and food production. But, in addition to those generally rising prices due to inflation, there is also rising prices in specific commodities, for other reasons.
NATO has been engaged in an economic war with Russia and China for years. Its manifest in the tariffs and other trade restrictions placed on Chinese exports, for example. Given that China is the workshop of the world, and supplies large quantities of manufactured commodities, the inevitable consequence of those tariffs and so on, is to increase the prices of those commodities paid by workers in other countries. But, more recently, there has also been the economic war waged against Russia. What was said above about inflation can be seen by the fact that the price of energy and food was rising long before Russia invaded Ukraine. Those prices were rising sharply in 2021, as I detailed at the time. In part, that was also due to the fact that long before Russia invaded Ukraine NATO countries were implementing sanctions on Russia, with the effect of restricting Russian exports of energy, grains and fertiliser, all of which played into the rising global costs of energy and food from which workers everywhere are now suffering.
US imperialism used its muscle to make Germany block use of the new Nordstream 2 gas pipeline that would have pumped huge amounts of cheap Russian gas into Europe, for example. It also leaned on the EU to reduce its imports of cheap Russian oil, forcing it, thereby, to have to buy much more expensive US oil, instead, as Ed Morse described in this interview with Bloomberg some time ago. I set out all of these causes of rising global prices of food and energy in my blog NATO's War Is Causing Global Famines.
On top of all that, in Britain, another cause of rising prices and wider economic damage is a result of the idiotic Brexit. It has increased the costs of all the things that Britain buys from the EU, and made it more difficult for us to sell to them; it has introduced huge delays and frictions in trade between Britain and the EU, and with Northern Ireland, as well as introducing additional costs in that trade; it has reduced the ability to move labour to where it is required, so that all sorts of unnecessary supply blockages have been created, for example, with crops being left to rot in fields and so on.
None of that is anything to do with wages. On the contrary, in terms of hourly wages, they are lagging these rising prices, and workers are striking entirely justifiably to catch up. Its nonsense to say that doing so causes additional inflation. Take an easy example, suppose we take bread as representing all production. The price of a loaf of bread is, say, £1. It is comprised of £0.50 for materials, energy, and wear and tear of fixed capital, the other £0.50 comprising £0.25 wages and £0.25 profits. Now, to make the calculation easy, let's say that inflation is 100%, so that the price of bread rises to £2. In line with this 100% inflation, the price of all the materials and so on, will have doubled, so that they now amount to £1.
Now the bosses, government and Tory media want workers to accept say only a 20% pay rise, or a fifth of what inflation is. That would raise wages to £0.30. However, we know that the price of the loaf of bread has increased to £2, and so that leaves £0.70 as profit! Whilst workers have had only a 20% pay rise, meaning their real wages have fallen by 70%, the bosses have seen their profits rise by 180%. No wonder the bosses, the government and the Tory media don't want workers to demand their wages keep up with inflation! If, however, workers also got a 100% pay rise to £0.50, profits would also increase to £0.50, and everyone would be in the same position they were before the inflation, with only the nominal figures changed. So, there would be no reason for any further inflation of prices, other than those which led to the original inflation, i.e. a devaluation of the currency.
Workers should not be taken in by these ridiculous claims about wages causing inflation, let alone the current rises in prices caused by NATO imperialism's economic war against Russia and China, their boycotts against Russian oil, gas and grains and so on. Workers at ports are on strike now for 8 days. With tens of thousands of other workers on the rails, buses and elsewhere already taking action, the question should be why all those other workers are also not coordinating their action, by also staying out for that same 8 days, with millions of other workers coming out to support them, and in pursuit of their own pay claims. Indeed, with inflation at this level, all workers should bring forward their claims, and begin taking action now in support of them.
What is more, rather than waiting another year for additional rises, workers need to demand a sliding scale of wages, so that as inflation rises each month, wages rise along with them. Nor should we rely on the inflation data of the state. We need a workers' cost of living index calculated by trades unions, and socialist economists. The TUC should also demand that pensions and benefits be increased accordingly too, mobilising a General Strike in support of it, if required. The current minimum wage based upon hourly rates is useless. We need at least a Minimum Weekly Wage, and preferably a Minimum Monthly Wage, which would also deter bosses from employing workers on zero hours contracts and other forms of precarious employment.
Victory To All Striking Workers
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