EDITORIAL: Every Gain Must Be Fought For

Written by: Editorial Committee on 1 August 2020

This is the Editorial from the August 2020 edition of Vanguard. Download a pdf of the whole edition here.

Staring down the barrel of the largest capitalist crisis in nearly a century triggered by the COVID-19 health crisis, the Federal government and the capitalist ruling class they represent moved quickly to prop up their system.

The JobSeeker and JobKeeper programs were always stop gap measures designed to stimulate spending, stave off the sudden collapse of the economy, and placate the anger and struggle of the masses of people thrown further into precarity by yet another inevitable crisis of capitalism.

Any notion that the government had discovered “socialism”, or cared about the wellbeing of the people was purely a coincidental alignment of short-term class interests.

Now with the health crisis only getting worse, and the economic crisis only showing signs of deepening, the government has announced the scaling back of its welfare packages and is pushing for the reopening of the economy, the people be damned! They chant their neoliberal mantra that “the best form of welfare is a job”, but have no solution to the reality of a real unemployment rate nearing 20 percent, and 13 unemployed people for every job advertised.

We should have no illusions in the government or the bosses that they will willingly look after our wellbeing. Every gain, every benefit, every measure that serves the peoples’ needs must be fought for and won from the hands of the ruling class. They will never give it up for free.

It is not class collaboration, but class struggle; not begging, but the strength of the people organised that will force the demands of the people to be met.

The first steps towards that crucial independent working class mass movement are being made. Work must be done to unite the vast sections of the people, employed and unemployed, in a common struggle for genuine change that serves the interests of our class.

We should have no doubt that such change is possible – if only we dare to struggle and dare to win!

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