Johnson’s new tax is grossly unfair to workers

Boris Johnson was back on form this week fending off a backbench revolt over his plan to raise National Insurance rates to help the health service and social care for the elderly while at the same time mocking the ineffectual Labour opposition which takes its lead from the utterly useless Keir Starmer.
    Johnson’s new tax is grossly unfair to working people and it will raise nowhere near enough to address the current problems of the care home community.
    Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is calling for a “National Care Service” for all, funded by progressive taxation, including a wealth tax while Richard Burgon from the Corbynista camp spelt out the demand for a 10 per cent tithe on the super-rich - those with assets over £100 million – that could raise £69 billion to deal with the funding crisis.
    Even Dame Margaret Hodge, the Blairite MP for Barking, said Johnson was ignoring a "raft of better alternatives" including raising income tax or dividend tax. Sir Keir Starmer, however, confined himself to the usual platitudes, accusing the Tories of “putting their rich mates and donors before working people” while avoiding making any concrete counter-proposals.
    Starmer’s crowd will make the usual ineffectual statements. Union leaders will make paper calls for “action” and the assorted left poseurs will tell us that the only answer is to sign their petitions and join their factions. We shouldn’t be surprised at this. They've been doing the same thing for over 100 years.
    Labour’s first Prime Minister was Ramsay MacDonald in 1924. He talked about “socialism” – but only as a dream for future days. His job, he said, was to administer capitalism which he loyally did in the 1920s before openly betraying the labour movement to join the Tories in the bogus “National Government” of the 1930s. Tony Blair never talked about socialism at all. Nor does Starmer.
    Well, we need to talk about socialism. The capitalists do it all the time. Before the Russian Revolution they said that socialism sounded good in theory, but it could never work in practice. After 1917 they said it wouldn't work in the Soviet Union. And when the Soviet Union did survive they argued that it wasn' t really socialist and they presented it as a distortion of what it really was.
    They say, in essence, that the only economic and political system which works is one in which a tiny minority -- themselves -- exploit the rest of the population to ensure that they live lives of ease and luxury.
    If we were Martians observing the Earth from afar we would see how absurd and self-serving this theory is. Unfortunately many working people believe this because they are brought up to accept their own slavery.
    We have to prove them wrong. We have to say that capitalism is brutal and oppressive system that exists solely to ensure that the rich can continue to live the lives of Roman emperors on the backs of workers and peasants.
    Capitalism is the dictatorship of the rich. Their “democracy” is democracy for the exploiters and dictatorship for the exploited. Bourgeois elections are used so that the smallest number of people can manipulate the largest number of votes
    We don' t need to make any concessions to the ideology of the ruling class. Its system is failing and socialism is the only way forward.
    Capitalism had a progressive role once when it emerged from the feudal period. It's certainly not the case now. It's outlived its sell-by date. It's an oppressive and backward system which stifles the hopes and ambitions of the people who produce all the wealth of the world. The 21st century belongs to us.