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This Halloween: A spectre is haunting capitalism

This Halloween: A spectre is haunting capitalism

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As Halloween approaches, a spectre is haunting Westminster – the spectre of economic instability, political chaos, and class struggle. But all of these horrors are hammering consciousness into shape: capitalism is producing its own gravediggers.

As this year’s Halloween approaches, a spectre is haunting Westminster – the spectre of economic instability, political chaos, and class struggle.

British capitalism is in a dire state. Starmer and co. say that they have inherited a mess from their Tory predecessors: a national debt of over 100 percent of GDP; a fiscal “black hole” of £22 billion, or even more; public services that are creaking and crumbling after years of austerity and neglect. And the picture only gets gloomier by the day.

Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ first Budget, due to be announced on 30 October, is therefore set to contain a variety of accounting tricks to make the numbers add up, but with no treats for the working class.

In words, the Labour leaders promise that there will be “no return to austerity”. But in deeds they have proven that they are as comfortable wielding the knife as the villain of a gory slasher flick – as impoverished families and shivering pensioners can attest.

All this is necessary, assert Starmer and Reeves, to “fix the foundations” of the UK economy and bring about growth. But this is a utopian delusion, at best; or a barefaced lie, at worst.

Contradictions are piling up across the global capitalist system. The conflict in the Middle East threatens to cause major disruption to world trade and energy supplies. Protectionism and climate catastrophe are adding extra inflammable material to the mix. And the prospect of a second Trump presidency would only pour further petrol onto this combustible cocktail.

The perspective ahead – in Britain and elsewhere – is therefore not one of stability and growth, but of deepening crises and cuts.

Nightmare on Downing Street

This stark reality is beginning to make itself felt at the top of government, with rifts emerging both within Number 10 and inside the Cabinet.

The Prime Minister was recently forced to axe his chief of staff and reshuffle roles in his office, in response to establishment concerns that he was losing his grip, following a string of scandals and missteps.

After more than 100 days in power, recent polling gives the PM a record-low net approval rating of -38, and suggests that Labour’s lead over the Tories amongst voters has evaporated.
After more than 100 days in power, recent polling gives the PM a record-low net approval rating of -38, and suggests that Labour’s lead over the Tories amongst voters has evaporated.

At the same time, with communities, schools, and prisons already on the brink, several Labour ministers have decried the impending cuts to their departments, vainly calling on the Treasury to provide greater spending.

And tensions have emerged over Starmer’s attempts to woo unscrupulous capitalists to invest in Britain – most notably with the case of the Dubai-based owners of “rogue operators” P&O Ferries, who are being encouraged to pump money into new UK infrastructure projects, despite their dodgy track record.

Public support for Starmer and his party, meanwhile, continues to decline. After more than 100 days in power, recent polling gives the PM a record-low net approval rating of -38, and suggests that Labour’s lead over the Tories amongst voters has evaporated.

In short, there is already a nightmare on Downing Street. But the government’s ordeal has barely begun.

Tory zombies

The capitalist establishment is clearly relying on Starmer and Reeves to do their dirty work; to carry out the diktats of the bosses and bankers, whilst holding back the trade unions with false promises that this government will be “pro-business and pro-worker”.

But with Starmer’s Labour haemorrhaging support, and the government’s authority rapidly draining away, the ruling class knows they need a B-team.

The terrifying sight that is the Tory Party, in this respect, is only amplifying their panic.

The Conservative membership resembles the night of the living dead. Yet this frothing ‘hang-em, flog-em’ brigade are set to choose the next leader of His Majesty’s Official Opposition.

And what a choice it is! Would you prefer a Norman-Bates-esque psycho like Robert Jenrick, or the seemingly-unstoppable Jaws that is Kemi Badenoch, the anti-woke warrior and complete careerist shark?

Bourgeois commentators decry this ‘choice’ in the leadership contest, knowing that whoever wins, the Tories are set to lurch even further to the right, with an unreliable maverick – in the mould of Boris or Truss – at their head.

But in truth, the rotten elites have the representatives they deserve. The Tories are a zombie party, befitting of Britain’s zombie capitalism. And a new madman at the helm is only to be expected from this senile, irrational system.

Horror without end

The ruling classes in both the US and the UK are gripped with fear.

In the words of Leon Trotsky, they are “tobogganing towards economic and military disaster with their eyes closed”; spooked at the fact that they are increasingly losing control of the situation, both at home and abroad.

In the Middle East, Netanyahu is running amok, like a Zionist Frankenstein’s monster. In America, Donald Trump could soon reenter the White House. In Britain, the establishment’s main two parties are discredited and in disarray.

But it is ordinary people who have to suffer the hell on Earth that the capitalist class has created.

Over one year on from the start of the genocide in Gaza, the warmongers in London and Washington are covered in more blood than Leatherface, the deranged killer from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Whilst aiding Israel’s bombing of Palestinian hospitals, leading to harrowing scenes of patients being burnt alive, Starmer and his government allow dilapidated hospitals over here to deteriorate and collapse.

There is therefore no need to watch any scary movies this All Hallows’ Eve. It is enough to just turn on the news. As Lenin remarked: capitalism is horror without end.

At the same time, as Karl Marx noted, capitalism has created its own gravediggers.

From Bangladesh to Britain: a new generation of class fighters is moving into action, looking to bury this decrepit system.

To these layers, we say: join the Revolutionary Communist Party today, and help us put an end to the miseries of capitalism and imperialism, once and for all.

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