The savage plans announced by George Osborne in today’s budget will force young people to pay for the crisis of capitalism so that the rich can keep their mansions and their millions. We are being forced, by rich Tories and their rich friends, to pay for a crisis of capitalism that we did not cause.
For people aged 18-21 the automatic entitlement to housing benefit is being cut, in essence treating many young adults as children who must live with their parents until they’re 21.
The living wage of £7.20 (pathetically low in itself) will only apply to over-25s despite the fact that zero-hours contracts, low pay and terrible working conditions are most prevalent among young people.
Maintenance grants for poorer students at university are being scrapped in favour of maintenance loans. As if enormous tuition fees are not enough of a millstone around the neck of students, now those from the poorest backgrounds are going to be forced to bear an even heavier debt burden.
The Marxist Student Federation’s response to this budget won’t be to go begging and pleading to these Tory gangsters to rethink these cuts. Osborne and co. can’t help but do the bidding of their puppet-masters in the banks and the boardrooms. Nor will we try to persuade these bosses that they can keep their profits without imposing austerity. We realise that this is impossible under capitalism.
Instead we propose waging a revolutionary struggle against the Tories and the capitalist system they serve.
We want cheap and plentiful social housing for all, so we’re fighting for the expropriation of the big landlords, without compensation, and placing their land under the democratic control of the working class.
We are fighting for the same thing to happen with the banks and biggest businesses so that we can democratically control the wealth and jobs in society so that they’re directed towards people’s needs (such as free education) and not the capitalists’ profit.
This budget is an attack on today’s workers and the working class of the future. Trade unions and other labour and protest movement groups must fight for a fundamental change in society.
We encourage you to stand with the Marxist Student Federation in solidarity with all those workers and students who will suffer from today’s budget, and to join us in fighting for the revolutionary ideas that are so desperately needed in our movement today.
