Comrade Ranjeet Brar gives an in-depth presentation on the root causes of the cost of living crisis affecting the working class of Britain and the world today. From food to rent to petrol, surviving – even with employment – is becoming an increasingly difficult challenge. All while the richest handful in our society are becoming wealthier than ever.
Comrade Ranjeet describes how the inflation crisis is really a repetition of what has been a near-constant burden on the working class since its earliest days. The cyclical crises of capitalism prove that the ‘cost of living crisis’ is nothing new under the regime of the free market.
He describes how this concept has existed even in nursery rhymes for centuries, explaining how the ‘weasel’ in ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ may have been cockney rhyming slang: ‘weasel and stoat’ for ‘coat’. When wages are falling and workers need extra funds, they pawn (pop) their coats; pop goes the weasel.
“We’ve been living with a cost of living crisis as a working class, in the country which has the oldest working class, for so long that its actually become part of our nursery rhymes. And though cyclically we may think we’ve escaped this question, it never goes away – so long as we remain a working class in an industrial capitalist nation. And more than that, this is no longer a question which simply affects one country; this is an international question affecting the vast majority of humanity.”
What would a rational system look like? In a socialist economy, we would produce in a planned way in order to meet the demands of society. These things are calculable, especially in the modern age. We do not need a volatile market to tell us that people need food, housing, heating, and other basic necessities.
