Capitalism is embarking on a major class war offensive against living standards in Britain. This needs to be met by a determined counter-offensive from the working class. To be snatched from the pockets of the poor There are to be £113bn of spending cuts and tax increases over the next four years, with £11bn coming off state welfare alone. The 7 percent cut in housing benefit will leave 750000 under threat of homelessness, and the inflation index by which state benefits are calculated will now exclude housing costs. VAT, a tax on the poor, is going up to 20 percent whilst Child Benefit is to be frozen. The vaunted 'ring-fencing' of the health budget is more about guaranteeing repayment of the staggering debts run up through the construction of PFI hospitals than about defending essential services, which in fact face £20bn worth of 'efficiency savings'. Meanwhile, as an estimated 750000 jobs are to go in the public sector and many public-sector workers face a wage freeze, there is to be a drive to push single parents back into the labour market as soon as all the children are in school and 1.8 million disabled people are to be required to present themselves for fresh medical examination. Shocking as such cuts are, they represent only the first fumbling efforts of our rulers to make ordinary people pay for a crisis triggered by money-lenders, bankers and financiers and rooted in a long-developing capitalist overproduction crisis which will not go away. Unless the working ...