A Budget For The Workers? We Need A Planned Economy

The government has delivered a pro-bosses Budget that has every worker hand over about €250 a year to fast food giants like McDonalds, that cuts tax on offshore funds, for big developers and for corporate research and development.

They’ve also broken a hell of a lot of promises. They promised minimum wage workers that their wage would rise to 60% of the median wage by January, a rise of 95c instead they’ll get a measly 65c. They just got cheated out of €600 a year!

They also disappointed carers. While carers will welcome the change to income disregards, the €10 increase in the basic payment is dwarfed by rising costs. Carers save the state up to €20 billion a year with their hard work.

Most workers on average incomes will lose money because of the Budget. And while families on lower wages and with kids might get some crumbs the rising cost of living, in particular childcare, erodes any small increases they got.

The increase in carbon tax will hit most workers, increase our energy bills and won’t do anything to stop big corporations from being the worst polluters.

What attitude should socialists take to Budgets? First of all we fight for anything we can get while we live under capitalism but we have to tell other workers the truth - that no gains are secure as long as the rich dominate politically.

Budgets can do one of threee things: They can make things slightly better, they can make things slightly worse or they can have no real effect. They don’t change the fundamentals of the economy. They couldn’t if even if they wanted to.

That doesn’t mean we let any government off the hook - we have to fight for to make life better in any way we can while we live under capitalism. People desperately need an extra bit of money here and there.

But it’s not enough, we can’t live with dignity until we control our own lives.

In the Sinn Féin budget for example they explain that their “fiscal strategy is a balanced and responsible approach to managing the public finance while being ambitious for the future.” They want to increase disability payments by €20, carers by just €12 and jobseekers allowance by €10. Most of this is in line with the government’s own proposals.

They want to get childcare costs down to €10 a day, But “this will be done by increasing the subvention to childcare providers and will also apply to childminders, at a cost to the state of €345 million.”

So they’ll give that money to private childcare providers. And while they want greater funding for youth services they ultimately take a law and order approach to crime: “Sinn Féin would commence the largest Garda recruitment drive in the history of the state, maximising recruitment in 2025 to bring in 1,000 new trainees.”

The government promised the same and there is no correlation between more Guards and less crime. In fact we had far less Guards in the 1960s and far less crime. The economic underpinnings of communities are far more important than Garda numbers.

And as we’ve seen during strikes and protest movements - the Guards will be mobilised to stop us fighting for change.

The €13.4 billion Sinn Féin package is funded by scrapping tax relief for landlords, increasing the bank levy and introducing a “solidarity tax" of 3% on individual income above €100,000. By contrast the government package was €9.4 billion.

The Social Democrats and Labour play the same game of trying to balance the books while offering some small relief to workers. The Social Democrats propose raising welfare payments by €15 while they argue we “must strike a balance between protecting our economic security… and providing targeted support to hard-pressed households.”

You have to keep the bosses and the workers happy, they argue. No one told them that’s not possible. You have to pick a side. Labour play the same “responsibility” game.

Labour want to fund 6,000 extra social homes. This is small fry compared to the scale of the crisis we face. Labour also criticise the government for not running capitalism responsibly, they write:

“In truth, this government’s reputation for sound fiscal management is undeserved. Their self-imposed 5% spending rule has been honoured more in the breach than in the observance.” They even boast that signing up to global tax reforms will “ensure certainty for investors.”

People Before Profit play this game too. They ask for a “fair redistribution of wealth”, and argue that all we need to create a socialist society is “the political will”. One of the problems with budgets is the question of who is to implement it? If demands are made on the current government then we have to ask what they can or cannot be forced to concede.

If a budget is a set of policies to be implemented, under capitalism, by a left government then there are limitations set there too. PBP clearly states that their budget is “part of a programme for a future left government”.

The left cannot currently make up the numbers to oust Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Lowry gang. But any left government will necessarily be led by “responsible” parties like Sinn Féin and involve former austerity Ministers from Labour and the Greens.

Negotiations to form such a government would operate on two levels. The bigger parties would dominate and shape the policy proposals (so PBP’s budget would be dumped!) and then every government must present its manifesto to the senior civil servants who negotiate a programme for government from that.

PBP accepts this and argues that people power can force concessions - from the government they’re proposing to join. Now they sometimes admit they wouldn’t join a Sinn Féin government unless their “red lines” were met, but they don’t say that in their budget.

They claim this left government will increase social protection payments to €350, disability to €400 and the minimum wage will be increased to €17 and offer abolition of the USC. If these proposals are for a future left government why are they all based on today’s figures?

By the time the next election rolls around a €17 minimum wage could already be obsolete. Are these figures in contrast with the government’s or are they policies for a PBP minister in a Sinn Féin government?

They propose an energy credit of €500 to every household, why every household? Why not exclude the rich? They call for a “publicly owned not-for-profit grocery service” which would operate “while supporting small Irish producers”.

This would be paid for through a “Public Nutrition Levy on the profits of the largest and most profitable food retail and fast-food chains”. Prices of goods under capitalism are set by the costs of production plus the average profit. The food on the shelves of this public grocery store would still be produced by capitalists, even if they were “small Irish producers”.

For the poorest working class people off-brand food at cheaper prices would be a relief. But it doesn’t work properly unless embedded in a planned economy, where all production is in the hands of workers and we democratically plan it. Any supply chain shocks would have the “small Irish producers” demanding higher prices.

In Venezuela the state run grocery stores initially offered food at lower prices but ended up reliant on imported food and mired in bureaucracy and corruption. Private food producers could combat state led price reduction by hoarding food and pushing prices back up. The government printed more money, food prices were fixed, but everything else suffered massive inflation.

You need to plan the whole economy, not bits and pieces.

The same goes for PBP’s call to establish a state-construction company. We call for that too in our minimum demands but we make clear that without worker control and a planned economy it’s just another state run quango and that these reforms aren’t secure.

PBP wants to fully nationalise the energy sector and nationalise childcare too. Under a capitalist state with a left government sitting on top of it, despite the fact none of the potential partners in such a government would want to go that far. As James Connolly once wrote:

“Socialism properly implies above all things the co-operative control by the workers of the machinery of production; without this co-operative control the public ownership by the State is not Socialism – it is only State capitalism.”

We in the Red Network will fight tooth and nail for every scrap and reform we can win for our class while we live under this rotten system. Any future Red TD would vote for any reforms won by a Sinn Féin led government, case by case and from the opposition, that way you’re free to mobilise protests when they fail to deliver.

We will work with others on the left in building social movements on the streets to fight for reforms. But while doing so we will always tell the truth to our class. Nothing is secure until our class, the working class, is in the driving seat of a socialist, planned economy.

As the Russian revolutionary Lenin argued: “We must be practical politicians; we must join in the demand for small things… This is how all the opportunists, all the reformists, argue… We must choose - between the existing evil and a very small rectification of it… Reformist tactics are the least likely to secure real reforms. The most effective way to secure real reforms is to pursue the tactics of the revolutionary class struggle… they are only real in proportion to the intensity of the class struggle.”