In actual fact you’ve long been paying! And the calls for protests all name it: when the markets break down, when business declines in production and trade, then the companies avert the damage to their balance sheets by passing it on to their workforce. They lay people off, ordain shorter hours, cut wages. They adjust their costs to reduced business opportunities and defend their profits. This is the front where the fight takes place over who has to make sacrifices to what extent so that growth gets going again and the entire capitalist crap starts anew. Anyone not prepared to put up with the role of a cost factor; anyone fed up with being ready to work as a flexible stand-by for the growth of profits in times of boom and with putting the companies’ balance sheets back into good shape in phases of decline can only hand in his quitting notice as far as his role as a commodity of labor power is concerned. The calls for this protest curse fiercely about capitalism and call for “the foundation of a better world” that “works for people and the planet” – but what they don’t find necessary is the fight to abolish capitalism.

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“A fundamental change is needed” – so runs the demonstration's statement. Quite a peculiar fundamental change; it takes right back on board all the figures who called the shots in the bad old community and whose profit-making has caused all the enumerated evils in Europe and around the world, from poverty up to climate change.

* The millionaires, for instance. They stay millionaires: they will be given a tax on the “wealthy” to minimize the government’s costs for saving the banks.
* “The banks are ours!” They must of course be saved! They, too, are inevitable for a “solidarity society.” Only sound banks can subsidize business by credit for an advance in capital – and capital is as necessary for the working population as their daily bread, or isn’t it?! And the people also need the assets of the banking sector – after all, only rich banks can provide the claimed funds for bailing themselves out of the crisis and sparing the people the costs for the indispensable “renovation” of the banking sector.
* And all the bosses from the “real economy” – are of course also needed in the “new system”: who else can need the bankers’ credit, extorting all the interest for the banks together with profit out of labor. Only exploitation can provide all the jobs that the people need! And this is what needs to get going again: because for all the calls critical of capitalism, the evil of capitalism doesn’t seem to consist in the fact that a subsistence for workers is only available as long as their work yields profit – but instead in the circumstance that at present capitalism doesn’t properly function.

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Not only the rich and powerful, even the poor and dependent appear in the “new system” in their old roles: why call for a “social umbrella,” unless one takes it for granted that there will certainly continue to be helpless and needy hardship cases:

* Minimum wages for those employed in the low-wage sector. It is obviously taken for granted that this sector will continue to exist.
* “Decent jobs and public services for all” – it is also taken for granted that the list of long-term unemployed won’t decrease nor the one without healthcare and unfulfilled basic needs.

Beacons of modesty! But what else is one to expect of calls for a protest that want to “put people first” – profit-making second, i.e. change the rank of both these highest goods? Profit has to be after all, but the human being must not be forgotten in all that! People and profit should coexist, isn’t this the message? How does this match the fact that profit from the outset is made at the expense of the working people – that profit is nothing else than what a capitalist extorts from his workforce? Is this the “better world”? Is this the “fundamental change” in the “economic system” for which you’re taking to the streets?

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No, you can read that all this is only a “first step” – but a step to what end? The calls for protest enumerate many evils caused by the capitalistic economy at the expense of the working class. But they do not turn against capital but to the state who is supposed to limit the damage. They turn precisely to the same address that brings the economic power of capital into this world by guaranteeing private property with its political power, that secures the power of capital and takes care of it. A more social policy is supposed to remedy the damage caused by the economy. These calls for limiting the damage take all the economic principles that hold sway in capitalism and all the social roles this system generates for granted, acknowledging them. This is not a first step for abolishing capitalism but a call for a social policy that accompanies this exploitative economy as long as it exists.

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Those who no longer want to be made victims of the crisis and the crisis management, those who no longer want to be means of profit in a new upswing – all those have something better to do than to build up social pressure for a social change in policy in Berlin, London, or elsewhere.

You don’t want to pay for the crisis of capital? Then refuse your participation! But don’t haggle with governments for lower prices in paying for the crisis burdens.