If you are in the 1%, the capitalist system works
exceptionally well. Since the financial crisis in 2008, most of the wealth
created in the world has ended up in their bank accounts. By next year, they
could own more wealth than the rest of us put together. The World Bank
calculated that ten Africans own more wealth than half the continent. Africa is the richest continent on Earth in terms of natural resources and agricultural potential, yet Africa's people are the
poorest people on earth - and getting poorer. That is why Africans are
continually leaving Africa.
Research shows lobbyists spend hundreds of millions of
dollars to influence government legislation for their industries benefits,
saving them billions of dollars, for instance by securing the banks’ huge state
bailouts. Across the world, we see that money buys power: immunity from justice;
the passing of favourable laws; buying off the candidates in an election and paying a pliant
media to justify it all. We cannot win under the current economic system. This
is a system that sees a world possessed of huge wealth leaving most of humanity
with virtually nothing at all. The vast majority keep falling behind
economically while the rich get even richer. It is also a system that is
leading us to runaway climate change. Yet
this situation doesn't translate into a winning politics. Working people have
no effective party to champion their interests. Economic inequality translates
into inequality of political influence. You'd expect people to be in the
streets, but there is a cynicism about politics. A lot of social problems have
been personalized and internalized with the assumption that we are all on our
own. But that can be changed.
Another world is possible – it is up to us. People possess imagination,
human invention, ingenuity and spirit. We need to build a world where people do
not have to live in fear; where every child gets to fulfil their potential and
where the planet is preserved and sustained for our children and their
children’s children. This is not an impossible dream, it is a practical
possibility, well within our reach. To get there we need to organise. We need
to harness our boundless energy and creativity. We are many, they are few. We are
the 99% and they the 1%. However, the plethora of campaigning groups can be
seen mainly as a sign of fragmentation. The good news is that a growing number
of different movements are joining together to demand change. If there's a
group of workers that don't have rights, then that means that your rights are
being threatened because there's going to be an excuse at some point to take
your rights away from you. We're seeing that now with the state of labour
unions and the fight that people are waging even to form labour unions.
Change can happen and is happening! But we won’t change the
system until we change our politics and the economic system. We do not believe
the Koch Brothers and the other billionaire oligarchs and plutocrats are more
powerful than millions of people fighting for themselves and their own
interests. But we require an invigorated popular democracy as the antidote to
concentrated wealth. The remedies that evoke real change are far outside
mainstream political conversation, and will not become mainstream until forced
onto the agenda by a genuine mass movement. But without a potent socialist movement
on the ground, mainstream electoral politics is likely to remain stuck in the
rut with reforms too weak either to rouse public imagination and participation,
or to provide more than token relief for today's extreme inequality. The
Socialist Party has always argued that the low expectations and diminishing
participation can be reversed, as it has been reversed at moments in the past.
Just as the injustices we fight have no borders, neither should our movement. It's
really hard for people to understand a movement that is full of “leaders”.
That's how our homes work; that's how our communities work; that's how our
workplaces work, whether or not we want to talk about it. We're just trying to
reflect our own realities. We're trying to create more pathways for more people
to participate and engage. If we want a full democracy, we can't just have
people following one person. Everyone has to feel like they have a stake in
shaping the kind of world that we live in. We want to create a different kind
of political culture. We think it's important; we think we need it and we don't
think we can survive without it.
According to
Frederick Douglass “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and
it never will.” Our demands are the same as they have been over the hundreds of
years. We want quality housing that's comfortable to live in. We want a
decent life-enhancing education. We want communities where people
can live in dignity and in peace. We want to be able to live with our families without fear
of poverty or deprivation. We want fulfilling and socially useful work for
everyone who seeks it. We want all the things that we have been fighting for
since people were turned into slaves. These are not a new demands, but
it's certainly a new political moment where we have the opportunity to join people
together across issues in a unified socialist movement and try to advance
liberation. We are just getting started with that project.
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