Together to pursue the revolution

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.