Editorial – Politicians all serve the one percent

In the world today, the richest 1 percent now own almost half the world’s wealth, whilst the poorest half of the world’s population own between them less than 1 percent of the wealth: just 81 billionaires hold between them more wealth than 4 billion of the world’s population combined.. In Britain, the four richest individuals have more wealth than the poorest 20 million people combined. Perhaps most significantly, in recent years the richest 1 percent of people have accumulated nearly two thirds of all new wealth created around the world. A total of $42 trillion in new wealth was created since 2020, with $26 trillion, or 63 percent, of that being amassed by the top 1 percent, the ultra-rich. The remaining 99 percent of the global population collected just $16 trillion of all of that new wealth.

This goes to the heart of the social system we live within. You can be sure that the 99 percent making do with only a third of the produce we create includes all of the most productive and useful people in society: the nurses, builders, teachers, doctors, engineers, programmers, IT architects, transport workers, factory workers, miners, and so on. So we have an all-encompassing global social system in which there are two classes. One class, the vast majority, works to actually create wealth, but then is forced to survive on a fraction of what we have created. The majority of what we create, we are forced (by the current laws of society which we have collectively endorsed and accepted, implicitly) to hand over to a miniscule minority. They then use that wealth to increase their stranglehold over the whole process.

Returning to British politics in 2023, what are Sunak, Starmer or any other of the political leaders or parties on offer proposing to do about this? The core social system stands utterly unquestioned, unthreatened by them all. Jeremy Corbyn was seen by many as standing for a ‘socialist alternative’, but if you actually look at all of the policies he has ever endorsed, what they really consisted of was a reform, a modification of this capitalist system, in which more sectors would be state-controlled, and a more generous or comprehensive slate of social benefits might be attempted. But like all ‘left-wing’ regimes which have come to power in various parts of the world, that would also be doomed to fail in chaos. Furthermore, Corbyn never stood for real socialism, which means not state ownership but genuine and democratic community control of all resources. It would also entail the end of the market system and the beginning of production for need, for use, not for profit or sale.

Until we have a majority ready to implement that, by doing it themselves instead of trusting politicians, we are stuck with this rotten system where ninety-nine people do all the hard graft… and one person gets all the pleasure and benefit, week after week, without end.

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