November 2022

Can we separate the skills of the beautiful game from the ugliness of the money machine that drives it and the rivalries and nationalism it thrives on? Should we regard the emotional investment of fans as people being brought together or a reminder of how alienated they are from their own lives and capabilities. Is it, as one commentator stated, people being sold ‘meaningless thrills to patch over the pain’?

Whatever the case, in the society of voluntary cooperative work and free access to goods and services that socialists look forward to, appreciation of the talents of others – including footballers – will still exist, but side by side with each person having the time and space to cultivate their own talents and capabilities.

Red faces in the Socialist Workers Party after their tweet on X in response to the death of Widdecombe was ‘Hooray, she’s dead’, followed by immediate deletion as furore swept the media. Some even confused the SWP with us.

So we should point out that, while we oppose capitalism and all its works, and urge the world’s people to establish a post-capitalist society of democratic common ownership, we have no truck with the SWP’s infantile reaction to the death (probably murder) of a pro-capitalist politician, however detestable that person’s opinions.

Capitalism is a worldwide system of private property and market trading, which can only be replaced at a worldwide scale by a conscious and informed majority, not by targeting individuals.

A report on wealth inequality graphically illustrates the class divide in 2026.
Apparently, the 56,000 wealthiest adults on the planet – who could fit inside a single football stadium – own three times as much wealth as the poorest 2.8 billion adults (add their families, that’s HALF of humanity).

Those 56,000 must have really worked their arses off…

Just kidding! That wealth has been sucked from the world’s working class and, as Marx predicted in Capital, the nature of capitalist economics has resulted in increasing concentration of real wealth.

The report’s suggestion? Higher taxes for the rich and spend more on education (!!). In other words, tinker around at the edges and leave the cause of the problem alone. Sad or what?

The government has just repealed the Vagrancy Act of 1824, which made rough sleeping a crime. There are about a million empty homes in England alone with more than a quarter of them empty for more than six months. So there is absolutely no need for anyone to sleep rough.

In London, there are over 47.000 homes that have been empty for more than six months, enough to house the estimated 13,000 people sleeping rough there each year, and the 200,000 living in temporary accommodation.

In this supposedly relatively wealthy country, the possibility of providing decent homes for everyone is perfectly feasible, but capitalism’s profit motive prevents it from happening.