October 2022

The sell-out concert tour of Britain and Europe by Bob Dylan (he’s in his 85th year) presents a prime example of the way capitalism, via its entertainment industry, can sell us meaningless thrills to patch over the uniformity and stress of living in its wage and salary system.

Dylan does have something unique to offer, but the adulation, the hero-worship, as opposed to simple appreciation, of him by the fans at his concerts can only be seen as part of the obsession with celebrity culture that capitalism thrusts upon us as a substitute for mutually cooperative activity. This is something the free access society of economic equality that we call socialism would release.

A new BBC history series concludes that ‘Wealth inequality is the most common and crucial element in societal collapse.’

What to do? At a recent awards ceremony singer Billie Eilish, who is donating £8m to fight food poverty, asked the question ‘If you’re a billionaire, why are you a billionaire?’ Her suggestion, to give it all away, reportedly annoyed Mark Zuckerberg.

Many, including even Reform UK voters, would support a wealth tax. But the tax proposed is usually modest – a mere ‘pantomime of pseudo-radicalism in which the villains are some wankers on yachts.’ We say it’s pointless decrying wealth inequality as an ‘injustice’ while accepting the capitalist logic that created it. If you want to abolish inequality, abolish capitalism.

On 18 November, the Financial Times told us that a Bank of America survey has found that a “majority of global fund managers think companies are overinvesting, as market anxiety grows about the sustainability of the artificial intelligence spending boom”.

The capitalist press is again revealing the accuracy of Marxian economic theory, which describes how capital will and must flow into industrial sectors with potential/actual relatively high profits. The end result will always be over-investment and an ensuing sectoral slump which, depending on circumstances, can turn into a world slump.

As the refrain goes, capitalism is “forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air”. Except for us, the working class, the bubbles aren’t pretty at all!

Over a billion people live in slums, an increase of more than a hundred million over twenty years.

This is mainly in Asia and Africa, with unplanned urban growth meaning that people often build their own poor-quality unsanitary homes. In south Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, around half of city-dwellers live in slums.

The real reason, though, is the massive inequality that marks this capitalist world, with so many having their lives disrupted and being forced to move to cities. Whether this is a result of war, climate change, economic problems or other causes, it shows clearly that the present global system cannot satisfy even the basic demands of much of the population.