The Socialist Party of Great Britain
Part of the World Socialist Movement
November 7, 2018
The Sultan of Brunei is the one of the very richest men in the world. The vast amount of land, technology and other property that he owns yields a huge profit. But where do his profits and the wealth of others like him come from? Where do profits come from? So, profits play a key …
A spectre is haunting America—the spectre of the middle class. Ever since Alexis de Tocqueville proclaimed the US to be a “middle-class country”, North Americans have anxiously sought to moralise and ennoble their notion of class struggle: Most were regular employees of major corporations like McDonnell Douglas, Grumman and Hughes Aircraft. If they didn’t go …
Now that it has become comfortable, even de rigueur, to admit capitalism can’t necessarily deliver the goods, we hear a lot less about that old standby, the standard of living. Socialists have often pointed out that capitalism is much better at providing us with poverty than with a living, and that we should more accurately …
Thirty countries covering a quarter of the world’s population are officially in recession. Even defenders of capitalism are now compelled to use the term “world economic crisis”. It had to happen. Given the chronic state of overcapacity and potential overproduction in relation to the market in all the key sectors of global industry-electronics, computers, vehicle …
A history of the debt of the world’s poorest nations. Can it be written off? Introduction Campaigns such as Drop the Debt have called for western, industrialised nations to write off the debt owed to them by the poorest nations of the South. At a United Nations meeting on the 7th September 2000, Nigerian President …
Both supporters and opponents of the capitalist market system agree on one point—the central importance of profit to the way the system operates. So what are profits and why do they get priority? What is Profit? Most production for the market is organised nowadays not by private individuals but by business enterprises of one sort …
While the growing disparity in G.N.P. between rich and poor states in recent years has been matched by the growth of inequality within each, there are undeniably huge differences in material circumstances of the average worker in Western Europe and their counterpart in, say, Bangladesh. How did this come about and what, if anything, can …
The Yanomami people of Brazil face the unrelenting curse of global capitalism. The tragedy being enacted in Northern Brazil appears to be moving towards its last act. It is a tragedy that has been enacted throughout the history of private property. The fate of indigenous people invaded by a more economically developed society makes a …
Naomi Klein’s book ‘No Logo’ (Flamingo 2000) has been widely proclaimed as a manifesto for the anti-capitalist movement. Klein herself disclaims any notion that she has written a manifesto, but the book is still well worth examining. It deals with the development of enormous global corporations and some of the resistance to this; the title …
Can capitalism be reformed to work in the interest of the majority, instead of the rich elite? Or must there be a social revolution to replace capitalism with some other society? This is a debate that has raged for over a century. The route of trying to change capitalism, or ‘reform,’ is the one that …