In the coming UK parliamentary by-election in Makerfield, apart from the two confessed jokers, candidates will all be putting out the same message:
‘Trust me, I have a plan that’s guaranteed to make life better for you’
Some will add a rider that there will be challenges ahead, there’ll be sweat and tears, but in the long run it’ll come right.
The plans will differ slightly, of course, but they will all have this in common – they’ll ignore the inescapable reality of the capitalist system, in which the profits of the minority will always take precedence over any other considerations, precedence over any of the needs or desires of working-class voters.
Workers toil not just to live, eat and raise a family, but also to prepare for retirement by building a pension pot. However, recent reports from the Pensions Commission have argued that fifteen million people in the UK are not saving nearly enough to have a secure retirement, even by the miserly standards of capitalism.
Nearly half of working-age adults are not saving into a pension at all, with just 4% of ‘self-employed’ workers doing so. Future retirees may well be worse off than today’s.
Not only does capitalism dominate people’s working lives, the pressures of daily life also make it much harder to get ready to live comfortably after their days of toil and exploitation are over.
Anyone looking to cool off this summer with a swim in England’s river bathing sites had better check it hasn’t rained recently, because the river could be full of E.coli from sewage overflows. Of the 14 inland river sites tested last year by the Environment Agency, 12 are still rated poor, with advice being not to swim.
People understandably get steamed up when water companies use profits to pay shareholders instead of repairing leaky infrastructure. Meanwhile we get filthy rivers and lakes, and hosepipe bans. Many would like to see water renationalised, but cash-strapped government doesn’t want the maintenance burden – they have jets and missiles to pay for.
Water falls out of the sky for free. Trust capitalism to ruin even that.
The Sunday Times Rich List reports that David and Victoria Beckman doubled their wealth in the past year and have a combined fortune of £1.185bn. In a similar category are James Dyson, Christopher Harborne (who recently gifted £5m to Nigel Farage) and Jim Ratcliffe, part owner of Manchester United.
In comparison, the vast majority of people own close to nothing and have to find an employer to sell their energies to. Yet if that majority simply said enough is enough and decided to get together and use the earth’s vast resources to provide the means of life for all, we could have a society of production for use with free access to all goods and services for all.
… and he’s “fighting” for the millions of people on low pay and insecure jobs. “Millions of people who don’t get the dignity. The respect. The chance that they deserve, to go as far as their talent and effort should take them. Millions of people held back because the status quo in this country does not work for them.”
Yeah, but your figures and your scope are wrong, Starmer. Billions of people around the world are ensnared for life in wage labour, all being held back because capital must, and will, keep them permanently on the edge of destitution. How else could they be forced to provide the profits on which the capitalists depend?
The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises presents an alarming picture. 226 million people experienced ‘acute food insecurity’ in 2025, and there were two famines, in Gaza and Sudan, the first time that two famines had been declared in the same year. Over 35 million children were acutely malnourished in countries with nutrition crises.
For 2026 there is a risk of famine in South Sudan as well. And the conflict in the Middle East may well increase disruptions to global food markets.
The main reasons given for food insecurity were conflicts, insecurity and weather extremes. Behind this is a world based on profits, wars and environmental damage, where producing enough food for all is in reality perfectly feasible.
The so-called Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) is putting up candidates in the forthcoming elections for local councils and for the Senedd (Wales Government). Their watchword is ‘Join the Socialists!’. But their agenda is to ‘fight for the day-to-day issues, like pay, benefits, rights, and an end to oppression and war’. In other words they are campaigning for improvements to capitalism and not, despite their name, for socialism – a society of worldwide cooperation in production and distribution and free access to all goods and services.
Given this, the reference in their literature to ‘a society democratically run by working-class people’ means nothing, since their focus on reforms of capitalism can only mean relegating socialism to a dim, unthought-out, far distant future.
People often defend the capitalist market system on the grounds that the ‘price mechanism’ is the most effective and realistic way to regulate production and consumption. But because price only reflects paying potential, not actual need, this often leads to bonkers outcomes, like milk being poured down drains.
Right now there’s a global energy crisis, due to the Iran war. But UK electricity providers are telling consumers to use more power, not less. Why? Because the government expects a glut of renewable power this summer, and will have to shut down solar and wind plants, and reimburse providers for lost revenue via expensive ‘constraint payments’ (Guardian, 14 April).
Socialism, where everything is free, would be so much simpler!
Most crude oil (88%) refined in the US comes from fields in the US, Canada and Mexico, all a long way from the chaos currently being wreaked by the latest Middle East war. Yet average retail petrol prices in the US have risen by over 30% since January.
The reason? Along with every other major raw material, crude oil is subject to a world market price, so a major disruption to supplies, be it caused by war or an economic bottleneck, will have a global effect.
The lesson? National governments (however big the country!) have little influence over the world market. In particular, any politician who promises to control prices is lying through their teeth.
There are over 13 million people in the UK living in relative poverty (which means in a household with income below 60% of the average income). This includes four million children and nearly 1.7 million pensioners. The figures are for the year to March last year, during which the total rose by half a million.
The Work and Pensions Minister described the situation as ‘wholly unacceptable’. This is right of course, but, like all politicians, she has no understanding of the causes. It’s due to capitalism, a system which, in the midst of potential abundance, relies on poverty and inequality as a means of coercing people into wage labour and hence exploitation.
