Most people will be aware of food banks, which provide food to those too impoverished to buy enough for themselves and their family. Nearly three million food parcels were distributed in the UK in the last year by the Trussell Trust alone.
But it’s not just food, for there are also multibanks, which supply other goods as well. One example (ironically, it was founded by the former Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown) supplies clothes, bedding, hygiene products, toys and furniture – ‘surplus’ goods that companies cannot sell.
This is capitalism in one of the most developed countries on Earth. Many cannot afford life’s essentials, and have to rely on charities to provide them
What a mess the Labour government is in. The problems just pile up – proposed welfare cuts followed by a humiliating U-turn, a lot of its active supporters hacked off by its outlawing of Palestinian Action, the court system bursting at the seams, the small boats that keep coming, and now doctors threatening to strike over pay. They just can’t do right for doing wrong.
But that’s the fate of all governments of capitalism. True, it’s happening sooner than most for this one. But getting a system riven with contradictions and at the mercy of ‘market forces’ to work in a way that keeps them popular with the electorate is doomed to failure, and usually ends in electoral defeat.
If you’re feeling fearful right now, possibly because Labour wants to cut your welfare to pay for fighter planes, you won’t be consoled to learn that superyachts are getting bigger. One yacht owner helpfully explains why, for example, these floating 5-star hotels need huge kitchens to provide gourmet fare: “If you are used to eating well, not everywhere [in the world] are there restaurants good enough.”
How tiresome for the poor lambs. Globally, 733 million are not used to eating much at all, and 9 million a year starve to death. Yet when you point to capitalism’s monstrous inequality, caused entirely by the rich exploiting the poor, the rich are the first to accuse you of the politics of envy!
… for 5 July is Coops Day “a once-in-a-decade opportunity to spotlight the critical role of cooperatives in building more inclusive, resilient, and sustainable communities.” At least that’s what the International Cooperative Alliance would have us believe.
They seem to have forgotten that the world economy is driven by the laws of capitalist production. Meaning that every enterprise must increase its productivity if it is to stay in business. Increasing productivity is (usually) achieved by spending more of the enterprise’s revenue on technology, so reducing the amount available for wages. So eventually, there will be fewer workers, or lower wages.
There is no opt-out from this particular law – see here for more on the socialist view of coops.
Fellow workers currently in receipt of a PIP or Universal Credit will no doubt be relieved that the government has been forced to withdraw its plan to directly attack their standard of living.
They might also be thinking that Starmer & Co. would be more honest if they used the term ‘economic imperative’ instead when referring to plans to change the social insecurity system.
Because capitalists everywhere are bound to resist increases in the amount of tax taken from profits to fund the system, in the same way that they are bound to resist attempts to increase wages.
By so doing they reveal their real imperative: the protection of profitability, come what may for the rest of us.
Many workers find their jobs stressful in various ways. But recently the trade union Unison described the problems met by a specific group of workers, those who deal with 999 calls that involve a medical emergency. It is important and rewarding work, but …
They frequently have to take life-changing decisions, sometimes working a 12-hour stretch with limited breaks. One worker had to take time off after dealing with four suicide calls in a single shift. There is a high staff turnover, with over a quarter leaving their jobs in the last three years.
These may be exceptional cases, but they demonstrate the stress and burnout that many workers experience under capitalism.
Inflammatory headlines such as ‘London pays £3.6bn to house non-Britons (Telegraph) and ‘Asylum chaos as migrants housed in 81% of areas’ (Express) have been part of a relentless campaign to foment hatred of anyone living in the UK who is not White British. Keir Starmer has announced that Britain risks becoming ‘an island of strangers’. Such goads to xenophobia and racism could hardly be more blatant.
Instead of making life hell on earth for people moving from country to another, we should be looking towards a radically different earth – borderless, stateless and moneyless. The end of the border system and the nationalism that underlies and sustains it will make the world a secure and habitable place for all.
News that UK water bosses won’t get fat-cat bonuses for polluting waterways might mollify some, furious at the blatant mismanagement and grift. Britain is renowned for being cold, cloudy and wet, yet it’s now projected to run out of water by the mid-2030s, due to lack of reservoirs, and 1tn litres a year in leakage.
Water companies, some nearly bankrupt, push up charges and borrow huge sums not to fix leaks, but to service a £60bn debt mountain, as well as pay around £2bn a year in shareholder dividends.
There’s nothing efficient about capitalism. State or private, it’s always money first, people last. The whole planet needs democratic common ownership. Anything else is just a drop in the bucket.
An interim Water Commission report released on 3 June tells us that “the current system is not delivering what people expect and need” but “There is no simple, single change, no matter how radical, that will deliver the fundamental ‘reset’ of the water sector”
Alongside the blather about a ‘long-term direction’ and better regulation is a plea for the already low risk to investors to be made lower still, to make low returns more attractive to capital.
And there’s the rub – the Commission is (of course!) stuck with the capitalist mindset.
There is indeed a single radical change to make it easier to produce all of the goods and services that we all need – expropriate the capitalists.
In April, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) reported an ‘unprecedented’ 9.4% rise in worldwide military spending last year, making 2024 the tenth year of successive increases. In response, SIPRI sponsored a “Forum on Peace and Development” in May, which featured “high-level panels and roundtables as well as a range of workshops, spotlights, exhibitions and fireside chats”.
Reassured? Don’t be.
Because capital, privately owned or state-controlled, will always require some part of the wealth that we workers produce to be squandered on preparations for and commission of fresh slaughters. Not for freedom, democracy or nationhood, but to protect markets, sources of raw materials and trade routes.
So if you want world peace, you need to help prepare for world socialism
