Anarchy Raised to Authority
Greater Accumulation of Social Wealth in Very Few Hands
The civil society organization Oxfam reports that during the past two years, a tiny minority of oligarchs "amassed close to two-thirds of all new wealth created in the world." The "collective fortunes of the super-rich have been increasing by $2.7 billion a day," the study says, while working people are suffering lower wages, insecurity, wars and attacks on the social programs on which they depend.
Working people produced $42 trillion in new social wealth since 2020 with $26 trillion of that or 63 per cent expropriated by the super-rich who control the economies of the world. The remaining $16 trillion or 38 per cent was divided among the actual producers mainly for their daily necessities. "A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 per cent," Oxfam says.
Certain billionaires in control of food and energy production and
distribution saw their wealth soar in 2022 as the prices people had to
pay for social products in those sectors rapidly rose. Ninety-five
privately-owned and controlled food and energy enterprises concentrated
mainly in the U.S.
and Europe more than doubled the amount they expropriated as private
profit from global production. The consequences of this concentration
of increased wealth in the hands of a few were immediate, causing 1.7
billion workers to face price inflation outpacing the wages they
receive from the sale of
their capacity to work to the very rich who own and control the economy
and are profiting from this theft of social value. Tragically as a
result of the gross inequality more than 820 million people -- roughly
one in ten people on Earth -- are going hungry, Oxfam reports.
"While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams. Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires -- a roaring '20s boom for the world's richest," said Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International. The myths of trickle-down economics and a rising tide lifts all ships are shattered in the reality the people face. The tide, which has been more like a tsunami of enormous social wealth pouring into the pockets of the oligarchs during the anti-social offensive has only "risen the superyachts," Bucher concluded.
This report once again confirms that the minority who control the economy and politics throughout the world daily amass ever greater amounts of the social wealth the working people produce. The possession by a few of social wealth, investments and means of production and their control of governments lead to greater accumulation for the rich minority while working people suffer increasing insecurity and a lower standard of living, and social problems fester.
How can it be otherwise as long as a rich minority controls the economy and politics, and expropriate for themselves the added-value workers produce and refuse to recognize or accept that in the modern world the people themselves must be in control of all affairs that affect their lives? There is nothing new in that. The challenge facing the working class is to solve the problem of their own empowerment so that they cannot be reduced to a force which simply describes how corrupt, degenerate and superfluous the rich minority are, or, what is just as bad if not worse, demand that this superfluous force should solve the problem of the system from which they profit.
The accumulated social wealth of the rich allows the expropriators to use the power and control this brings to defend the status quo that favours them and not allow an advance to the next stage in human development. The working people themselves must take up the social responsibility to gain control over political affairs, the productive forces and the social wealth they produce so as to use it to humanize the social and natural environment.
The imperialist economy where the super-rich rule over the working people is transitory. It is necessary to advance to a new direction and stage under the control of the working people. This requires that the working people continuously and on all matters of concern establish their own vantage point, based on their own independent politics. The working people can fight the anti-social program by advancing their own pro-social program which lays their own claims on society. These are the claims they are entitled to make by virtue of the relations people enter into in the society and of the need to create a society which provides the rights all by virtue of being human with a guarantee. Working peoples’ independent actions with analysis on this basis are bringing the new quality into being of the workers speaking for themselves and representing themselves. This is crucial to avert the dangers which lie ahead as a result of inter-imperilaist competition and the war path the U.S./NATO alliance, including Canada, are pursuing.
This article was published in
Volume 53 Number 5 - May 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/M530051.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca