Recently, The Economist published an article entitled ‘Don’t go after the rich to fix broken budgets’.
This stance is hardly surprising from a publication dubbed by Lenin “a journal that speaks for the British millionaires [now billionaires!]”.
Allegedly, left-wing populists like Mamdani want to “embrace their inner Robin Hood” and tax the rich to soften capitalism’s crises. But “squeezing the rich further [?!] will raise trifling sums of money, while causing real economic damage”.
Suggesting that Musk, Bezos, and co. are “squeezed” – on their yachts and private islands! – is beyond ridiculous. Between 2015-25, the wealth of the global top 1% surged by over $33.9 trillion – enough to end world poverty 22 times over.
Nevertheless, there is a point in The Economist’s babbling. Palliative reforms like wealth taxes cannot repair the capitalist system. Capitalists have many ways to sabotage such efforts, from capital flight to bond-market rebellions.
Why are the strategists of capital so concerned? Because they fear the radicalisation of the masses through struggles for reforms, through which people draw more radical – even revolutionary – conclusions.
As communists, we do not want a ‘Robin Hood state’ that ‘robs the rich to give to the poor’. We propose something far bolder: expropriating the fat-cats to build a classless, stateless communist society, free of all exploitation, inequality, and poverty.
Lucian, Oxford
How do we ‘take back power’?
On 14 March, activists from ‘Take Back Power’ entered supermarkets in UK cities, filled boxes with food, and handed them to food banks.
Take Back Power is right about almost everything. Over 14 million people – including 4.3 million children – live in poverty in Britain. The richest 50 families hold more wealth than the bottom 34 million combined. The billionaires are parasites. Every statistic they cite is a damning indictment of this rotten system.
Their solution? A ‘House of the People’: a citizens’ assembly, chosen by lottery, with powers to tax extreme wealth. The problem is, you can’t build the people’s house on the billionaires’ land.
They correctly identify that capitalist politicians serve the rich, then turn around and ask those same politicians to hand over power. But you can’t appeal to a system to dismantle itself.
Moreover, taking food from Tesco and taxing billionaires both go after distribution. But exploitation and inequality don’t start at the checkout. They start in production – in who owns the factories, the land, the supply chains.
Redistribution within capitalism is like mopping a flooded floor with the tap still running.
The billionaires won’t be taxed into irrelevance. They need to be expropriated – not by a citizens’ lottery, but by the working class, organised and mobilised against the 1 percent.
Noah Melero, London
