The world is entering a new epoch, characterised by trade wars, militarism, and savage attacks on the working class.
Protectionism and painful tariffs are on the order of the day. The global economy is sliding towards ‘stagflation’ – a toxic cocktail of recession and inflation. European powers are calling for rearmament. And Starmer’s government is waging war on the poor – chopping billions from welfare to fund billions for warfare.
Whilst the downtrodden and oppressed suffer ever-greater hardships, however, the super-rich have never had it so good.
Stock markets may be experiencing a rollercoaster ride thanks to Trump’s capricious economic decisions. But this is a mere blip for the planet’s plutocrats, who are raking it in at our expense.
According to the latest Oxfam inequality report, the world’s billionaires increased their collective wealth by $2 trillion over the course of 2024 – a rate of around $5.7 billion per day.
The global number of billionaires increased by 200 compared to the previous year, rising to a total of 2,769, with a combined fortune of around $15 trillion.
Britain’s billionaires, meanwhile, sit on a tidy sum of £182bn: around the same as annual public spending on day-to-day health and social care costs.
And yet we are told by big business politicians like Starmer that the coffers are empty; that workers and the vulnerable must bear the burden of capitalism’s crises.
We say: make the billionaires pay for this crisis!
‘Tax the rich’
Accompanying this widening chasm between the haves and the have-nots is a growing chorus of campaigners demanding higher taxes on the mega-rich.
Recently, for example, at a 2000-strong summit held on 29 March, Jeremy Corbyn and other well-known left figures launched the ‘We Demand Change’ project: a movement “calling for welfare not warfare and taxing the rich, to win a fairer society for all”.
Similarly, the People’s Assembly is organising a national demo on 7 June under the slogans “austerity is a political choice” and “welfare not warfare”.
And Youth Demand activists are “demanding that the government make the rich pay” by “raising £1 trillion from the super-rich and fossil fuel elites”.
‼️Hold the date!
On Saturday 7th June, we are planning a big demo against Labour’s Austerity 2.0 in Central London.
👉 Austerity is a Political Choice
👉 Welfare Not Warfare
👉 Stop the Far Right
👉 Stop the Cuts pic.twitter.com/S2cMeRYZlH— People’s Assembly (@pplsassembly) February 28, 2025
In fact, even senior spokespersons from government and business are calling for greater taxes on the rich, with warnings (to the ruling class) that growing wealth inequality could trigger “societal collapse and disintegration” within the next decade.
Gary’s Economics
Perhaps most prominent and vocal amongst these ‘tax the rich’ advocates is Gary Stevenson, the host of popular YouTube channel Gary’s Economics.
With over a million followers on social media, Gary’s diatribes against the billionaires have clearly and understandably struck a chord with ordinary people.
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Speaking with passion, in simple but class-based language, the former Citibank trader uses his insider knowledge and prestigious economics education to explain how the rich and powerful exploit and impoverish the rest of us, leading to today’s eye-watering levels of inequality.
To right this wrong, he concludes, we must demand bigger taxes on the very richest; preferably, in his opinion, in the form of a wealth tax.
Neither the “boring centrism” of Starmer’s Labour, nor Farage’s “the problem is foreigners” party offer any solution, Gary correctly states.
Instead, he insists, we must “build, build, build” in order to “win the argument”; to make “taxing wealth, not work” the accepted mainstream “common sense” in politics, academia, and across society.
Gary’s message is no doubt appealing. But can his proposals work? Can the rich and their representatives be convinced to hand over their money by force of reason and persuasion?
Bankers’ blackmail
Speaking in interviews and commenting on TV show panels, Gary frequently brings up his experience as a talented speculator. As he recounts in his bestselling book, he became a millionaire by betting on debt and interest rates in the wake of the 2007-08 crash.
Having witnessed the power of the banks first hand, then, with their ability to bring governments to their knees, Gary should know that the super-rich will not freely part with their cash.
If this wasn’t evident from his time in the City, it should be clear from Britain’s recent economic history: first with the market’s defenestration of Liz Truss in 2022; and then earlier this year, when investors turned on Labour, demanding cuts to social spending in place of taxes on business.
In fact, over £100 billion per year is currently being siphoned from the public purse to pay interest to Britain’s creditors. Disability benefits are being cut to ensure that these well-heeled ladies and gentlemen get their pound of flesh.
And from Tata in Port Talbot, to British Steel in Scunthorpe, to AstraZeneca in Merseyside: multinational monopoly CEOs have threatened to shut down plants and withdraw investment, unless UK taxpayers subsidise their profits.
Far from paying their way, these blackmailing bosses and wealthy investors are holding a gun to our head!
Under capitalism, then, it is not governments that dictate to the bankers, but the bankers that dictate to governments.
It is 100 percent correct to demand that the billionaires pay up. But to do this, we must seize their wealth, not merely tax it.
Overthrow their system
Demands to ‘tax the rich’, then, are not nearly as ‘pragmatic’ or ‘realistic’ as their proponents suggest.
More importantly, these reformist calls do not go nearly far enough.
At a time when capitalism is lurching towards a new Great Depression and the world is on fire, tinkering with the tax system is a case of trying to put out an inferno with a water pistol.
Appealing to establishment politicians to implement such changes, meanwhile, is the equivalent of asking the arsonist to extinguish the blaze.
To transform society, the working class must trust only in its own strength and organisation.
Our aim, as communists, is not just to end inequality, but to end the systemic exploitation that gives rise to, in the words of Marx, the “accumulation of wealth at one pole” alongside “the accumulation of misery, agony, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole”.
We have a far greater goal than simply redistributing a few scraps from the fat-cats’ feast to the poor man’s plate.
The working class, through its labour, creates all the wealth and riches in society. We therefore have every right to demand more than mere crumbs. We demand the whole bakery!
Workers shouldn’t be forced to kneel and beg for more from the rich. Instead, we must rise up and struggle to overturn the regime and rule of the capitalist class – those responsible for today’s rotten status quo.
We must fight to take control of the means of production: the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy; the means by which wealth is created in the first place.
As the old socialist saying goes: you cannot cure cancer with an aspirin.
The crisis-ridden capitalist system cannot be patched up. It must be overthrown.
Revolution against the billionaires!
For those who seek to reform this rotten system, the slogan of ‘welfare not warfare’ is merely an impotent cry; a moralistic and utopian call for nice things rather than bad things.
The problem is, the capitalists do not act according to what is ‘rational’ for society, but in terms of what is best for their profits and parochial interests.
As communists, we must fill this phrase – ‘welfare not warfare’ – with revolutionary, class content.
Austerity and militarism are not simply ‘political choices’, but the inevitable logic of capitalism: the product of an anarchic system based on exploitation, inequality, and profit; a reflection of the fundamental limits of private property and the nation state.
The same ruling class that is supporting genocide and imperialist war abroad is responsible for an all-out assault on the working class back home.
If we want to see an end to cuts, conflict, and chaos, we must organise and fight to sweep this decrepit system into the dustbin of history, along with all of those who seek to uphold it.
Only an international, rational, socialist plan of production can save humanity from the miseries of war, crisis, and poverty.
This requires wrestling the main levers of the economy – the big banks and monopolies – from the capitalists, and putting them in the hands of the working class.
After all, you cannot plan what you don’t control. And you cannot control what you don’t own.
To combat the coming catastrophe will require far more than a bit of tax-and-spend. We need a global revolution against the billionaire class.
