“Sigh of the oppressed creature”
I’ve recently noticed a head-scratching trend: young people in the West, particularly Gen Z males, are bucking the long-standing shift toward non-religiosity.
In response, some media outlets have rushed to explain this away by blaming young men’s supposed lack of education or even attributing it to the influence of Andrew Tate. But can misogyny or educational disparity really explain the dramatic rise in young British men attending church – from just 4 percent in 2018 to 21 percent today?
Are the Tates of the world truly so powerful that 18 to 24 year-olds have become the second largest age group in church attendance across England and Wales?
Clearly, these explanations fall short.
Historically, religion has served as a source of comfort and stability in times of crisis. We’ve all seen someone turn to prayer for the first time during a personal emergency, brought to their knees in desperation, asking why God has forsaken them.
Today, 26 percent of adults aged 16 to 29 experience moderate to severe depression, a reflection of a system in deep disarray. In the 2000s, the rise of “New Atheism” mirrored an era of globalisation and economic optimism following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
But now we are in the midst of a historic downturn. Real wage growth hasn’t been this stagnant since the Napoleonic Wars. Public services are being gutted while imperialist powers wage war – resulting in nearly 60,000 dead in Gaza and bloodshed in Ukraine. The material world is offering nothing. And so, many are turning to the spiritual one.
That responsibility now falls to us: to build a revolutionary party capable of transforming the sighs of despair of the oppressed into a militant voice for class struggle.
Myles Gordon, Ealing
Molecular process of revolution
On my way back from the June 7 ‘No to Austerity’ demonstration in London, an energetic school teacher from Shropshire approached me on the tube and complimented my ‘Time to clean the world’ Lenin T-shirt. I immediately asked him “Do you think we need a revolution against the billionaires?”. His response: “I bloody hope so!”
He was in London by chance, visiting friends, with no awareness of the demonstration, despite being a unionised teacher.
The result: he was pessimistic about the perspective for a British revolution. He believed revolution would only come if the billionaires threatened nuclear war!
But we got talking, first about the Birmingham bin strikes, and then about a struggle he’d been involved with at his school against the local authority, who had threatened to cut hours, funding and TAs for the school, which immediately brought the workers out onto a picket!
The sudden militancy of the teachers forced the local authority onto the defensive, leading to a compromise in favour of the TAs. He explained his whole school is ready to go back out on strike again very soon, and not just over pay.
We discussed the deals offered by the government, both Tory and Labour, particularly the unfunded and partially funded ‘pay rises’, which are in reality a cut.
He explained the right-wing press often tries to convey striking workers as just ‘greedy’, wanting more money, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
“It’s got nothing to do with money… They could pay me what they did three years ago for all I care – but it’s when they attack the school… and my TAs – I cannot live without them and I hope they know that! I love my job and I don’t care what I’m paid.”
Workers don’t want the extravagant lives of the bosses and the billionaires, we merely want a comfortable existence, to do our jobs, live our lives and support our families. But capitalism cannot afford us these basic necessities.
This is what transforms consciousness, and brings people out onto the streets, onto the pickets, and ultimately into opposition against the government and the rotten capitalist system itself.
It is this molecular process which leads, time and again to revolution.
Ben Campbell, Bristol
Labour attacks prostitutes – for a class solution!
Labour MP Tonia Antoniazzi has put forward two amendments to the crime and sentencing bill that would further expand the criminal justice approach to addressing prostitution. This would further punish the most vulnerable in society, mainly poor women into secrecy and increase vulnerability.
By treating prostitution as solely a crime the Labour government is conveniently ignoring the social and economic reasons that compel people into the sale of sex. A practice more workers are forced into alongside official paid work due to cost of living and low wages.
This is an attack that is disguised as ‘help’. But no bourgeois state can be trusted – with its courts and police – to keep the most vulnerable in society safe.
Prostitution is far from being the ‘oldest profession’ that some activists have fabled it to be. Rather, it is the necessary conjunct of any system based on exploitation, where want is pervasive.
This oppressive practice can only be combatted through class demands: naturalising all those who are trafficked; providing housing and employment for all; and doing away with the material roots of sexism and misogyny.
Tom Wood, Liverpool
‘Astroworld’ – LiveNation Has Blood on its Hands
Netflix’s latest documentary, Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy, investigates Travis Scott’s 2021 music festival ‘Astroworld’, at which incompetent planning and corporate greed led to crowd surges and crushing, leaving 10 dead and over 300 injured.
The account told by the filmmakers is damning. The 80 minute film features eyewitness testimony, video footage, and unprecedented access to internal communications. Its conclusion? This tragedy was easily preventable.
The evidence presented in the film demonstrates that LiveNation, the music mega-corp behind the festival, cut corners in order to increase their profit margins. The festival sold 50,000 tickets, despite the main stage only having capacity for 35,000. During Scott’s performance executives refused to pull the plug, despite knowing that at least four attendees were being given CPR.
In the words of crowd safety expert Scott Davidson, “Astroworld was not an accident. It was an inevitability…”
When the seriousness of the situation finally sets in, text messages show management callously trying to cover their backs. One message reads, “I know they’ll try to fight through it, but I would want it on the record that I didn’t advise this to continue.” Criminally, they failed to act.
The Astroworld tragedy serves as a bleak reminder of the lengths to which corporate greed is prepared to go. The wretched capitalist system demands that profit will always be put before people.
For companies such as LiveNation, safety will always be an afterthought. However, under capitalism profit is king, and providing anything other than the bare minimum is an unacceptable squeeze on corporate margins.
Astroworld was not the first time that incompetently organised cash grabs have endangered the lives of their attendees, and it will not be the last. As long as capitalism endures, safety will always be subordinate to profit.
Lewis Montgomery, Royal Holloway University
Britain’s benevolence?
Britain’s record of mass murder and indictable war crimes in places such as Iraq, Ireland, South Africa, India and many other such places is well-documented, unforgivable, and unavoidable in confronting horrific aspects of our country’s past. However, the raging hypocrisy of foreign aid alongside arms sales shows a uniquely modern and sadistic streak in Britain’s foreign policy.
Take the case of the Saudi Arabia-led coalition’s military intervention in Yemen, whereby it backed the Yemeni government against the Houthi rebels. Since the conflict began in March 2015, the estimated value of UK arms exports to the Saudi coalition is £9.7 billion.
However, in a policy which can only be described as an incredibly warped and confused sense of British morality, Britain has simultaneously provided £1 billion in humanitarian aid to Yemen since March 2015.
In other words, Britain is providing humanitarian aid to the very same country which it has helped the Saudi-led coalition to terrorise. Besides the war crimes the coalition has committed, the coalition has even been guilty of blocking the same humanitarian aid which Britain has sent to Yemen, to the sum of £1 billion of British taxpayers’ money.
The United Kingdom is aiding the destruction of the Yemeni people and their sovereign state, and then handing them a pittance, with Yemen receiving aid almost ten times less in value than the arms we send which is used to massacre them.
And yet, history has repeated itself.
Britain has sent £100 million in arms licenses to Israel since October 7th, whilst also sending another £100 million in aid to Gaza, and £10 million to Lebanon in the same time period.
Capitalism morality, if it can be said to have any, and places profit above all other priorities, and this has occurred again in Britain’s support of Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people.
George Lawrence, University of Leeds
Why I am a communist
Growing up in America, I believed in the myth of the American Dream – that with enough hard work, I could achieve anything. But when I turned 18 and entered university, the illusion shattered. The goalposts kept moving, and the living standards of previous generations seemed impossible.
To get a decent job, I had to take on six-figure student debt – burdened with compounding interest for life – just to survive in a system designed to keep me chained to work. There were no real alternatives. We were told to pick a ‘dream job’ to make it bearable. But under this system, no work is a dream.
My dreams are different.
I dream of spending quality time with my mom – because she has free, accessible healthcare that saves lives and prevents crises.
I dream of living in balance with our miraculous planet, not exploiting it to the brink for profit.
I dream of pursuing my passions freely, not squeezing them into evenings after my third shift.
I dream of teaching my future children to recognize healing plants, not recite the Pledge of Allegiance.
I dream of being valued for my kindness and wisdom; not how much tax I pay.
I dream of work that serves my community without becoming my entire identity.
I dream of a world where bombs are still seen as barbaric, and those being bombed are free to dream too.
I came to see capitalism for what it is: a system built to extract everything from workers while enriching the few. All roads led me to Marxism and communism, because only then can power truly return to those who create value: workers.
Why is it always, “Young people don’t know hard work,” and never, “Why do young people need three jobs just to survive?”
Why do billionaires, who’ve never laboured in the sun on the side of a highway or dug in their daddy’s mines, decide the future of those who have?
It’s not brilliance that made Elon Musk rich – it’s exploitation.
The capitalists have robbed workers for centuries. And I, for one, don’t welcome thieves into my home without resistance.
That’s why I joined the RCP.
Because I’m hardworking and tired of crumbs.
Because change doesn’t come from waiting.
Because I want to stand with fellow workers and fight for a new world.
Because I won’t go quietly into that good night.
The new ‘American Dream’ is the complete reclamation of wealth and power for the working class.
It’s time to end billionaire rule and global imperialism.
Workers of the world, unite!
Shelby, Kensington
