En Passant

The capitalist system must maintain inequality as a function of the drive for profits writes Socialist Worker US.

As profit rates have fallen and are up to half what they were in the boom years of the 50s and 60s, across the developed world the state has responded by cutting taxes on capital.

Going to university should be a liberating experience. It should train us to critique rigorously all orthodoxies and dogmas. It should be about unlocking intellectual and practical abilities, giving us the tools to help transform society for the better writes Jordan Humphreys in Socialist Alternative.

However, universities, like all other major institutions, are shaped by the needs of the capitalist system – an authoritarian order run in the interests of the rich and powerful, who put profit above everything else. Going to university is an alienating experience because educational institutions take on the authoritarian, profit-driven dynamic of the system as a whole.

Revolution won’t come about by us wishing and waiting writes Nick Everett in Socialist Alternative in Australia. We need to fight for change. Socialism – a society that organises production to meet human need, not corporate greed – is not only possible, but urgently necessary.

Marx’s study of Capital goes to the heart of a crisis prone economic system, but it isn’t just a book about “Marxist economics” writes Tom O’Lincoln in Socialist Alternative. Neither can we settle for other one-dimensional tags like “philosophy” or “sociology”. While it’s indispensable reading in all of these fields, the greatness of Capital lies mainly in another dimension: apart perhaps from the Communist Manifesto, it’s the greatest argument ever written to fight for a better world.

In the first of a series of articles to mark Black History Month, Ken Olende in Socialist Worker UK explains how capitalism and slavery created racism.

Between $21 and $32 trillion – as much as Japan and America’s GDPs combined – has been stashed in offshore tax havens by the world’s richest 10 million individuals. Just 92,000 of them claim a $9.8 trillion dollar share.

Solidarity is not a light switch. It must be on the whole time. Our support for the oppressed today prepares us for the struggles of tomorrow against capitalism and its agents of oppression. The best way to do that right now and to help drive back racism and oppression is to support and defend the Muslim demonstrators and any other struggles that do break out against capitalism.

Even in death the bourgeoisie honours its own and those who serve them directly or indirectly. They die for capitalism. The system dishonours those who die because of capitalism. It consigns them to the coffin of history. Lest we forget.

Capitalism is a system built on the blood of its soldiers, indigenous people, refugees and workers. Only overthrowing this system of death can bring peace and safety to the world.