It is difficult to overstate the level of crisis shaking the world today. Capitalism has always meant crisis. But in 2022, it’s as if every new catastrophe is developing at a pace and scale not witnessed for generations.

We are still living with the effects of a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ global pandemic. The world economy is heading for a new recession. The war in Ukraine has brought mass conflict and human misery. Around the world, there are more people displaced by war, violence and persecution than ever before. And we cannot forget the ever-deepening climate disaster.

Young people in Britain are thinking: “What is going wrong with the world today?”. Everywhere we look, records are being set for food prices, energy bills, NHS wait times, low wages, high temperatures, food banks – the list goes on.

Socialists say that all these problems are the result of capitalism, as an anarchic economic system that permits a tiny minority of individuals to sow death, destruction and exploitation on a global scale to boost their own private profits.

Left to the mercy of the capitalist market, our universities have been plunged into crisis. The average maintenance loan falls hundreds of pounds short of monthly living costs, with 1 in 3 students having less than £50 to live on per month. Entire courses and departments have been cut. Many of our staff barely earn enough to live on.

This rotten Tory government has no answers to the crisis of cuts and marketisation blighting our universities, because this would require a 100% publicly funded higher education system – and that means making the super-rich pay.

The recent coup against Boris Johnson, and the subsequent Conservative leadership contest has laid bare the deep divisions within the Tories, as they butt heads over the way forward for the capitalist system they represent.

It was no coincidence that Boris Johnson resigned just two weeks after rail workers in the RMT union took strike action in June. We’ve seen the power of the trade unions in the current strike wave for the first time in our lives.

Socialist Students aims to be the group on campus that organises students in fighting side-by-side with workers.

But we want to be more than a solidarity group. Striking workers have shown that they can fight back and win against this weak and divided Tory government, and we think that students can do the same. 

Socialist Students campaigns for students to get organised in a movement of our own – for the scrapping of tuition fees, the writing-off of student debt, the introduction of living maintenance grants, and for universities to be 100% publicly funded by taking the wealth off the super-rich.

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has abandoned workers and young people, going as far as banning its front-benchers from attending trade union picket lines. Labour wants to be the ‘second eleven’ for the British capitalist class, as reliable representatives of big business, just as they were under Tony Blair.

That’s why Socialist Students supports the building of a new party for workers and young people. We know that important victories can be won through mass campaigns and movements – especially strike action. But we also think that fighting without a political voice is like fighting with one arm tied behind your back. 

Because when trade union leaders call for nationalisation, for example, or the NUS calls for 100% publicly funded education, who can they expect to implement these demands?

A new mass workers’ party could be a voice for workers and young people in parliament and council chambers against the pro-big business politics of all the establishment parties. It could also help coordinate and lead struggles on the streets, in the workplaces, or in schools and universities. It would provide a mass forum for socialists to discuss and debate the way forward for everyone looking to change society.

As socialists, we say that the way forward is socialism, which would mean replacing the anarchic, crisis-ridden system of capitalism with public ownership and democratic workers’ planning of wealth and resources to meet the needs of everyone, instead of the private profits of a tiny minority. 

Capitalism will not be ‘reformed’ into socialism. We need fundamental change – revolution – which means the complete, democratic transfer of economic and social power to the working class and poor in Britain and on a global scale.

For students, the socialist fightback can start on campus. By linking up with university staff and organising now for a decent education, we can prepare ourselves for the struggle for socialism. That’s why you should join Socialist Students this year.