Theo Sharieff
Socialist Students national organiser
World capitalism in 2023 finds itself trapped in a new era of economic, social and political instability. The cost-of-living crisis has seen the living standards of millions fall as the owners of the energy companies have lined their pockets with record profits. The ongoing war in Ukraine underscores the bloody new era of increased tensions and competition between the world capitalist powers.
The havoc and destruction that the blind and chaotic system of capitalism causes to the lives of billions isn’t being felt by everyone however. The rich globally and in Britain continue to hoard grotesque levels of wealth while the basics for billions of people across the globe go unprovided. In 2022, the ten richest men on the planet increased their wealth by $15,000 every second, totalling $1.3 billion a day.
So wealthy are the super-rich now that in several countries they are constructing their own private cities! Meanwhile it is estimated that tens of thousands of people die across the planet every day owing to lack of access to food or adequate healthcare.
Capitalism’s failure is also writ large in its failure to deal with the developing climate catastrophe. The capitalists, however, while they are increasingly forced to be seen to take some measures to counter climate change, are totally incapable of taking the necessary decisive action on the scale required. Capitalism is based on the private ownership of the means of production by a handful, and on the continued existence of competing nation states, leaving it unable to take the necessary decisive action.
As a result, more and more young people are turning towards socialist ideas in the search for a way out from the nightmare of dystopian capitalism. Young people have been to the fore in mass and revolutionary uprisings against the system across the world. From Chile to Nigeria, Lebanon to Sri Lanka, workers, youth and the poor have taken on governments who brutally defend the inequality and injustices inherent to the capitalist system.
More and more young people are turning towards socialist ideas in the search for a way out from the nightmare of dystopian capitalism
British capitalism faces a particularly stark and deep crisis. Real household income is a third less than the pre-2007 trend. The debt to GDP ratio has skyrocketed. Productivity in the economy (the measure of economic output per hour worked) is growing at the slowest rate in 250 years! But what does all this actually mean for the futures of young people in Britain today?
All that capitalism and its political representatives have to offer young people is more of the same – attacks on our futures as they attempt to make us shoulder the crisis of their system and protect their profits.
It’s the common experience of millions to leave university saddled with debt, only to be unable to find quality work which gives us a path to any decent future whatsoever. Students and young people today have only ever known economic stagnation and crisis – a 21-year-old graduating today was six years old when the Great Recession of 2007/2008 took place!
Housing has become so unaffordable that millions of young people have given up on the idea of ever owning their own home after finishing university. This isn’t only among lower paid graduates. A recent study found that 38% of people earning over £60,000 a year have now turned their back on the idea of home ownership! This is at the same time that over half a million homes in England alone lie empty, owned by super-rich property speculators.
Alongside the crisis capitalism poses to the futures of young people, the working class has suffered the biggest collapse in living standards since the 1950s. The accumulated anger at the cost-of-living crisis, on top of 13 years of vicious austerity, crumbling public services, and continuously falling household income, has exploded out into the open with the biggest strike wave Britain has seen in decades.
The Tory government is falling apart. Projected to be kicked out of office at the next general election, they contain multiple different warring factions, split fundamentally over the question of how to take terminally ill British capitalism forwards. In ‘better’ times – the heyday of the British Empire – the Tory party was able to rule stably and without major political crisis. But those days are well and truly gone.
The strike wave has shone a light on how weak the Tories really are. Organised in the trade union movement, workers have been able to take collective action to shut down large parts of the economy and hit the profits of the bosses. Public service workers, including teachers, health workers, and civil servants, have wrested pay offers from the Tories which 12 months ago the Tories said were impossible to grant.
Meanwhile workers in the private sector have also been getting organised and fighting back. The first ever official Amazon warehouse strikes in Britain opened 2023, with workers taking on one of the richest men on the planet.
The working class is potentially the most powerful force in society, and the only one capable of overturning the rule of the capitalists. Marx and Engels described how capitalism brought into existence its own ‘gravediggers’ when it created the working class.
The decisive role of the working class in the socialist transformation of society arises because of the collective consciousness which it develops in the workplace, and because it faces common attacks from big business, which it can only defeat through collective action. This allows it to prepare for the collective, democratic control and management of society, preparing the basis for establishing workers’ democracy and beginning the task of building a new socialist order.
Socialist Students says that the most pressure can be brought to bear on the Tories by fighting for the maximum possible coordinated action, not only between the trade unions and workers in different workplaces, but also by building a united student and workers movement.
The working class is potentially the most powerful force in society, and the only one capable of overturning the rule of the capitalists
Students haven’t just been passive observers to this fightback. Graduation last year saw students protesting in solidarity with university staff in UCU taking strike action over falling pay and endless cuts to jobs and courses on the campuses.
The Tories, acting on behalf of an increasingly dysfunctional British capitalism, are moving to make further attacks to our futures. That’s what lies behind the government’s student debt reforms, lowering the income threshold at which graduates start repaying their debt, and extending the repayment window from 30 years to 40 years. The government estimates that the number of graduates who will pay back their loans in full will increase from 27% to 62%. The Tories and the capitalist class are fighting to make us pay for their crisis.
Meanwhile the student cost-of-living crisis rumbles on. With maintenance loans increasing by 2.8%, thousands more students will be driven to skipping meals and skipping university classes just to save money. Average annual student rent has now overtaken the maximum available student loan!
None of this is inevitable however. As the strike wave has demonstrated, mass action can force concessions out of the Tories.Those strikes have been made possible because striking workers are organised in their trade unions, allowing workers to discuss out a strategy and act to fight back against the attacks they face from big business bosses and the government.
That’s why Socialist Students says that students have to get organised too on our campuses. Students could fight for action from university management on the cost-of-living crisis – including to make available access to student hardship funds, ensure no price increases on campus canteens and restaurants, keep university spaces such as 24-hour libraries open, not limit campus lighting or heating, and make no more cuts to jobs or courses.
Such student organisations could start to link up nationally, alongside campus trade unions like the UCU and Unison, to fight for the funding our universities need. We say that no cuts to education are necessary in the fifth-richest nation on the planet. Socialist Students fights for the funding our universities need to provide a free, high-quality education for all, the cancellation of student debt and the replacement of loans with living grants which rise with inflation.
We say a future can be provided for young people, but not under the failing capitalist system. Socialist Students stands for the building of a united student and workers’ movement to stop the attacks of the rich, kick out the Tories and fight for socialist change.
We want to get organised to fight for a socialist transformation of society, to harness the resources and technology which exist today to meet the needs of the majority and to take society and humanity forwards in Britain and internationally.
But all the main establishment parties defend the capitalist system, including Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. From scrapping Jeremy Corbyn’s pledges to abolish tuition fees to opposing inflation-proof pay rises for workers, Starmer has firmly put the Labour Party on the side of big business. That’s why Socialist Students voted at its most recent conference to campaign for the establishment of a new mass workers’ party to fight for our interests and to give voice to the struggles and campaigns of workers, students and young people in Parliament and the council chamber.
Such a new party on its own however would not be enough. Socialist Students says it is vital any such party is armed with and fights for a socialist programme. The struggle for free education, above-inflation pay rises, proper funding for our NHS, mass council house building, and decent and well-paid jobs will be resisted bitterly by big business both in Britain and internationally.
That’s why we need to build a mass movement which fights to replace capitalism with a socialist society! We want to take the industries and companies which dominate the economy – including the banks, monopolies, transport industry, the energy companies – into democratic public ownership under workers’ control and management.
On that basis – a socialist basis – it would be possible to introduce a democratic plan of production to meet the needs and wants of all in society, and to build a world free of all oppression, division, climate destruction and war. Join Socialist Students to get organised on your campus and fight for a socialist transformation of society in Britain and across the world, and fight for our futures!
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