Capitalism is the virus, Socialism is the vaccine!

By Nikos Mottas.

The 2008 global capitalist economic crisis, the effects of which are still visible today, was a tremendous opportunity for the big capitalists to increase their wealth. During a period of ten years, from 2008 to 2018, the number of billionaires was doubled, like their profits. It has been proved that the crisis generates more capitalists.

The Coronavirus pandemic, which has plagued the world since the beginning of 2020, comes to confirm that capitalist barbarity “feeds” from the people's death, poverty, impoverishment and exploitation. The recent report by Forbes is revealing: 

Questo è il capitalismo: Queues form outside Milan food banks as capitalist crisis deepens

The scenes you are going to see are from Milan, the industrial, commercial and financial center of Northern Italy and one of the Europe's wealthiest cities. Hosting a significant number of large multinational groups (e.g. Amazon, Apple, Coca Cola, HP, Huawei, IBM, Microsoft, Nestle, Samsung, Siemens, Vodafone, Whirpool, etc), Milan has in terms of GDP the second-largest economy in the EU after Paris.

But behind the impressive facade of capitalist growth, there is another Milan which reflects the deepening class inequalities and the results of long-time policies by the bourgeois Italian governments and the European Union. 

Royal parasites and capitalism

By Nikos Mottas.

“Megxit” has become the new favourite top story of the bourgeois media in Britain and the world these days. 

Bombastic headlines, thousands of articles and analysis are dedicated to the announcement of Prince Harry and his wife, the Dutchess of Sussex, to “step back” from their roles as senior members of the British royal family. 

In Erdogan's Turkey 18 million people are living below poverty line

While the world's media are busy covering Tayyip Erdogan's visit in the United States, a report issued by the General Workers Union exposes the harsh reality of the deepening of social inequalities in Turkey. 

According to a report titled "Income Inequality and Poverty in Turkey", the number of poor people in Turkey is 16 million, while 18 million people are living below poverty line. 

As the report notes, the working pverty in the country has increased by 11% in one year, while the capitalist crisis has created more than 1 million newly unemployed. 

Capitalism in Australia: A record number of elderly people are sinking in poverty, debts

According to an interesting report of news agency Xinhua from Canberra, debt assistance services have warned that a record number of elderly Australians are living in poverty.

The National Debt Helpline (NDH), the government's financial counselling service, is on-track to receive a record number of calls in 2018 and staff have observed a marked increase in the number of older Australians who cannot pay their rent or mortgage.

Genieße den Kapitalismus: 48% of German pensioners earn less than €800 per month

Even in the European Union's economically most powerful country, Capitalism shows its rotten, barbaric nature. 

More specifically, as Deutsche Welle reports, poverty towards Germany's senior citizens becomes more and more threatening, as long as almost half (48%) of the country's retirees earn a pension of less than 800 euros per month!

It must be noted that the poverty limit in Germany – the monthly net income that someone must earn in order to be considered as “poor”- is 958 euros/month. 

Capitalism's queues: London workers are queuing up for free food, can't afford to eat

The various apologists of free market economy and slanderers of the socialist system must get used to a new term: Capitalist queues. 

According to an interesting report by The Independent, during rush hour on one of London’s most affluent streets, amid the bustle of the Strand, an orderly queue is forming. Dozens of people stand patiently, and hungrily, waiting for their dinner.  

The gathering, near Charing Cross station, comprises people of all ages and ethnicities. 

Some look visibly homeless, clutching large carrier bags containing their worldly possessions. Others wear work clothes. Despite having a job, they can’t afford to eat.

This is Capitalism #7 - Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

According to a report published in The Guardian (7 April), the world’s richest 1% are on course to control as much as two-thirds of the world’s wealth by 2030. 

An alarming projection produced by the UK House of Commons library suggests that if trends seen since the 2008 financial crash were to continue, then the top 1% will hold 64% of the world’s wealth by 2030. Even taking the financial crash into account, and measuring their assets over a longer period, they would still hold more than half of all wealth.

This is Capitalism #6 - Number of homeless people in England hits highest level on record

According to a report published on the Independent, the number of people sleeping rough in England has hit a record-high – after a 73 per cent increase over the last three years. 

This is Capitalism #2 - World's wealthiest capitalists became 1$ trillion richest in 2017, while 22,000 children die each day due to poverty

This is Capitalism No #2

Behind Hollywood's glamour: Shocking images of poverty and homelessness in downtown Los Angeles

Tents of homeless people in
downtown Los Angeles, California.

Capitalism Exposed in L.A.

What lies behind the glamorous showcase of the United States' second largest city? 

Rubbish bags piled up by the pavements and littered across streets. Tents erected in clusters where people have camped down for the night. Dozens of directionless residents congregating by the roadside and wandering into the road. 

This is what Christmas Day looked like for thousands of homeless people in the dark and dingy underbelly of Downtown Los Angeles this year.  

Homeless in Dublin: The Communist Party of Ireland says "we need homes, not prison cells"

Dublin City Council is considering using a section of the Mountjoy prison campus to help deal with the capital's homeless problem. The Department of Justice has offered the training unit of Dublin's largest prison to the local authority, which is now considering it to house homeless people. The training unit is separated from the main section of the jail and was closed earlier this year.

At the time of its closure the unit had a capacity of 96 beds. Independent councillor Mannix Flynn said the council was considering using the facility to alleviate the city's current homelessness crisis. [...] The latest figures show there are 8,500 people without a home, 3,500 of whom are children, but there are fears the number could increase as the country heads into Christmas week, as the figures were compiled in October.

Britain: 19 million people living below the line of poverty

Source: The New Worker.

Prime Minister Theresa May earlier this year claimed she was reaching out to families that were “just about managing” to get by. But there are millions more families now who are not managing at all, thanks to her policies.

According to a report released last week by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) there are now 3.4 million more households in Britain struggling to live on their income than there were in the year 2008—2009.

There are now just under 19 million people in Britain living below the ‘Minimum Income Standard’ (MIS), 11 million of whom are not managing but are sinking fast into a bottomless pit of debt and desperation.

The Great Lie of the "American Dream": Capitalism perpetuates poverty in the USA

According to a New York Daily News report, earlier this month, the number of homeless people living on New York City's streets surged by nearly 40% this year, according to the results of an annual count. "There were 3,892 homeless people on the street, the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate done in February found — up 39% since last year, when the number was 2,794, according to results released Wednesday" the report writes. 

New York City is of course an example which highlights the great problem of homelessness that affects the United States of America. According to the official data published by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) more than half a million people - a quarter of them being children- were homeless during 2015. 

Capitalism Unmasked: Numbers reveal the expansion of social inequalities in the 21st century

The poorest half of the world's population shares a bit under the 1% of the global wealth, while the richest 10% owns the 88% of the total global wealth. The 0.7% of the world's population owns 116.6 trillion dollars!

1. The richest 1% of the world's population controls half of the global wealth. Despite the economic crisis, the number of millionaires in a worldwide scale was increased during the last 12 months of 2016.

2. According to a survey by Credit Suisse, 3.4 billion people- the 71% of the world's population- share only 7.4 trillion dollars, less than the wealth of the 2,473 billionaires around the world. 

3. The total number of billionaires grew by 81% since 2009, a year after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, while their wealth was more than doubled. According to data provided by Wealth-X and UBS, 16.6 million people (0.334% of the global population) own 77 trillion dollars, which is almost the annual global GDP.

4. Approximately 211,275 millionaires (0.004% of the global population) own the 12.8% (29.7 trillion dollars) of the global wealth, while 2,325 billionaires own 7.3 trillion dollars.