Editorial: Twenty twenty-two (2022)

Editorial from the January 2022 issue of the Socialist Standard

Why do we in the Socialist Party frequently focus upon events outside Great Britain?

It is because we endeavour to express the interests of the worldwide working class. Anything that harms or helps our fellow workers anywhere is the concern of socialists everywhere.

Our New Year Resolution is to continue our work to get workers everywhere to reject capitalism, abandon the illusion that a broken system can be fixed, and aspire to work for genuine change by building a society rooted in relationships of reciprocity with one another while respecting the planet. This world and its laws are set up to protect property owners and commerce, not the people or the planet.

More and more people are becoming aware that the current capitalist system works against them with government austerity and a rightward drift of politics bringing many issues that have existed for years out into the open where they are more difficult to deny or dismiss. The growing oligarchy and the power of the plutocrats will hopefully stir and ignite working people to take action and to demand change. But such progress will only occur if we prepare to educate and organise for it.

What is needed is to tackle the economic system itself – based as it is on class ownership and production for profit and which is at the root of all our problems – and not just the thousands upon thousands of injustices that are symptoms of it. The workers’ movement must connect the dots to a real solution. Everyone has to be all-in for rebuilding society. There is much to do – but change is possible. More people have grown active and started to make links, and many of these are seeds of change that socialists can nurture and grow.

We in the Socialist Party have no illusions that this work will be easy. Those in power will do all that they can to misdirect the workers’ efforts. Our task is to maintain the focus on our end goal and not to be side-tracked by false or partial solutions but to connect all the single-issue movements into one unified, powerful force.

Otherwise, 2022 will give us more of the same that we experienced the year before and the year before that: wars, disease, hunger, economic crises, poverty, senseless tragedies, intolerance, hatred and apathy.

New bosses will prove to be much the same as the old ones. The rich will get richer, the poor will stay poor. Workers will hate other workers, driven by fear and prejudice.

The power to change things for the better rests with working people, not the politicians. There is a tremendous amount of wilful ignorance of political ideas because there are a great number of people who would rather fight about politics than think about it. Don’t contribute to that problem.