Theo Sharieff, Socialist Party national committee
The world is looking on in horror at the events which are unfolding in Ukraine. In an instant, life has become a living nightmare for millions of ordinary workers and families.
Images from Ukraine have generated an outpouring of sympathy from workers and young people here in Britain. But it has also contributed massively to the anger many feel towards the rotten system of capitalism, which is at root the cause of this and other devastating wars across the globe.
From the murder of innocent civilians to the uprooting of millions from their homes, yet again its ordinary workers and families who are paying the price for the decisions of the rich and powerful. Capitalist governments and powers are playing with people’s lives in the pursuit of power, prestige, and new spheres of influence.
No future
It isn’t just militarily, however, that capitalism poses a threat to our lives and futures. Capitalism for many young people in 2022 is a byword for environmental and ecological breakdown, racism, sexism and oppression, a runaway cost of living crisis, and no chance of an independent and decent future whatsoever.
No wonder then that 67% of under-35s in Britain today say they want to live under a socialist economic system. Capitalism is a system built on the creation of profit for a tiny handful at the top of the system ahead of the security, needs and wants of the majority in society: young and working-class people.
It’s in this blind pursuit of profit that capitalism wreaks its havoc on the lives and futures of billions of people. War is part and parcel of the capitalist system.
That’s why the Socialist Party fights to channel the despair and anger that exists at the war into a mass movement capable of consigning capitalism to history, and replacing it with a socialist society free from all war, inequality and oppression.
