Extreme inequality is no longer a trend that economists cautiously warn
about or a distant moral concern for charity campaigns. It is now the
defining feature of global capitalism. The latest World Inequality
Report, discussed by Michael Roberts in "Extreme Inequality - and what
to do about it", confirms what working people have long known from lived
experience: wealth is being hoarded at the top at a scale unprecedented
in human history, while the majority are expected to accept stagnation,
precarity and ecological collapse as the normal price of "economic growth".
Today, the richest ten percent of the world's population take more
income than the remaining ninety percent combined. A tiny elite of
roughly sixty thousand people controls more wealth than half of
humanity. These numbers are so grotesque that they almost lose meaning
through repetition, yet they describe a reality that structures everyday
life from housing unaffordability and crumbling health systems to
climate breakdown and permanent insecurity for workers. Inequality is
not an abstract statistic; it is the background condition shaping how we
live, work and survive.
What is striking about the current moment is not just how extreme
inequality has become, but how openly it is now defended. We are told
that billionaires are "job creators", that obscene wealth is the reward
for "innovation", and that any attempt to limit accumulation will harm
everyone else. This ideological cover has become thinner over time,
precisely because the material outcomes are impossible to hide.
Productivity rises, profits soar, and yet wages flatline. Wealth
multiplies at the top, while public services are stripped back and
people are blamed for failing to thrive in an economy rigged against them.
The World Inequality Report makes clear that this concentration of
wealth is not accidental. Since the 1980s, the deliberate dismantling of
labour protections, the privatisation of public assets, and the
globalisation of capital have allowed wealth to flow upwards with
remarkable efficiency. Tax systems have been re-engineered to favour
capital over labour. Financial markets have been deregulated, enabling
speculative profits divorced from any social use. States have become
managers of inequality rather than restraints on it, ensuring that the
conditions for accumulation remain intact even during crises.
This global picture has local resonance in Aotearoa New Zealand. While
politicians still trade on myths of fairness and opportunity, wealth
inequality here has steadily deepened since the neoliberal restructuring
of the 1980s and 1990s. Housing has become a primary vehicle for
accumulation, locking entire generations out of secure shelter while
landlords extract rent as a form of unearned income. Maori and Pasifika
communities continue to experience disproportionately worse outcomes
across health, housing and income, a direct legacy of colonial
dispossession compounded by capitalist exploitation. None of this is a
policy failure, rather it is the logical outcome of a system designed to
concentrate ownership.
One of the most politically useful insights from the inequality data is
the way it exposes the connection between wealth concentration and
climate destruction. The richest layers of society are not only the
primary beneficiaries of capitalist growth, they are also its most
destructive agents. The top ten percent are responsible for the vast
majority of emissions linked to private consumption and investment,
while the poorest half of the world contributes almost nothing to the
climate crisis. Yet it is the poor who face the harshest consequences,
from rising food prices to displacement and environmental collapse.
This alone should demolish the moral blackmail that frames climate
action as a sacrifice demanded of ordinary people. The problem is not
that "we all consume too much", it is that capital demands endless
expansion, and the wealthy profit from it. Any serious response to
climate change must therefore confront inequality at its root. Green
capitalism, carbon trading schemes, and market incentives merely
repackage the same logic of accumulation under a different aesthetic.
They do nothing to challenge who owns, controls and benefits from
production.
Michael Roberts is clear that mainstream responses to inequality, while
often well-intentioned, fail to address these structural realities.
Proposals for wealth taxes, improved public services, and international
cooperation on tax avoidance are important, but they remain defensive
measures within a system that constantly regenerates inequality. Even
where such reforms are implemented, they are fragile and reversible.
Capital is mobile, organised and politically powerful; gains made
through reform can be undone the moment they threaten profitability.
From an anarcho-communist perspective, this limitation is fundamental.
Redistribution after the fact does not change the underlying relations
of power. As long as a small minority owns the means of production -
land, housing, infrastructure, factories, finance - inequality will
reassert itself. The state, no matter how progressive its rhetoric,
exists to manage these relations, not abolish them. This is why decades
of social democratic compromise have failed to halt the upward transfer
of wealth.
The deeper question, then, is not how to make capitalism fairer, but why
we continue to accept a system that requires inequality to function.
Capital accumulation depends on exploitation. Profit is extracted from
labour by paying workers less than the value they create. This surplus
is then reinvested to generate more profit, concentrating wealth and
power in fewer hands over time. No amount of moral appeal or
technocratic adjustment can change this basic mechanism.
Anarcho-communism begins from a different premise: that the resources
and productive capacity of society should be held in common and
democratically controlled by those who use them. This is not an abstract
utopia but a practical alternative rooted in cooperation, mutual aid and
collective self-management. Rather than redistributing wealth after it
has been hoarded, anarcho-communism aims to prevent hoarding altogether
by abolishing private ownership of productive assets.
Under such a system, production would be organised around human need
rather than profit. Housing would exist to shelter people, not to
generate rent. Food would be grown to feed communities, not to maximise
export returns. Energy systems would be designed for sustainability and
collective benefit, not shareholder dividends. The obscene accumulation
of wealth that defines our current reality would simply be impossible.
Critics often respond that this vision is unrealistic, yet what could be
more unrealistic than a system that concentrates vast wealth in the
hands of a few while pushing the planet toward ecological collapse?
Capitalism presents itself as inevitable only because alternatives have
been systematically marginalised or violently suppressed. History is
full of examples of cooperative production, commons-based resource
management and non-hierarchical organisation. These practices persist
today, often invisibly, wherever people organise to meet their needs
outside the market.
The challenge, of course, is scale and power. Capitalism is not merely
an economic system but a social order enforced by law, police and
military force. Dismantling it requires organised collective resistance.
This is where the struggle against inequality becomes inseparable from
class struggle. Workers withholding labour, tenants organising against
landlords, communities defending land and water from extraction - these
are not isolated issues but interconnected fronts in the same conflict.
In Aotearoa, this also means confronting the ongoing reality of colonial
capitalism. The theft of Maori land was not a historical aberration but
a foundational act of accumulation. Any genuine movement against
inequality must therefore be anti-colonial, supporting tino
rangatiratanga and recognising that capitalism and settler colonialism
are deeply intertwined. Re-indigenisation is not an optional add-on to
class struggle; it is central to dismantling the structures that produce
inequality here.
What, then, is to be done? Not in the sense of policy recommendations,
but in terms of building power. The answer is not to wait for better
leaders or kinder governments, but to organise where we are.
Strengthening unions, supporting strikes, building tenant and community
organisations, creating networks of mutual aid. These are not symbolic
gestures but concrete steps toward a different social order. They
challenge capital directly by asserting collective control over labour
and resources.
Internationally, solidarity matters more than ever. Capital moves freely
across borders, exploiting differences in wages, regulation and
political stability. Resistance must be equally internationalist,
rejecting nationalist narratives that pit workers against each other.
Global inequality is not caused by migrants or foreign workers, but by a
system that extracts wealth from the Global South and concentrates it in
imperial centres. An anarcho-communist politics insists on solidarity
across borders, recognising shared interests against a common enemy.
The data on extreme inequality should not lead us to despair, but to
clarity. The problem is not that we lack wealth or productive capacity;
it is that wealth is controlled by a class whose interests are
fundamentally opposed to human flourishing. Ending extreme inequality is
not a matter of better distribution within capitalism, but of abolishing
the system that creates it.
The choice before us is stark. Either we accept a future of deepening
inequality, ecological collapse and permanent insecurity, or we organise
to build something different. Capitalism will not collapse on its own,
nor will it reform itself into justice. It must be confronted, resisted
and replaced.
There is no technocratic fix for a system built on exploitation. There
is only struggle, solidarity and the collective creation of a world
where no one hoards while others go without. Extreme inequality is not
an unfortunate outcome, it is capitalism working exactly as intended.
Our task is to make it unworkable.
https://awsm.nz/a-world-of-plenty-organised-for-poverty/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
about or a distant moral concern for charity campaigns. It is now the
defining feature of global capitalism. The latest World Inequality
Report, discussed by Michael Roberts in "Extreme Inequality - and what
to do about it", confirms what working people have long known from lived
experience: wealth is being hoarded at the top at a scale unprecedented
in human history, while the majority are expected to accept stagnation,
precarity and ecological collapse as the normal price of "economic growth".
Today, the richest ten percent of the world's population take more
income than the remaining ninety percent combined. A tiny elite of
roughly sixty thousand people controls more wealth than half of
humanity. These numbers are so grotesque that they almost lose meaning
through repetition, yet they describe a reality that structures everyday
life from housing unaffordability and crumbling health systems to
climate breakdown and permanent insecurity for workers. Inequality is
not an abstract statistic; it is the background condition shaping how we
live, work and survive.
What is striking about the current moment is not just how extreme
inequality has become, but how openly it is now defended. We are told
that billionaires are "job creators", that obscene wealth is the reward
for "innovation", and that any attempt to limit accumulation will harm
everyone else. This ideological cover has become thinner over time,
precisely because the material outcomes are impossible to hide.
Productivity rises, profits soar, and yet wages flatline. Wealth
multiplies at the top, while public services are stripped back and
people are blamed for failing to thrive in an economy rigged against them.
The World Inequality Report makes clear that this concentration of
wealth is not accidental. Since the 1980s, the deliberate dismantling of
labour protections, the privatisation of public assets, and the
globalisation of capital have allowed wealth to flow upwards with
remarkable efficiency. Tax systems have been re-engineered to favour
capital over labour. Financial markets have been deregulated, enabling
speculative profits divorced from any social use. States have become
managers of inequality rather than restraints on it, ensuring that the
conditions for accumulation remain intact even during crises.
This global picture has local resonance in Aotearoa New Zealand. While
politicians still trade on myths of fairness and opportunity, wealth
inequality here has steadily deepened since the neoliberal restructuring
of the 1980s and 1990s. Housing has become a primary vehicle for
accumulation, locking entire generations out of secure shelter while
landlords extract rent as a form of unearned income. Maori and Pasifika
communities continue to experience disproportionately worse outcomes
across health, housing and income, a direct legacy of colonial
dispossession compounded by capitalist exploitation. None of this is a
policy failure, rather it is the logical outcome of a system designed to
concentrate ownership.
One of the most politically useful insights from the inequality data is
the way it exposes the connection between wealth concentration and
climate destruction. The richest layers of society are not only the
primary beneficiaries of capitalist growth, they are also its most
destructive agents. The top ten percent are responsible for the vast
majority of emissions linked to private consumption and investment,
while the poorest half of the world contributes almost nothing to the
climate crisis. Yet it is the poor who face the harshest consequences,
from rising food prices to displacement and environmental collapse.
This alone should demolish the moral blackmail that frames climate
action as a sacrifice demanded of ordinary people. The problem is not
that "we all consume too much", it is that capital demands endless
expansion, and the wealthy profit from it. Any serious response to
climate change must therefore confront inequality at its root. Green
capitalism, carbon trading schemes, and market incentives merely
repackage the same logic of accumulation under a different aesthetic.
They do nothing to challenge who owns, controls and benefits from
production.
Michael Roberts is clear that mainstream responses to inequality, while
often well-intentioned, fail to address these structural realities.
Proposals for wealth taxes, improved public services, and international
cooperation on tax avoidance are important, but they remain defensive
measures within a system that constantly regenerates inequality. Even
where such reforms are implemented, they are fragile and reversible.
Capital is mobile, organised and politically powerful; gains made
through reform can be undone the moment they threaten profitability.
From an anarcho-communist perspective, this limitation is fundamental.
Redistribution after the fact does not change the underlying relations
of power. As long as a small minority owns the means of production -
land, housing, infrastructure, factories, finance - inequality will
reassert itself. The state, no matter how progressive its rhetoric,
exists to manage these relations, not abolish them. This is why decades
of social democratic compromise have failed to halt the upward transfer
of wealth.
The deeper question, then, is not how to make capitalism fairer, but why
we continue to accept a system that requires inequality to function.
Capital accumulation depends on exploitation. Profit is extracted from
labour by paying workers less than the value they create. This surplus
is then reinvested to generate more profit, concentrating wealth and
power in fewer hands over time. No amount of moral appeal or
technocratic adjustment can change this basic mechanism.
Anarcho-communism begins from a different premise: that the resources
and productive capacity of society should be held in common and
democratically controlled by those who use them. This is not an abstract
utopia but a practical alternative rooted in cooperation, mutual aid and
collective self-management. Rather than redistributing wealth after it
has been hoarded, anarcho-communism aims to prevent hoarding altogether
by abolishing private ownership of productive assets.
Under such a system, production would be organised around human need
rather than profit. Housing would exist to shelter people, not to
generate rent. Food would be grown to feed communities, not to maximise
export returns. Energy systems would be designed for sustainability and
collective benefit, not shareholder dividends. The obscene accumulation
of wealth that defines our current reality would simply be impossible.
Critics often respond that this vision is unrealistic, yet what could be
more unrealistic than a system that concentrates vast wealth in the
hands of a few while pushing the planet toward ecological collapse?
Capitalism presents itself as inevitable only because alternatives have
been systematically marginalised or violently suppressed. History is
full of examples of cooperative production, commons-based resource
management and non-hierarchical organisation. These practices persist
today, often invisibly, wherever people organise to meet their needs
outside the market.
The challenge, of course, is scale and power. Capitalism is not merely
an economic system but a social order enforced by law, police and
military force. Dismantling it requires organised collective resistance.
This is where the struggle against inequality becomes inseparable from
class struggle. Workers withholding labour, tenants organising against
landlords, communities defending land and water from extraction - these
are not isolated issues but interconnected fronts in the same conflict.
In Aotearoa, this also means confronting the ongoing reality of colonial
capitalism. The theft of Maori land was not a historical aberration but
a foundational act of accumulation. Any genuine movement against
inequality must therefore be anti-colonial, supporting tino
rangatiratanga and recognising that capitalism and settler colonialism
are deeply intertwined. Re-indigenisation is not an optional add-on to
class struggle; it is central to dismantling the structures that produce
inequality here.
What, then, is to be done? Not in the sense of policy recommendations,
but in terms of building power. The answer is not to wait for better
leaders or kinder governments, but to organise where we are.
Strengthening unions, supporting strikes, building tenant and community
organisations, creating networks of mutual aid. These are not symbolic
gestures but concrete steps toward a different social order. They
challenge capital directly by asserting collective control over labour
and resources.
Internationally, solidarity matters more than ever. Capital moves freely
across borders, exploiting differences in wages, regulation and
political stability. Resistance must be equally internationalist,
rejecting nationalist narratives that pit workers against each other.
Global inequality is not caused by migrants or foreign workers, but by a
system that extracts wealth from the Global South and concentrates it in
imperial centres. An anarcho-communist politics insists on solidarity
across borders, recognising shared interests against a common enemy.
The data on extreme inequality should not lead us to despair, but to
clarity. The problem is not that we lack wealth or productive capacity;
it is that wealth is controlled by a class whose interests are
fundamentally opposed to human flourishing. Ending extreme inequality is
not a matter of better distribution within capitalism, but of abolishing
the system that creates it.
The choice before us is stark. Either we accept a future of deepening
inequality, ecological collapse and permanent insecurity, or we organise
to build something different. Capitalism will not collapse on its own,
nor will it reform itself into justice. It must be confronted, resisted
and replaced.
There is no technocratic fix for a system built on exploitation. There
is only struggle, solidarity and the collective creation of a world
where no one hoards while others go without. Extreme inequality is not
an unfortunate outcome, it is capitalism working exactly as intended.
Our task is to make it unworkable.
https://awsm.nz/a-world-of-plenty-organised-for-poverty/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten