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We Have No Choice But Socialism
Capitalism is Killing Everything we Know...
Comrade Drew
March 26, 2025
Introduction:
Look it’s no secret that capitalism is built on exploitation, but that exploitation has transcended to the point where it is destroying the very planet we call home. The greed of the bourgeoisie is so disgusting that they are not willing to work to save the Earth because it will cost them money. There are people like Elon Musk who know that the planet cannot sustain the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but they can’t “afford” to lose money to help slow climate change, so they decide to build space ships to “occupy” Mars which we have no real purpose in doing so, and in the process of building their ships they release even more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
But it isn’t just the planet which capitalism is destroying, it’s the working class as well. The capitalists are getting richer while the vast majority of human-beings, working class or not, are getting poorer and poorer while prices continue to rise on almost everything. The destruction of capitalism is made possible through the neoliberal socio-economic system combined with politics that have steadily moved to the right for the past 45 years.
There is a saying that “we are a product of our environment,” but I’d take that a step further and say we are a product of our political environment which capitalism has destroyed through legalized bribery, corruption, oligarchy, and major duopolies in the Western nations. While the bourgeoisie works to steal everything it can from us, there is still one choice we the people have, and that choice is socialism—it is the only way to defeat capitalism, save our planet, and economically-resurrect the majority of human-beings.
Capitalism is killing the planet
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) publishes a report assessing the current state of climate change every seven or eight years. The latest report is from 2021. For context, the Paris Agreement as well as the majority of climate “experts” agree that the current 1.5 degree Celsius target for global average temperature rise is the limit for when global warming becomes “unsafe.” However, we have already experienced above 1.5 degrees Celsius from February 2023 - January 2024—the first 12-month period to exceed the 1.5 degree average. According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), there is a 66% likelihood that the average global temperature between 2023 and 2027 will be above the 1.5 degree Celsius pre-industrial level for at least one year. We’ve already experienced one year over the threshold, so it’s definitely possible that we could experience another one within the next two years. The WMO also estimated that there is a 98% likelihood that at least one of the years between 2023 and 2027, and the five-year period as a whole, will be the hottest on record.
The authors of the IPCC report believe that 1.5C will be the average global temperature increase per year by 2040 even if emissions are decreased. However, they estimate that, due to increasing emissions with no signs of slowing down, we will reach the 1.5C average halfway through 2034. That means that we are expected to see temperatures grow at an alarming rate over the next decade and beyond it. What exactly does this entail for us though?
Extreme heat will become more frequent. At current global warming levels, the frequency and intensity of high temperatures is around 3 times every 10 years at an average temperature of 1.2C hotter. When we reach 1.5C average warming, there will be over 4 occurrences of extreme heat every 10 years at an average temperature of 2C hotter. By the time that the warming levels reach 2C average, there will be am average of 6 occurrences every 10 years at at an average temperature of 2.6C hotter.
If we do not decrease emissions to stabilize around a 1.5C increase, it is estimated that by 2100 the earth will have an average global temperature 4C hotter than pre-industrial averages which would be devastating for the planet and the majority of living things. If we increase our emissions, that raises to closer to 4.7C by 2100. If we lower our emissions less than half the current level the average reaches around 3.8C by 2100. If emissions our cut in half, we are expected to see a decrease in average global temperature sometime after 2050 and average temperature levels are expected to be closer to 1.7C by 2100. If we reach carbon-zero and turn to sustainable energy, the average global temperature will fall by 2050 and will be nearer to 1.4C by 2100.
The bad news is that even if we reign in emissions and keep the global temperature around 1.5C by becoming sustainable. the sea level is still expected to rise well into the future. The best case scenario, according to IPCC estimates, is an average rise of 0.6m by 2100. Unfortunately, the sea level will continue to rise even if we can slow down global warming. This means that extreme sea-level events that have occurred once per century in the past are expected to “occur once or twice per decade by mid-century.”
There will be an increase in extreme rainfall. At current levels we are expected to see 1.3 times per 10 years occurrences of heavy rainfall at 6.7% more intense than 1850 to 1900. When we reach 1.5C average global temperature change, that increases to 1.5 times at an intensity of 10.5%. By the time we reach 2C, the occurrences increase to 1.7 times at an intensity of 14%.
And, of course, the world will get warmer.
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You’ll hear time and time again that climate change is caused by human activities more so than anything else. This is true, but it ignores the humans causing this harm and the ones who have the most power to change it—the bourgeoisie class. Conservative billionaires spent $118M between 2002 and 2010 to build a network of climate deniers and shift climate change to a nonpartisan scientific fact to a complete nonissue for most conservatives.
It is capitalists who benefit from climate change, not your average person. It is capitalists and the profit motive of capitalism that is delaying essential decarbonization. It isn’t the workers on an oil rig responsible for climate change, it is the owner(s) of the oil rig who is exploiting the workers and the planet for their own gain. My point is that the capitalists are most responsible as they are doing the most harm with the ability to stop, or at the very least slow down.
The repeated theme with capitalism is that it is so good at creating problems and passing them down to the ones who benefit the least while not having the ability to fix the problems it created. Capitalists aren’t going to suddenly stop harming the planet one day. Capitalism is never going to replace the profit motive with something else.
Unless we are comfortable in watching the world burn while capitalists profit off of every flame they stoke, then we have no choice but socialism, no choice but to change our motives from being about profit to being about creating the best conditions possible for the maximum amount of people, no choice but to put the power into the hands of the people—who can’t afford fancy spaceships to fly away on when the Earth becomes too harsh to live on—and let them rebuild the world with a collective and coherent image that says the people do matter and they’ve always mattered more than profits.
The Working Class is Worked to Death
According to the World Inequality Database, the richest 10% of people in America received 46.76% of the total income in the country in 2023. That number is closest to the 1929 total of 46.95% meaning we are seeing the highest income inequality since before the Great Depression. The lowest that richest ten percent’s share of the income has been in the past 110 years was in 1970 at 33.55%. From 1980 to 2023 the share of income received by the richest ten percent in America shot up from 33.84% all the way to 46.76%, an increase of just under 13%. From 1980 to 2023, the share of income received by the poorest 50% dropped from 20.08% down to 13.44%. In 2023, the richest 1% of Americans received 20.73% of the total income. That means that the richest 1% of Americans received, and still receive, 7% more of the total income than the poorest 165M Americans.
The “working poor” is defined as people who spent at least 27 weeks in the labor force over a year, but whose incomes still fell below the official poverty level. In 2022, there were 6.4 million people considered working poor. How could it be that in the richest country in the world you could be working and still not make enough money to even reach the poverty line? That is completely unacceptable, especially as the richest people in the country continue to get richer.
In 1970, the minimum wage was $1.60 per hour, adjusted for inflation that’d be $13.05 per hour—an increase of $5.80 per hour from the current minimum wage of $7.25. The minimum wage is not even close to being a livable wage. You can’t expect people to work full-time at a job that doesn’t pay them enough to live. That’s wage-slavery!
In 2022, farmworkers made 40 percent less than comparable non-agricultural jobs. Domestic workers are three times more likely to become impoverished than other workers. The Fair Labor Standards Act, implemented in 1938, left minimum wage protections out for all workers in agriculture and domestic industries. These industries are overrepresented by Black and Hispanic workers. In 2022, 78 percent of agricultural workers identified as Hispanic, 34 percent of whom were women. Black women represent 1 in 5 people employed in domestic care jobs such as home health aides, personal care aides, and child care workers.
People who work part-time, voluntarily or not, are much more likely to be working poor. Involuntary part-time work is defined as workers who work part-time due to being unable to find full-time employment. The number of people reporting income from gig-based work increased from 1M to 5M in 2021. 24% report that gig-work is their full-time job, while 49% percent report it as part-time. These workers are misclassified as independent contractors rather than employees.
Which means gig-workers do not have minimum wage protections, employer-based health care plans, Social Security benefits, and unemployment benefits. Many of these gig-workers have to work multiple jobs just to make ends meet. A joint survey by CLASP and Data for Progress in 2023 detailed that 50% of gig-workers reported that they were overworked and said that their job was exhausting.
Without enacting higher labor standards for all workers, many will continue to join the growing working poor. There needs to be a livable minimum wage, benefits for all workers whether they are full-time, part-time, or gig-workers. We need to make higher education much more affordable as getting a degree shows significant increases in the chance of living a comfortable life. There absolutely has to be a redistribution of wealth from the top 10% down to the bottom 50% because what has been allowed to happen since 1980 is robbery of the working class and it cannot be allowed to continue, or the working class will die.
Capitalism has Stolen Politics From the Working Class
Since the return of laissez-faire economics in the form of neoliberalism, monopolies have returned and taken over just about every industry including the very profitable political industry. Lobbyists living around Washington D.C. make those surrounding counties the very wealthiest in all of the United States because they are paid so much money to legally bribe politicians to vote or not vote for legislation, to add or remove pieces of policy from bills, and to buy politicians to ensure they always work for the corporations who bought them and never for the people that voted them into power.
Since the 1980s, we have seen a growing divide between a very small group of winners and a large majority of the global population losing out. It has been an age of capitalists dominating the game of life in their favor at every possible avenue. One of the most consequential relations we see is that of economic and political power—they correlate. The more economic power you have, i.e., the richer you are, the more political power you have, i.e., the ability to be unelected and still have a great amount of sway over legislation.
In the United States, we have legalized corruption between billionaires and politics through the Citizens United v. FEC decision in which the Supreme Court ruled that corporations and unions have the “right” to spend an unlimited amount of money on campaigns through advertisements and Super PACs. Before this decision, PACs could only accept up to $5,000 from individuals, after the decision, Super PACs are allowed to accept unlimited money from corporations, unions, and individuals to spend on political advertisements.
In 2024, Elon Musk donated a total of $291,482,587—$276,275,595 went to Trump’s campaign alone. Timothy Mellon donated a total of $197,047,200 of which $150M went to Trump. Miriam Adelson, a bigtime Israel supporter, donated a total of $148,304,900—Trump’s campaign gained $106,019,900 from her. All of this data is available on OpenSecrets and I will post the link if you want to access it yourself.
The Super-PAC “Securing American Greatness” contributed $67,558,284, the Super-PAC “Building America’s Future” contributed $23,640,000, “America First Action/America First Policies” contributed $21,558,703, “US of America Inc” contributed $11,233,849, and finally “SAG PAC” contributed $9,422,000. Five Super-PACs alone contributed over $133M to Trump’s reelection campaign. If that isn’t buying democracy then I’m not sure what is.
According to multiple news outlets, right after Trump won the 2024 election, the 10 richest people in the world got $64 billion richer. With Elon Musk having the biggest increase of nearly $27 billion.
Since then, Musk has been allowed to take over the federal government and slash agencies left and right with false numbers showing the amount of “waste” they are cutting. Musk is increasingly taking an active role in the federal government in which he wasn’t elected to.
Trump has declared the “golden visa” to wealthy individuals as a way to buy their way into the country which according to Trump is such a “privilege” that you have to pay for it. As long as you’re not an immigrant and you have $5M to spend, then Trump and his administration think you’re A-OK. A total sham of politics when the people that need asylum are deported while the rich are offered a fast-track into the country.
The bottom line is this: capitalism has enabled the politics within Western countries to appear as free and fair while in reality the puppet masters control things from behind the curtain as politicians become simply a public face for the back room decisions made by the mega wealthy. If we want real democracy, a system of democratic centralism, direct democracy within the workplace and representative democracy in state & federal government, then we must throw away capitalism and embrace socialism, for socialism is the way to freedom and liberation for all people in the United States and beyond.
In Conclusion:
The sad truth is that regular Americans don’t have a say in politics if they continue to choose between a Democrat and Republican. Both these parties support the system of capitalism and everything that comes with it, including the buying of politicians, which means the differences you’ll see, and more importantly feel, will be marginal at best until there is an actual opposition party and candidate.
We’ll continue to see the destruction of the planet for profit if we don’t change our system from one that only cares about maximizing profits to a socialist one that cares about maximizing the wellbeing of all people—which means saving the planet before it is too late. We must fight the greed of corporations and the capitalist system itself before we don’t even have a planet left that’s worth fighting for.
We must demand what is our right: good working conditions, a livable wage, and a say in the workplace decision making. Doing this will improve the lives of many, pull millions out of poverty, and make work interesting and worthwhile instead of a place of misery for so many. Under capitalism, these things are not possible, hence why we must move towards socialism where all workers are treated like human beings, paid well, and given a say in all decisions regarding their work.
This is why it is so crucial to get the word out there. If we don’t use our voice then the rich will always talk over us and we’ll never be heard. If we demand change, go on strike, call our representatives, write to news outlets, speak at city council meetings, run for local office, help form action groups, etc. then we can and will change things. The revolution that we all want can happen, but we have to make it happen, which means we have to realize the power and the potential we wield and use it for the good of the people. Remember comrades, we are capable of great change just as the people before us were, we must not be afraid to stand up to capitalism and the bourgeoisie, we must not be scared to fight for basic human rights and dignity, we must not give up fighting for the freedom and liberation of all people!
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