It Is Time For Righteous Anger

Capitalist apologists have peddled the idea that the economic system rewards the good and punishes the bad. Their ideology is suppose to incentivize desirable behaviour — i.e., thrift, hard work and keep people from laziness or imprudent spending. Social welfare is deemed problematic because, it rewards those who’ve made bad choices. what the capitalist apologists fails to understand is this: The reason that people are poor is that they have no money. That’s it. The apologists justified capitalism in which competition means accepting inequality and suffering in the name of improving efficiency for all. We accepted the price of that some face poverty, hunger, and homelessness, and we were okay with the myth that it’s natural and better for everyone (or else caused by the moral failings of those who suffer).

Believing that myth caused millions of deaths worldwide and now we face the prospect of many more. However, this time around it just might be you, your family, your neighbor or your co-worker who pays the price. Our only hope is pulling together to help one another through shared sacrifice and collective action.

Capitalism is a system designed to take the wealth that everyday working people create and hand it to an ever smaller, privileged few. And to hide that state of affairs they strategy of scape-goating by racism, and xenophobia, deliberately attempting to divide us to distract from this reality. No matter what we look like, or where we come from, most of us work hard for our families. But today, certain politicians divide us from each other based on our color, our background, or what’s in our wallets, hoping we’ll look the other way while they hand kickbacks to their corporations.

What socialists need to do is insist that life and health cannot be for sale. If a large number of people have to die in order for the economy to work, the economy doesn’t work. And it never has. No matter what we look like, where we live or what’s in our wallets, getting sick reminds us that at our core we’re all just human. But for too long, we’ve let a powerful few divide us to fill their own pockets by making life and health a product for sale.