There Can’t Be Peace Without Equality
There can’t be equality without socialism
While capitalist world leaders are ramping up their military arsenals for a major battle to the death over natural resources and cheap labor worldwide, the overwhelming majority of humanity—we who do the work that creates profits for the rich—are struggling to put food on the table and a roof over our heads.
The staggering wealth disparity between the rich and the poor has hit new heights. The wealthy rule, not just to maintain their wealth, but to steadily increase their rate of private profit. War and genocide are how capitalists maintain their power and wealth. Capitalist oppression is happening worldwide, not just with bombs, but also with bigotry and mass starvation the world over.
World wealth
Out of a world population of more than 8.62 billion people1, the number of billionaires is a tiny minority of 3,028 and, as of 2025, they are richer than ever—worth $16.1 trillion in total—up nearly $2 trillion over 2024.
The U.S. has a record 902 billionaires, followed by China (516, including Hong Kong) and India (205). The top three wealthiest are Elon Musk with $342 billion, Mark Zuckerberg with $216 billion, and Jeff Bezos worth $215 billion.2
What does a billion look like? To spend a billion dollars in a year, you would need to spend approximately $2,739,726 per day.3 What does a trillion dollars look like? To spend one trillion dollars in a year, you would need to spend approximately $2.74 billion per day.4
World poverty
In 2025, an estimated 696 million people worldwide live in extreme poverty, which is defined as surviving on less than $2.15 a day. Approximately 9.9 percent of the world’s population, or roughly one-in-ten people, live in extreme poverty.
When considering a higher poverty line of $8.30 a day, the number of poor people remains over 3.7 billion, which is comparable to the number in 1990—things are not getting better!
Poverty is not evenly distributed. Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rate of extreme poverty, with 30 percent of its population living below the $2.15 threshold, according to the World Bank.5
Workers in the U.S. are relatively wealthy. In 2025, the federal poverty guideline for a single person is $15,650 annually or having a job that pays about $7.52 an hour, while for a family of four, it’s $32,150 annually or having a job that pays about $16.20 per hour. No wonder so many people want to live in the U.S.!
But even in the U.S., “…the national average annual income needed to be in the top one percent of earners is approximately $731,492.00.”6
Class consciousness
These wealth figures actually show how much power workers really have because it is we, the working class, that creates this wealth that the capitalist class claims as their own.
We could, on our own, just as easily distribute this wealth equally and democratically—on the basis of the needs and wants of all—and not on enormous private profits for the tiny few.
Class consciousness comes when workers realize that all this wealth is created by their labor—and their labor alone. And we, along with our allies among the masses, have the power to take that wealth into our own hands through unity and solidarity against capitalism worldwide. We, the 8.62 billion people in the world, have the power to end capitalism and build a society of economic and social equality and justice for all—a world socialist society.
Economic injustice is, and has always been, the foundation of capitalism
I was enamored with the TV series from Toronto, Canada called, “The Murdoch Mysteries” which takes place in the mid-to-late 1800s. It’s a very left-leaning series that takes up many social issues such as the Suffragette movement, racism and slavery, and labor struggles of the time.
After watching the TV series, I was inspired to start reading the novels that the series was based upon by author, Marureen Jennings.
In her novel, “Night’s Child” there is a character named Reardon, who was horribly disfigured with severe burns all over his body, and who’s a possible witness to a crime under investigation by the then, Acting Inspector Murdoch. (He was an Acting Inspector because he’s Catholic, and there was a lot of prejudice against Catholics at that time. He finally makes it to full Inspector later on in the series.)
As it turns out, throughout most of the 1800s labor unions were outlawed in Canada. Well, this character in the novel, Reardon, is explaining to Murdoch how, exactly, he got his burns.
He tells Murdoch that he’s a member of a secret labor organization, The Knights of Labor, which actually was a secret mutual support group of workers at the time unions were outlawed.
Reardon was working at a lumber mill when all the workers walked off the job for better pay and safety conditions—workers were losing fingers and limbs and their lives—as well as starving to death.
The company sent in scabs, not only to take the jobs of the workers on strike, but more sinisterly, to act as agent provocateurs attempting to superficially attack the homes of the bosses and blame it on the striking workers in order to break their strike. So, The Knights of Labor decided to thwart their plans by defending the bosses’ houses against the scabs with their own armed guards while maintaining their walk out.
Reardon described the indignation he felt while protecting the bosses who were starving himself and his fellow workers by explaining to Murdoch, “...there we were, standing outside the bosses house trying to protect them, while the bosses were stuffing their faces with the fine food we gave them!”
That night Reardon and his comrade standing guard were captured by the scabs and tarred and feathered.
Class consciousness was literally burnt into them.
Class consciousness is the enemy of the wealthy
Such vast wealth concentrated in the hands of such a tiny minority allows them to control not just the military and the police, but the mass media and the internet—and the thoughts and consciousness of the masses everywhere.
They must maintain full control over the economy, the military, the police and the media in order to control us. Their modus operandi is divide-and-conquer because they know, that united together in our own defense, they are utterly powerless. Without the misguided cooperation of workers, war would not be an option for the capitalist class.
Racism and bigotry are capitalism’s tools used to divide us for centuries
In a July 4, 2025, New York Times guest essay by Greg Grandin, a professor of history at Yale, titled, “Trump Is Waging War on His Own Citizens,” Grandin draws parallels between the current racist expansion of ICE, and the racist U.S. invasion of Mexico in 1846:
“Vice President JD Vance admits the expansion of ICE is the mainspring of the White House’s agenda. In a series of social media posts, he pushed back against worries about the president’s signature reconciliation bill. Nothing else in the bill mattered, he said—not debt, not Medicaid cuts—compared to securing ‘ICE money.’ Now, the agency—which already acts like secret police—will have an additional $75 billion to build detention centers, hire new agents and supercharge its operations. …The United States annexed Texas in 1845 and then, the following year, invaded Mexico. By 1848, the U.S. Army had won the war, and though there were many excitable expansionists in favor of seizing ‘all Mexico,’ the opposing opinion of Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina won the day. Calhoun warned that incorporating the ‘mixed races’ of Mexico into the United States would undermine ‘Caucasian’ rule. The United States couldn’t take them in as citizens. ‘Ours is the government of the white man,’ Calhoun said. And there were too many Mexicans to make slaves. Congress limited itself to taking just Mexico’s less densely populated northern half.”
Gaza genocide—capitalism’s example and warning to all of us
The horrendous suffering, devastation and starvation ofthe Palestinian people of Gaza and the West Bank has been designed by the U.S. and Israel to set an example to anyone who would challenge U.S. hegemony in the world and its self-proclaimed right to control, by lethal force, if necessary, any territory or resource it wants—even if it has to destroy everything in its path.
There are approximately 5.6 million Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank and another 2.1 million living in Israel. There are about 7.7 million non-Arab Israelis in Israel. That’s about 7.7 Palestinians all together, and 7.7 non-Arab Israelis—an equal population living under severely unequal, racist laws that give the non-Arab Israelis privileged status over all Palestinians—including Arab Israelis:
“The Israeli government directly controls 93 percent of the land in Israel and systematically discriminates against Palestinian citizens of Israel in its allocation through official agencies like the Israel Land Authority and quasi-governmental Jewish National Fund. Combined with the discriminatory Admissions Committee Law, approximately 80 percent of state lands are off-limits to Palestinian citizens of Israel, who face significant legal obstacles in gaining access to this land for residential, agricultural, or commercial development.”7
There is talk of recognizing a “separate state” for Palestine supposedly encompassing the territory of the West Bank and Gaza. The West Bank is where Israeli settlers are illegally stealing Palestinian homes and farms, bulldozing streets and forcibly settling on the land they have stolen.
Gaza has been demolished almost entirely—there are no more farms, stores, hospitals, homes, businesses, electricity, gas, clean water—nowhere to forage for food. The U.S./Israeli assault on Gaza has turned it into a wasteland that will take trillions of dollars to restore—money the capitalists have, for sure—while the Palestinians have nothing left at all and not a dime to spend.
Exactly where is this “separate state” supposed to be established and just who will rule it? That decision has been left to the U.S. and Israel.
The vast U.S. military budget
And how much does the U.S. spend on the military industrial complex that it shares with Israel and its diminishing allies?
“From 2020–2024, the latest five-year period for which data is available, the average was 54 percent— $2.4 trillion in contracts, $4.4 trillion in spending. …Approximately $993 billion of the $1.06 trillion in military spending authorized for 2025 is for the Pentagon (as noted above, the $1.06 trillion total also includes spending on nuclear weapons programs and other expenses outside the Pentagon.) If the share of the department’s spending on contracts this year reflects the decade’s average (54 percent), these figures suggest a more than half-trillion-dollar transfer of wealth from U.S. taxpayers to private [military related] contractors.”8
Please take note that we workers pay the overwhelming majority of the taxes. The capitalists use our tax money to protect their obscene wealth—by the use force and violence anywhere and anytime they are threatened.
Capitalism is mad, irrational, and the most unbalanced it has ever been between the wealthy and the poor. It must be ended and only we, the overwhelming masses of humanity, have the power to end it.
The road ahead
In the UK, there’s a new challenge to the Labour Party which has been moving further and further to the right including sending arms to Israel against the will of the majority in the UK as well as criminalizing immigrants in the UK.
Jeremy Corbyn, current Member of Parliament and former leading figure in the Labour Party and Zarah Sultana, who has served as a Member of Parliament, have launched a new leftwing party in the UK that is independent and in opposition to the Labour Party. They collected over 600,000 membership signatures in just three days. The Labour Party currently has around 309,000 members.9
In their statement about the formation of this new party in opposition to the Labour Party they said they are calling it “Your party” temporarily until the organization can meet in a founding convention sometime this fall and democratically decide on the final name. Here’s what they say their party is about:
“On Gaza, the statement said the new party would demand an end to arms sales to Israel and ‘defend the right to protest against genocide.’ ‘The great dividers want you to think that the problems in our society are caused by migrants or refugees,’ it said. ‘They’re not. They are caused by an economic system that protects the interests of corporations and billionaires. It’s time for a new kind of political party. One that is rooted in our communities, trade unions and social movements. One that builds power in all regions and nations. One that belongs to you.’”10
We need similar discussions among the left—including the labor movement in the U.S. and everywhere—about the formation of an international, independent, democratically organized workers’ party in opposition to capitalism and the capitalist class as a whole. We can use our power on the internet, in the media and in the streets if our voice is loud enough—and that will happen when we are very well organized in unity and solidarity with each other and in our own defense.
We urgently need to form workers’ independent parties that will unite the entire working class and all of our allies to demand an end to war and inequality—parties who, united together, will have the power to end capitalism and establish a new, socialist society devoted to equality, freedom and justice for all—and finally bring to an end the rotting capitalist dictatorship of the tiny few over us all.
1 https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/
2 https://www.forbes.com/billionaires/
6 https://www.investopedia.com/personal-finance/how-much-income-puts-you-top-1-5-10/#:~:text=The%20amount%20varies%20by%20location%20and%20local,while%20in%20others%2C%20the%20threshold%20is%20lower.
7 “Fact Sheet: Palestinian Citizens of Israel”
https://imeu.org/article/fact-sheet-palestinian-citizens-of-israel#:~:text=The%20Israeli%20government%20directly%20controls%2093%25%20of,Land%20Authority%20and%20quasi%2Dgovernmental%20Jewish%20National%20Fund.
8 “Profits of War: Top Beneficiaries of Pentagon Spending, 2020–2024”
9 “Membership down 11 percent since election as Labour loses a member every 10 minutes”
https://labourlist.org/2025/02/labour-party-membership-drop-since-general-election/
10 The Guardian, July 24, 2025