The Socialist 16 October 2004

A Socialist World Is Possible

PCS Strike Ballot: Vote 'Yes' To Defend Jobs And Services

Iraq - Withdraw The Troops

'Solid' General Strike in Nigeria Shows Fury At Elite

Fight Back Against A Future Of Pension Poverty

A Socialist Guide To The ESF

The Socialist Party at the ESF:

Did The Anti-War Movement Fail?

CWI - Building Socialism Worldwide

How a socialist economy would work

Workers Must Fight Attacks On Living Standards

Italy - Mass Struggle And The Forces Of The Left

International Socialist Resistance: Get Organised And Fight For Socialism

The Lessons Of Chile 1970-73

International Workers' Solidarity

US Elections: Putting An Alternative

Previous issues, etc

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A Socialist World Is Possible

TWO WEEKS ago, two thousand people in a hall in Bournemouth - overwhelmingly wealthy, male and over sixty - dominated the entire media, as every aspect of the Tory Party conference was pored over. The week before that the Labour Party conference, of not many more people, got even more media attention.

The 20,000 mainly young people who will gather in London this weekend for the third meeting of the European Social Forum (ESF) will not receive a hundredth of the publicity - except in papers like the socialist.

But whereas the establishment parties represent the past, in some senses the young people at the ESF - and the many others who are angry at the existing order - represent the future. They cannot accept a world where:

The richest seven people on the planet own more wealth than the poorest 48 countries (UN report 1998).
In the US - the richest country on the planet - 45 million live below the poverty line. Between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90% of the US population declined while the income of the top 1% increased 123%.
Public services are being privatised and cut in every country of Europe.
Bush can spend $87 billion (and Gordon Brown £5 billion) on brutally occupying Iraq for oil and prestige resulting in the death of at least 36,000 Iraqis and over a thousand coalition troops.

It is capitalism - a system based on a relentless drive for profit - that is responsible for these ills.

If you look up 'capitalism' in the Collins English Dictionary it suggests you compare it with the alternative - 'socialism'. And genuine socialism, not the grotesque caricature that existed in the Soviet Union, is the only viable alternative to capitalism.

The slogan of the ESF is 'another world is possible'. But to fight for a world that takes the enormous wealth, science and technique of capitalism and uses it, not for warmongering and profiteering but to meet the needs of humanity, means fighting for socialism. Join us today.

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A Socialist World Is Possible