A headline to make you feel sick: “Elon Musk’s trillion dollar pay package”. The richest man in the world set to get even richer.
Accepting the ten-year, performance-related package, he spoke about his desire to “eliminate poverty”. Another retch. “This is sick”, he said, “we’ve got a cyberpunk nightclub here with real robots.”
In the actual real world, millions are budgeting to get through the festive period. And, in Britain, the government is plotting its Autumn Budget to make the working class pay and keep the capitalist financial markets happy.
Musk might have taken a step back from the position he held in President Trump’s office at the start of the year, but things are still being run in the interests of the world’s super-rich.
No wonder over one million New Yorkers voted for Zohran Mamdani, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist who said ‘billionaires shouldn’t exist’. His policies for free childcare, a rent freeze, free buses and a $30-an-hour minimum wage – paid for by taxing the rich – would be hugely popular everywhere!
But to take on the billionaires and all the forces at their disposal, the working class has got to get organised to fight. At work in our trade unions, and politically with our own party too.
Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s Your Party, set to be officially launched at the end of this month, has the opportunity to be that party. It should stand as widely as possible at the next elections in May – giving millions of people in Britain the opportunity to vote for an end to cuts and to make the super-rich pay.
Such a stand, like Mamdani’s, could boost the confidence of workers and young people to fight back. And in a world of climate crisis, economic instability and war, the ideas of socialism can get a huge echo.
