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From: The Socialist issue 1076, 4 March 2020: Coronavirus: Underfunded, understaffed - NHS is NOT prepared
Search site for keywords: Socialist Party - The Socialist - Socialist - Family
Why I joined the Socialist Party: I resent the 1% and the system that allows them to exist
We are the 99% Take the wealth off the 1%, photo Paul Mattsson (Click to enlarge)
Ronin Green, Exeter Socialist Party
During my childhood we were always a poor family. I enjoyed a myriad of poverty food while living with my father in a small flat.
We indulged in cheese on toast very regularly, rice and beans were a dietary staple and we even once tried pasta and gravy, much to both of our disappointments.
I thought that we were a very poor family, under exceptional financial strain, whereas this is the increasing reality that millions of people face in Britain every day. Even those who are slightly better off don't enjoy a fraction of the luxury that the 1% do.
In my late teens I started to feel very resentful of the 1%. These people that could solve various issues around the world, with but a click of their greasy fingers. Instead they live lives of decadent luxury, while workers and the poor slave themselves to an early grave.
But the real direction for my resentment and subsequent anger lay with the system that allows these people to exist, while exploiting the working class for personal gain.
Greedy dragons
This disgusted me and still disgusts me to this day. I didn't really know where to turn and had never really considered socialism.
Looking into the idea more, it began to really resonate with me. Why is it fair that the lucky few with the right connections, or born into the right family, should be able to just exploit workers and hoard their millions like greedy dragons? It isn't.
How and what can I actually do to help? It's hard being such a small voice, especially when you're fighting against powerful forces that control the media and influence public opinion.
The Socialist Party offers me a chance to unite with an organised group of like-minded people to actually try and make a difference. It feels great to have a cause, something that we can all work toward together, to try and make society a better place for the 99%.
The more of us that band together, the harder we'll be to ignore; the easier it will be to dispel the stigma that surrounds the term socialism, as if it's a dirty word.
There's nothing really radical in believing that people should earn what they've worked for, and not feed into the ever-deepening pockets of their employers.
Starve to death
I don't want to live in a world where potential scientists, humanitarians and people that could make a real difference starve to death because they happened to be born in the wrong country or in to the wrong family.
I don't want students to live in poverty or drop out just because their parents didn't have the capital to support them through education. I don't want homeless people on the streets having to beg for food and money because the system they were born into is inherently flawed and abandoned them the moment they drew the wrong card.
Everyone deserves a chance to make whatever they want of their own lives, to pursue dreams they've had since childhood, unhindered by social class or hierarchy.
I joined the Socialist Party because I want to learn more about what I can do to put a stop to the socio-economic prison that is capitalism. I don't want our planet to splutter and choke to death on the fumes and gasses of corporate greed.
I just want to make a difference, in the best way I can.
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The coronavirus crisis has laid bare the class character of society in numerous ways. It is making clear to many that it is the working class that keeps society running, not the CEOs of major corporations.
The results of austerity have been graphically demonstrated as public services strain to cope with the crisis.
The government has now ripped up its 'austerity' mantra and turned to policies that not long ago were denounced as socialist. But after the corona crisis, it will try to make the working class pay for it, by trying to claw back what has been given.
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