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SOCIALISM OR BARBARISM – A STATEMENT OF FACT  
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Matt Willgress
February 8, 2025
Morning Star
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_ Trump’s return when we already see a world at war, breathtaking
inequality and climate catastrophe confirms Engles’ famous
dichotomy. _

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Engels once said that capitalist society “stands at the crossroads,
either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.”

Commenting on these remarks during World War I, the great socialist
Rosa Luxemburg said: “What does ‘regression into barbarism’ mean
to our lofty European civilisation? Until now, we have all probably
read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their
fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what the
regression of bourgeois society into barbarism means. This world war
is a regression into barbarism. The triumph of imperialism leads to
the annihilation of civilisation.”

Today, as we see the climate catastrophe, the wars in Gaza and
elsewhere, the insane new nuclear arms race which is set to escalate,
and the dire economic situation globally, it is clearly the case that
the choice is socialism or barbarism.

Furthermore, the return of Donald Trump represents a new, heightening
phase in the barbarism that is the US empire’s ongoing war on the
majority of humanity.

In terms of the world economy, global poverty and inequality levels
show how barbarism is already a reality across much of the globe.

An Oxfam report last year confirmed the world’s five richest men
have more than doubled their fortunes since 2020, while the wealth of
the poorest 60 per cent has fallen.

If these trends continue, the world will have its first trillionaire
within a decade but poverty won’t be eradicated for another 229
years.

Unfortunately, there won’t be a habitable planet if capitalism
continues anywhere near that long!

Oxfam may not be a socialist movement, but it does eloquently point
out how sharply increasing billionaire wealth and rising corporate
power are interconnected.

These are of course the conclusions Rosa Luxemburg herself made as she
analysed the emergence of imperialism as a phase of capitalism, also
linked intrinsically with the drive to war, saying: “The high stage
of world-industrial development in capitalistic production finds
expression in the extraordinary technical development and
destructiveness of the instruments of war.”

Today it is weapons made in the US and Britain — and still sold by
the government of Keir Starmer and David Lammy — that use technology
to commit genocide in Gaza.

But there is hope that the flame of resistance can burn brighter too
in the period ahead.

The mass movements on Palestine show how millions have not only had
enough of war and misery, but are making the link between the wars and
the profit-driven, crisis-ridden economic system that drives them.

The same is true in the climate justice movement, where placards often
carry the slogan “system change not climate change.”

On both counts, Trump’s return — flanked by Elon Musk and a motley
crew of profiteers and polluters — will for millions in the US, here
and around the world starkly confirm the need for a different economic
order.

And as I’ve pointed to in the Morning Star before, polling shows
remarkable things in terms of how people perceive an economic system
that puts corporate greed before public need.

To give one illuminating example. In Britain, a 2023 YouGov survey
showed that while among those born between 1946-64, only 4 per cent of
people have a positive view of Lenin, he was popular among 40 per cent
of millennials (those born between 1981-96). And another poll
published shortly afterwards by the Fraser Institute found that nearly
a third of young people (18 to 34-year-olds) believe that “communism
is the ideal economic system.”

And we know that socialist solutions to the crises that we put
forward, such as water and energy public ownership, or wealth taxes to
fund public services, have massive popular support that goes way
beyond this layer of radical younger people.

It is therefore more than possible that a mass anti-capitalist mood,
and movements organised by the left based around it, can emerge here
in the next period.

But — and this is a massive but — the left needs to be explicitly
talking the language of anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism and
socialism if it is to harness these moods and forge the movements we
need, based on militant and collective action.

As well as this, a key lesson of the years of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour
leader and since must be that steeping ourselves in a real
understanding of socialist ideas is not a nice “add-on” to the
equally essential work of organising in streets, workplaces and
communities. It must be central to what we do.

How can we be beat back against the ideological warfare of the enemy,
if we don’t collectively grasp the nature of class rule today
ourselves?

And of course, the struggle is international which can also give us
hope. In Latin America, for example, mass movements are not only
rising against US domination and neoliberalism, but also making real
changes for the better. And uprisings in Africa against French
neocolonialism continue.

To again quote Rosa Luxemburg to conclude: “Enthusiasm combined with
critical thought, what more could we want of ourselves!” That is
exactly the attitude we need to build movements for real change and a
socialist future.

* Friedrich Engels
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* Rosa Luxemburg
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