ECONOMICS AND SOCIETY COURSE

People to whom socialism is a personality trait, along with a tattoo and a gap year teaching brown kids to use as a Facebook profile photo. But that's not because their wealth makes it impossible to enact socialist values in even the most nominal sense, it's because they're narcissists. But socialism isn't about making you give up your money or pursue affluence. It is, at its core, about making life fairer and accounting for structural scaffolding that rigs the system in favour of the few. It doesn't mean the erosion of the individual, an endangered species according to conservatives. So abhorred is the collective to those on the right that even the Windrush scandal, in an impressive feat of contortion on the part of Jacob Rees-Mogg, can be attributed to socialism. "The Windrush issue came about because the state put the interests of the collective ahead of those individuals who had come here perfectly legally prior to 1973, and ... it was more convenient for the Home Office to make them prove who they were and show their papers. This is socialism." According to this definition, standing in a queue is socialism. When you cut through the worthiness of it, if that's not your thing, looking out for the collective good is ultimately rooted in individual self-interest. A society where inequality is extreme cannot be policed effectively. Think of post-apartheid South Africa. White families had to build entire fortresses and compounds to protect themselves against what they viewed as a now feral black population unleashed from the necessary apartheid shackles. It does not occur to those rich people that apartheid is what created the hazard, effectively creating two separate societies so unequal that conflict and a forceful redistribution of wealth was inevitable. When large parts of society do not have the access to employment, and no safety net that guarantees them basic healthcare, shelter and nutrition, things start to break down. This is not to suggest that theft is justifiable, but that to hoard resources and expect the poor to starve in submissive dignity is just a little bit unrealistic.

QUESTION: Can you be a socialist and rich?

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