Top government officials, billionaire CEOs of big corporations, and academic ideologues of capitalism gathered for the annual World 2023 World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, on 16 to 20 January. The theme of this year’s meeting was “Cooperation in a Fragmented World.”
The fragmentation of the world, according to the WEF, is a function of “the cascading and connected crises we find ourselves in at the beginning of 2023.” These are mainly the global cost-of-living crisis, the climate crisis and increasing armed conflicts. Together, we are told, these “threaten a polycrisis.”
But, this polycrisis is not just about connected crises. It has a systemic basis; the logic of capitalist development. The rich capitalists get richer by exploiting working masses and nature. This leads to poverty for the immense majority of the population and the destruction of the environment.
Capitalists are also in constant competition among themselves for the lion’s share of global resources and profits. The heating up of such inter-imperialist conflicts leads to wars.
Every year, Oxfam International publishes a briefing paper on the global state of inequality at the time the rich are meeting in Davos. This year’s report shows that the wealth of the richest 1% in the world is now nearly double what the rest of the 99% put together have!
“Billionaire fortunes are increasing by $2.7 billion a day even as at least 1.7 billion workers now live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages.”
WEF and the “masters of the universe” it brings together at Davos cannot resolve the “polycrisis.” They represent the problem: capitalism and its general crisis. Working-class people across the world must unite and fight to overthrow this exploitative system to liberate ourselves and build a better world.
by Baba AYE
