Introduction

We live in a world of characterised by immense inequalities. Figures from 2018 show that the 42 richest individuals globally own the same wealth as the poorest half of the world's population (3.7 billion people). What's more, these unequal trends are accelerating. In the decade since 2008 the wealth of billionaires has risen on average by 13% per year, six times faster than the wages of ordinary workers (Alejo Vázquez Pimentel et al, 2018). These global patterns are reflected in the UK, where the proportion of wealth owned by the 1,000 richest people is already more than that of the poorest 40% of households put together, and the gap is growing (Equality Trust, 2018). Alongside inequality, high levels of poverty are also visible, with over one fifth of the UK population (14 million people) officially classified as poor (JRF, 2017). Furthermore, 1.5 million people in Britain, including 365,000 children, were destitute at some point in 2017, meaning they were unable to access basics like heating, housing or food (Fitzpatrick et al, 2018).

That inequality, poverty and destitution on this scale should exist in the midst of an economy the size of Britain’s, the fifth largest in the world (IMF, 2018), invites interrogation about the causes of these phenomena. From a socialist perspective, poverty and inequality are not inevitable features of the world, nor do they arise solely due to the greed of a certain layer of wealthy people within society or because the rich work harder. Rather, the cause is located in the functioning of our current socioeconomic system – capitalism. The core ideas of socialism represent a comprehensive critique of this market system, exposing the ways in which capitalism creates inequality and fundamentally undermines wellbeing. However, socialism involves not only critique but also a political practice that aims to transform capitalism into an alternative form of society based on the promotion of human welfare.

The chapter is organised in five sections through which these two dimensions of socialism, theory and practice, will be examined. The first section provides an overview of the various strands of socialist thought, focusing on two that have exerted significant influence: revolutionary and reformist socialism. The following section shows how the theorisation of oppression is integral to and incorporated within a socialist framework.