VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org
In 1859, Karl Marx wrote “There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery…”
That social system was and is capitalism, and nothing much has changed in the more than 160 years since Marx’s observation.
Private wealth in Australia has increased rapidly in recent times, as has the misery inflicted on working people.
The fifth interest rate increase this year announced by the Reserve Bank takes interest rates to an 18-year high. The decision is callously intended to drive up unemployment and to put further spending pressures on mortgage holders and renters, already struggling with day-to-day living expenses. The interest rate rise means that there will be more unemployed and under-employed, more homeless families, and more people with or without jobs lining up at food charities.
Reserve Bank governor Michele Bullock knows this and makes no apology.
She also knows that the number of ultra-wealthy Australians (those with net worth over US$30 million) is climbing rapidly. Ultra-high-net-worth households grew to 16,640 in 2026, a one-third increase since 2021. Australian billionaires grew even faster, surging 77% from 48 to 85 over the same period, the fourth-fastest rate globally.
High-net-worth households (those with wealth exceeding $1 million) grew from 1.21 million to 1.33 million, with their investable wealth rising 8% to $4.6 trillion.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions offered a converter which allows wage-earners to see how their earnings compared to those of Australian billionaires:
Let's say your annual wage is $80,000 (38 hours per week over 52 weeks).
The average Australian billionaire?
They make that in 4 hours 51 minutes. You need a whole year – they need a morning.
Wanna know how long you'd have to work to make what the billionaire makes in one year?
1,803 years. Clock on in 223 AD, never take a day off, and you’d just about get there by now.
Noone is telling those millionaires and billionaires at the height of the capitalist class that they must reduce their earnings, cut their investments, stop paying for luxuries.
But the government is told to cut its spending, and will only do so where the interests of the rich will not be touched. The government’s “savings” will come from the people.
Europe is currently ablaze with the anger of the working class and the youth. They face the same problems as Australian workers and youth: inflation, interest rate rises, homelessness, high rents, poor education and health services.
New Zealand is on the eve of an election – too close to call – but where people are facing the same problems as their Australian cousins, and their government is the equivalent of the Australian Liberal and National Opposition.
It doesn’t matter what choice of colours the governing parties of capitalism garb themselves in, the rich will increase their wealth at the expense of the increasing misery felt by the rest of us.
Rather than playing parliamentary games, growing struggles in workplaces and communities will increasingly point in the direction of socialism as the only answer to capitalism.