By: Wilson Honório da Silva, from the National Secretariat of Formation of the PSTU, Brazil
When I saw the 2024 version of the “Forbes” magazine list, which celebrates those who have fortunes over one billion dollars, I remembered an interview with the American black leader Malcolm X, in January 1965, in which he says that capitalism, after acting like an eagle, plundering the world during the colonial and imperialist expansions, had become “more cowardly,” going on to act “like a vulture” that, to guarantee its privileges, “sucks the blood of the helpless.”
At the time, Malcolm X was referring to the reaction of the system to the numerous revolutions, rebellions, and struggles that were sweeping the world and various sectors of society. Not coincidentally, it was then that he also concluded that “there is no capitalism without racism,” understanding that, like all other oppressive ideologies, racial discrimination plays a concrete role in making millions of people the most disempowered among the already terribly disempowered.
Today, the instability of the system has as its backdrop the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s and the growing socio-political polarization emerging from inter-bourgeois and inter-imperialist disputes; from regional conflicts that are globalizing, as in Ukraine and Palestine; from the imposition of barbaric levels of exploitation, precarious labor and confiscation of rights; from social and environmental catastrophes; from the attacks on historically marginalized sectors, etc. But, also, there are the struggles against all this.
Differences aside, the “Forbes” list is an unfortunate reminder that it is moments like these that reveal, even more, the inhumane character of the scavenger birds of the bourgeoisie, who see the tragedies caused by the crises they themselves created as a means of increasing ftheir macabre banquet. Already replete with huge sums of money, but nevertheless fearing “losses,” they spare no effort in wringing every last drop of blood from the men and women who produce all the wealth.
This is what explains why, at a time when large portions of the 8.2 billion people on the planet are surviving with great hardship (if not bordering on barbarism), the American publication opens its infamous list with the following finding:
There are now more billionaires than ever: 2,781 in total, 141 more than last year and 26 more than the record set in 2021. They are richer than ever, worth $14.2 trillion in total, up $2 trillion from 2023, and $1.1 trillion above the previous record, also set in 2021,” noted “Forbes.”
Richer and More Parasitic Than Ever
Immediately, it is necessary to remember that the superrich have been breaking records while humanity is going through one of its darkest and most tragic periods, particularly after the Covid-19 pandemic, whose main consequence, in addition to the approximately 7 million lives lost, was the brutal (and never recovered…) worsening in living conditions, income, health, education, etc. of the vast majority of the world’s population.
In fact, the scavenger birds have been getting fat without stopping in spite of the 2008 crisis, which is always used as a justification to try to convince “those at the bottom” to “tighten their belts” and resign themselves to cuts in public services, social and labor rights, etc.
The fact is that, in the meantime, in round numbers, the vultures have tripled their weight: 16 years ago, there were 946 billionaires, with a total of 4.4 trillion dollars. Moreover, the 14 richest of the current 2,781 (which Forbes calls the “$100 billion club”) have seen their fortunes increase by 255% in the last 10 years.
As if this were not enough, the vast majority of these fortunes are tied to sectors of the economy that are light years ahead of the quest to meet the real and urgent needs of humanity. In addition to a bunch of useless heirs and heiresses, who live on “rents,” the filthy rich make money with so-called “big tech” (high-tech companies, mostly in the digital world); luxury products; financial market manipulation; or (on a smaller scale and with fortunes in the “modest” range of between one and five billion dollars), acting in the media, entertainment, and sports sectors.
The richest of all, Frenchman Bernard Artaud, for example, owns the LVMH, which only produces super-luxury items (jewelry, wines, fashion, cosmetics, and perfumes) for brands such as Louis Vitton, Christian Dior, Tiffany and Dom Pérignon, which allowed him to accumulate 233 billion dollars. Then come the infamous Elon Musk (“X”, ex-Twitter, Space X and Tesla) and Jeff Bezos (Amazon), with 195 and 194 billion dollars, respectively.
The “top ten” list continues with other names from “big tech” such as Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, who controls Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Larry Ellison (Oracle), Bill Gates and Steve Balmmer (Microsoft), and Larry Page ( Google), accompanied by people who only know how to “produce” money, living off stocks and trades, such as Warren Buffet, in Brazil, owner of Nubank and partner of the gang formed by 3G Capital ( which we will return later), with fortunes ranging from $114 to $177 billion.
While Some Have More than Enough, Poverty is Bordering on Barbarism
Compared to the “rest” of humanity, the figures surrounding these vultures are scandalous. Suffice it to recall, for example, that according to the report “Inequality SA,” launched by the NGO Oxfam, also in January 2024; today, “the richest 1% of the world owns 43% of all global financial assets.” In other words, they own almost half of everything that can be converted into money in the world. What’s more: their income respects an inverse “logic” to that of humanity.
“The combined wealth of the world’s five richest people – Bernard Arnault, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg – increased by $464 billion, or 114%. Over the same period, the total wealth of the poorest 4.77 billion people – who represent 60% of the world’s population – fell by 0.2% in real terms,” the Guardian newspaper found on January 15, cross-referencing data from Oxfam and Forbes.
As a result, research such as that of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), published in March 2024, reveals that there are 783 million people who simply go hungry, about 150 million more than in 2019 at the start of the pandemic. Moreover, no less than one-third of humanity lives in some stage of food insecurity (i.e., they are not fed in the right way or in the right quantity).
Going back to 2022, as the world agonized over Covid, the World Bank found that there were about 700 million people (9.2% of the world’s population) living in “extreme poverty”; that is, with incomes of less than US$1.92 per day. And another 1.3 billion (26% of humanity) lived in “moderate poverty,” with a daily income of between US$1.90 and US$3.20, while 50% of the planet’s inhabitants survived on US$6.85 a day.
To get an idea of what this means, it is worth mentioning a calculation made in February 2024 by the “Findbold” portal, taking as an example one of the most hated members of the Forbes list: “Technology billionaire Elon Musk earns around US$ 6,887 per minute; US$ 413,220 per hour; US$ 9,917,280 per day; and US$ 69,420,960, per week.” In short, Musk, who, in addition, uses his fortune to sponsor and support the far right, earns R$ 36,000 per minute; R$ 2,169 million, per hour; R$ 52 million per day; and R$ 364.5 million per week.
The vast majority of the 2,781 billionaires live in the northern hemisphere and are concentrated in countries that are at the forefront of imperialist exploitation and recolonization of the world. At the head, the United States, with 813 billionaires, accumulating 5.7 trillion dollars; followed by the unquestionably capitalist China, with 473 super-rich, with a combined fortune of 1.7 trillion dollars.
Among the 54 African countries, only seven have billionaires, in a total of twenty people, ten of them located in South Africa (6) and Nigeria (4). With a detail: of the 20, only five are black. Over South America, increasingly subaltern and recolonized, only 87 vultures fly over, the vast majority of which, 69, are Brazilian; 27 more than the list before the pandemic, in 2018.
Vultures with Green and Yellow Feathers
In Brazil, together, the vultures have a net worth of 230.9 billion dollars. The richest vulture is also from “big tech”: Eduardo Saverin, from Meta, with $28 billion. Then comes the banker-heiress Vicy Safra, with 20.6 billion dollars, and then João Paulo Lemann, at the head of the AB InBev brewery, Kraft Heinz, Burger King and an endless list of maracutaias [businesses of obscure origin], as in the Lojas Americanas, including in privatization processes, as in that of Eletrobras, and agreements with the Lula government, in the Ministry of Education, which yielded him US$ 16.4 billion.
With a combined fortune of US$ 42.5 billion, Lemann and his 3G Capital cronies (Marcel Herrmann Telles, Carlos Alberto Sicupira and Alex Behring), are among the “10 most Brazilian,” which also include bankers such as André Esteves (BTG Pactual, with US$ 6.6 billion) and the Moreira Salles family (Itaú-Unibanco and mining, with US$ 25.3 billion, divided among four heirs).
Another group that stands out in Brazil is formed by owners of hospital and pharmaceutical chains, who saw their fortunes multiply during the pandemic, such as Jorge Moll, of Rede D’Or São Luiz, who had US$ 2.2 billion in 2019 and reached US$ 11 billion in 2021; and now has US$ 4.5 billion; and Maurizio Billi, of Eurofarma, whose fortune jumped from US$ 1.1 billion (2019) to US$ 3.6 billion (2024).
There were those who celebrated that the youngest billionaire on the planet is the Brazilian Lívia Voigt, 19-year-old heiress of WEG, in the engine and auto parts industry, with a fortune of 1.1 billion dollars. For us, there is nothing to celebrate.
Voigt is a pitiful example of such farces as “meritocracy” and “personal effort,” preached by the capitalists, since, without shedding a drop of sweat, she “earned” something like R$ 763 thousand per day. This, while the average salary of WEG workers is between R$ 1,900 and R$ 2,500 per month. What’s more: according to Rebeldia’s colleagues, with the young heiress’ fortune it would be possible to build 65,000 low-income housing units, 3,700 schools, 7,000 schools or create 1.8 million jobs.
However, according to Forbes, what many Brazilian billionaires have in common is the fact that “their fortunes are linked to agribusiness and its food chains.” This group is made up of 18 wealthy individuals, with a net worth of US$ 67.5 billion – of which the 3G Capital swindlers own 62.9% of that total – which also corresponds to about 30% of the fortune of the 69 Brazilians on the list.
While the “agrobusiness that is rotten” is satisfied with its obscene banquet, data from the Instituto Fome Zero [Zero Hunger Institute], referring to the fourth quarter of 2023, revealed that no less than 45 million Brazilians are barely surviving, being in a situation of “moderate” (20.7% of the total population) or “severe” (9.2%, or 20 million, of the inhabitants) food insecurity. In other words, they barely eat or literally go hungry.
And since hunger and misery go hand in hand; while 69 vultures accumulated more than R$ 1 trillion, according to the Center for Social Policies of the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, based on IBGE [Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics] data, in 2023 about 8.9% of the Brazilian population (i.e. 17 million people), lived in extreme poverty (with average monthly income below R$ 300). IBGE data from the end of 2022 indicate that, in that year, around 30% of the inhabitants, or 60 million people, lived in poverty (with a monthly income of around R$ 670).
If it is a fact that, between 2022 and 2023, there was a reduction in the number of extremely poor and hungry people, which has to do both with the end of the pandemic and the recomposition of income supplementation policies. It is also a fact that Brazil is far from “eliminating” hunger or ending poverty by 2030, as promised by Lula’s government. This is evident from both national and global dynamics.
More Than Ever, Socialism or Barbarism
The certainty of this is given by the very existence of the list, as Oxfam points out: “If current trends were to continue, the world will have its first trillionaire within a decade, but poverty will only be eradicated in 229 years.” These are figures that, first and foremost, indicate the impossibility of humanity having any prospect of a decent future as long as these vultures continue to devour the world’s wealth at the cost of the suffering of billions.
What is more: they also bear witness to the real crime of selling the illusion that it is possible to build a “capitalism with a human face” or to make “reforms” in this system, as advocated by those who preach class conciliation, such as Lula’s PT, its allies, and the like all over the world.
After all, what “conciliation” is possible with these vultures? Who believes they will ever be willing to give up their privileges? None and never are the only realistic and honest answers. That is why the only way out for humanity begins with the confiscation of these fortunes, the nationalization and workers’ control of the means of production that guarantee them and, consequently, the construction of a society that enforces an important teaching of Rosa Luxemburg: “a world where we are socially equal, humanly different and totally free”.
Article published in www.opiniaosocialista.com.br, 5/6/2024.
