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Largest increase in global poverty since WW2 capitalists profit while the rest o

Marxist Analysis · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The article argues that the dramatic surge in global poverty and inequality since 2020 is not a temporary malfunction of capitalism but a logical expression of its inner dynamics. The central claim is that the pandemic-era boom in billionaire wealth — with the top 1% capturing two-thirds of all new wealth created since 2020 — and the simultaneous collapse in living standards for billions of workers are two sides of the same coin. The piece rejects the notion that this crisis can be resolved through reforms like wealth taxes, insisting instead that the system itself must be overthrown. The Oxfam report is used as empirical confirmation of Marx's law that accumulation at one pole necessarily means immiseration at the other.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis is rooted in Marx's theory of capitalist accumulation as developed in Volume 1 of Capital, specifically the general law of capitalist accumulation. The article deploys this not as an abstract proposition but as a concrete explanatory framework: the concentration and centralisation of capital at the top is not a distortion of capitalism but its normal operation. The piece also draws implicitly on the Marxist theory of crisis, though it does not develop the mechanism in detail. The argument that "there's no reforming greed out of a system based on greed" reflects the classical Marxist position that capitalism's contradictions are systemic and cannot be resolved within its own framework. The conclusion — socialism or barbarism — is a direct reference to Rosa Luxemburg's formulation, situating the analysis within the revolutionary Marxist tradition that rejects both reformist palliatives and catastrophic passivity.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article is written in February 2023, at a specific conjuncture defined by several intersecting crises:

  • Post-pandemic inflation: Global inflation hit 8.8% in 2022, with wages for 1.7 billion workers falling behind price rises. Food prices reached record highs, with the UN Food Price Index at its highest since records began in 1961.
  • Energy crisis: Energy prices remained 75% above the five-year average. The IEA recorded that 75 million people who had recently gained access to electricity would lose it — the first such increase on record.
  • Austerity: Oxfam projected that three-quarters of governments would cut social spending by a combined $7.8 trillion over five years.
  • Corporate profiteering: 95 of the largest food and energy companies more than doubled their profits in 2022. Exxon made $56 billion — $6 million per hour — the most profitable year for any publicly traded oil company in history.
  • Declining human development: The UN Human Development Index fell for two consecutive years, the first such decline ever recorded, affecting 9 out of 10 countries.

The article connects these phenomena to the broader trajectory of global capitalism, arguing that the IMF's forecast of recession in one-third of the world economy signals a deepening crisis, not a temporary blip.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is relatively short and polemical, leaving several theoretical questions underdeveloped. The argument continues in several directions within the IDOM corpus:

  • The mechanism driving the crisis — the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and the role of fictitious capital — is not explored here but is developed in other IDOM articles on the Marxist theory of crisis, particularly those analysing the 2008 crash and its aftermath.
  • The relationship between inflation and class struggle — specifically, whether inflation functions as a form of wage repression — is gestured at but not theorised. This is taken up in IDOM pieces on the cost-of-living crisis and the politics of wage demands.
  • The political conclusion — "socialism or barbarism" — is stated but not concretised. How the working class can move from defensive struggles against austerity to offensive revolutionary action is the subject of ongoing analysis in Against the Stream episodes and IDOM articles on strike waves, particularly in Britain, France, and Latin America.
  • The critique of Oxfam's reformism — wealth taxes as a "bandaid on a sinking ship" — is a recurring theme. IDOM has published detailed critiques of progressive taxation proposals and the politics of NGO-led reformism.

Connections

  • Marx, Capital Volume 1, Chapter 25: The general law of capitalist accumulation is the theoretical backbone of the article's central claim.
  • Rosa Luxemburg, The Crisis of Social Democracy (the "Junius Pamphlet"): The "socialism or barbarism" formulation is directly invoked.
  • Oxfam, Survival of the Richest (2023): The empirical source the article engages with and critiques.
  • IDOM articles on the cost-of-living crisis: For a more developed analysis of inflation, wage repression, and class struggle.
  • IDOM articles on the tendency of the rate of profit to fall: For the underlying crisis theory that explains why this inequality is not cyclical but structural.

Key Quotes

  1. "As Marx wrote over 150 years ago, 'Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole'. Unfortunately, this quote is more relevant than ever before."

  2. "Since 2020 – i.e. the beginning of the pandemic – the top one percent has appropriated two-thirds of all new wealth created, nearly doubling their profits in that short time. Of the $42 trillion of wealth created in the past three years, $26 trillion has gone to the 1 percent, with the rest of humanity receiving just $16 trillion."

  3. "For every new dollar of wealth earned by someone in the bottom 90 percent of society, a billionaire has earned $1.7 million."

  4. "Oxfam reports that 95 of the biggest food and energy companies more than doubled their profits last year. These industries made $306 billion in unexpected revenue, $257 billion of which was distributed to wealthy shareholders."

  5. "The only 'solution' that Oxfam puts forward is the introduction of new wealth taxes. But under the current state of things, that'd be like attaching a bandaid to a sinking ship. There's no reforming greed out of a system based on greed."

  6. "Capitalism is rotten to its core; it must be overthrown and done away with in its entirety. Under socialism, the economy would be held in common and used to address the needs of society, rather than just the narrow interests of a few parasites at the top."