EDITORIAL: We’ve got Elon Musk outnumbered

It’s not just you – we also feel the world getting darker day by day.

While the majority of people in Scotland struggle to get by against the backdrop of soaring bills and stagnating wages, the ultra-rich are consolidating both wealth and power.

This grim trend is playing out across the globe, with Donald Trump’s triumphant return to the White House last month, flanked by parasitic billionaires like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg, only the latest and most prominent symptom of this world in crisis.

Far-right governments in the UK, Germany and France – like those already ruling the US, Israel, Russia and India – are no longer distant and unrealistic prospects. More and more of the wealthiest people in our societies are marshalling hatred based on race, religion, sexuality and gender in defence of their status, with Musk only the loudest and the most vulgar among them.

The Nazi-saluting hatemonger, who gave words of encouragement to the racist pogroms which far-right extremists attempted to stage in England and Ireland last summer, has recently rowed back on suggestions he could donate up to $100 million to Nigel Farage’s racist party, Reform UK – though he will no doubt still seek to influence future UK elections in the same way that he has campaigned extensively in support of Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland.

Unfortunately, there is no shortage of other wealthy patrons from which Reform UK can solicit donations. Party treasurer Nick Candy, himself a real estate billionaire, last month succeeded in raising over £1 million in one night at a glitzy London fundraiser. The billionaires who own the most widely-read newspapers in Britain will of course be easily won over.

The rich are investing in far-right politics because they can see the world sagging under the combined weight of economic and climate crises, war and disease, and are determined not to be held responsible. Their top priority is their own pockets.

They know as well as the rest of us that things can’t carry on as they are right now, but they cannot stand the alternative – working-class people of all backgrounds uniting against them and repurposing their wealth to solve the world’s problems instead of exploiting them for profit.

We have one massive advantage over this small but powerful elite: there are more of us than there are of them. That’s why ‘divide and rule’ is all they’ve got.

Reform UK’s recent growth in Scotland should sharpen minds about the miserable state of our own organisations. The party is now a powerful magnet for both disaffected Tories and violent loyalists; it is capable of not just entering the Scottish Parliament, but poisoning our society.

A decade ago, Scottish independence offered a convincing alternative to far-right politics, uniting more than a million working-class people against both Westminster austerity and UKIP’s British nationalism. The SNP’s managerialism, internal crises and die-hard constitutionalism risk unmaking that bulwark; the party’s failures leave a dangerous vacuum that socialists must fill.

We have no choice but to get serious about the dual tasks of confronting the far-right and building a radical alternative that can deal with the scale of the challenges ahead of us – one that must break with the logic of endless capitalist growth and market-based climate solutions that only enrich the ultra-wealthy while accelerating environmental catastrophe.

We know the pieces are there. It was not long ago that Scottish bin workers, bus and train drivers, posties, teachers and lecturers, and many more were taking part in Britain’s biggest strike wave since the 1980s. Thousands of tenants have joined Living Rent in the course of just a decade to challenge the power of landlords. We have seen the streets of cities and towns across Scotland filled with hundreds of thousands of Palestine solidarity campaigners, youth climate strikers, independence supporters, anti-racists and Pride protesters.

Scotland’s recent political history has inspiring examples of disparate threads coming together with a joint strategy to change the direction of our country and the world, including the successes of the Scottish Socialist Party in the 2000s and the Radical Independence Campaign in the 2010s – both of which still exist but have struggled to regain that leading role.

There’s no shortage of tiny left-wing organisations. None of these, whether they have dozens of members or hundreds, are fit for purpose in their current forms – and that includes the Republican Socialist Platform, the organisation which funds and publishes this magazine.

Many people involved in Scotland’s trade unions and social movements recognise that the left is in a dire situation that needs to change. Unfortunately, we don’t all agree on how.

There are those who argue the time has come for the founding of a new political party that seeks to unite socialists, either in Scotland (as recently embraced by the vibrant Scottish Socialist Youth) or across Britain (as some Corbynites argue) – but there remain wildly different views within this camp on what a socialist party is and does, and what forces should lead it.

There are also those who continue to believe that socialists in Scotland are better off joining and shaping the Scottish Green Party, as expressed most recently by that party’s brand new Green Left grouping.

Meanwhile, there are also those who would prefer for the left to avoid party politics and focus exclusively on building a fightback led by trade unions or grassroots organisations.

We believe that Heckle can play a useful role over the coming year in facilitating greater debate between these competing perspectives on how the radical left can supplant the far-right.

In our first editorial board meeting of the year, we agreed that we would invite people from different organisations and traditions – as well as those who belong to none – to write constructively in Heckle about how they would like to see the left develop over 2025.

This should include thorough examination of our collective successes and failures in recent years, and what lessons we should draw from those varied experiences.

We invite those who are prepared to work with us against capitalism, climate breakdown, racism, misogyny, ableism and LGBT+ hatred to talk to us about how we can do that.

In the meantime, we will continue to publish the same kind of news, reviews and comment that we’ve provided since 2022. Despite our modest size and circulation, we are proud of the quality of writing we’ve published from a mix of professional writers and activist-correspondents. We see this work as a contribution, however small, to the collective knowledge of our movements.

More than anything, we implore our readers to have courage. There remain glimmers of hope in the shit that has engulfed the world. We’ve got the likes of Elon Musk outnumbered – and they know it. The working class remains the wildcard that ensures no bleak vision of the future is set in stone.

Dundee’s revolutionary Mary Brooksbank said it best when she wrote many decades ago:

Courage we need, for our foes they are powerful,
Millionaire, press magnate, lord, baron and peer;
Scream thro’ their yellow press, vituperation,
Their tirades the measure, now great is their fear.