High Poverty Rate Is The Failure Of Current Economy To Provide Sufficient Employment - M’membe

Socialist Party President Fred M’membe has charged that the main reason for Zambia’s high rate of poverty is the failure of the current economy to provide sufficient employment.

In a statement to the media, Dr. M’membe said that it is not the socialists who are worried about this problem, but capitalists only because of the social turmoil caused by this inequality and unemployment, which increasingly threatens the capitalists own privileged position, adding that the long-term inability of this same system to provide growth, jobs, and a decent standard of living.

Dr. M’membe further promised that his party, the Socialist Party, will therefore prioritize job creation with a macro-economic approach as well as massive investments in education, health, housing construction, and agro-processing.

Below is the full statement

We must not tire of talking about “jobs, jobs, jobs” until the solution is found. How can our people survive without jobs?

For last 27 years, Zambia has been on an unbridled neoliberal capitalist path, which has been privatizing and commercializing everything, including land. But the net result is what we see: unceasing and growing inequality and unemployment.This worry and fear exist among capitalists as well. The worry and fear is that rapid technological progress will lead to mass unemployment, with machines replacing workers in a vast range of jobs, both manual and white-collar, particularly with the advent of advanced computing techniques, such as machine learning and voice recognition.

It is real and a fact that, in Zambia today, machines have taken over our people’s jobs in the mines, on commercial farms, construction sites, in the banks, and so on. But our people need jobs to survive. Where are the jobs going to come from for young people leaving school, college, and university, and indeed, those who are being retrenched? We have to answer this question and solve the issue of jobs.

One of the main reasons for our high rate of poverty is the failure of the economy to provide sufficient employment.

It is not only we socialists who are worried about this problem. Even capitalists are worried, not only because of the social turmoil caused by this inequality and unemployment, which increasingly threatens their own privileged position, but also because of the long-term inability of this same system to provide growth, jobs, and a decent standard of living – that is, to develop productive forces.

Every winter they go to Davos in Switzerland for the World Economic Forum to discuss, mainly, ceaseless and growing global inequality and unemployment. The main cause of this growing inequality and unemployment is not because the world is today less capitalist or producing less goods and services. How much more capitalist do they want the United States, Europe, and indeed, the whole world, to be?

The SP will therefore prioritize job creation with a macro-economic approach as well as massive investments in education, health, housing construction and agro processing.

Fred M’membe

This article originally appeared on Lusaka Times