Despite propaganda by corporate media of a glittering and happy world outlook, the gulf between the rich and poor is widening like never before. From the IMF to the World Bank, all financial institutions are busy erecting a farce of show-efforts to reduce this gap. If anything, as a result of such efforts, the NGO sector has become an ‘industry’. Karl Marx, in Das Kapital (Volume I) says, “One capitalist always kills many. Hand in hand with this centralisation, or this expropriation of many capitalists by a few, develop, on an ever-extending scale, the cooperative form of the labour process, the conscious technical application of science, the methodical cultivation of the soil, the transformation of the instruments of labour into instruments of labour only usable in common, the economising of all means of production by their use as means of production of combined, socialised labour, the entanglement of all peoples in the net of the world market, and with this, the international character of the capitalistic regime. Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.” Regardless of what bourgeois experts say to defend capitalism, the facts speak otherwise, thus proving the historical truthfulness of what Marx said decades ago. Uneven wealth distribution at regional and national levels is increasing with every passing day. Out of a global wealth of around $ 200 trillion, Africa, India, Latin America and China have a proportion of 1, 2, 4 and 8 percent respectively. In other words, out of a seven billion global population, 4.2 billion people own merely 15 percent of the global wealth. Europe and North America own 63 percent of global wealth though their population is not more than 1.3 billion. This regional disparity on a world scale is only one side of the picture; disparity inside countries and regions is much more uneven. There are poor in rich countries while rich in poor countries. Concentration of wealth in fewer hands is a common factor all over the world. The US is one of the most uneven countries in the world in terms of wealth distribution. Of the total national wealth (around $ 57 trillion), the share of the richest one percent is 35 percent while the share of the richest 10 percent is over 80 percent. On the contrary, the poorest 80 percent US citizens own only seven percent of the country’s total wealth. In the case of India, despite phenomenal poverty, one finds three Indians (Mukesh Ambani, Laxmi Mittal, and Azam PremJi) among the world’s top 100 rich. On a world scale, the richest one percent own 43 percent of the global wealth while the richest 10 percent hold 83 percent of the global wealth. On the other hand, 50 percent of the world population holds less than two percent while the poorest 80 percent owns just six percent of the total global wealth. The richest 300 people have more wealth than that of the three billion poorest people combined. According to another estimate, the richest 200 people own assets worth $ 2.7 trillion while the poorest 3.5 billion people own total assets worth $ 2.2 trillion. In the last 20 years, the income of the richest one percent has increased by 60 percent, and after the financial meltdown of 2008, the trend remains the same. An important aspect of the recent economic paradigm is continuous, unstoppable and aggressive intra-regional flow of capital, crushing all national rules and regulations. At global level this roaming around of capital is playing a vital role in economic anarchy and instability. One reason behind the ever-increasing state debt is that the multinationals and richest people cannot be taxed, forcing treasuries to seek more loans, thus increasing national debt. Any attempt to impose taxes on corporate vultures leads to capital flight, triggering trade deficits, devaluation of the currency and a worsening economic crisis. No country on the face of the earth is safe from the loot and plunder of multinational corporations. Every year billions of dollars are transferred to offshore tax havens by these multinationals: $ 108 billion by General Electric, $ 73 billion by Pfizer, $ 60 billion by Microsoft, $ 54 billion by Apple and $ 53 billion by Merck. Only 60 big corporations transfer $ 1.3 trillion to these tax havens annually, evading tax laws. According to one estimate, the richest people of the world have deposited $ 32 trillion in such tax havens. This amount is eight times more than the total debt ($ 4 trillion) of the third world countries. In the Third World, the black economy is an important medium for such monetary transactions. According to an estimate by the Indian CBI, in February 2012, the richest people of India have deposited $ 500 billion of stolen money in Swiss banks. The Governor State Bank of Pakistan, Yasin Anwar, said on October 2 that $ 25 million were siphoned off daily out of Pakistan ($ 9 billion annually, 1.5 times more than the IMF bailout package the country will receive in three years). According to a report by Global Integrity, $ 197 billion fled the poorest countries like Angola, Ethiopia and Yemen from 1990 to 2008. Over 200 years ago, rich countries were three times richer than the poor countries. At the end of the 1960s, when colonisation was coming to an end, the figure was 35 times. Today, the rich countries have 80 times more wealth than poor countries. Rich countries give ‘aid’ worth $ 130 billion to poor countries annually. However, multinational monopolies transfer $ 900 billion from Third World countries to banks in rich countries every year. The Third World countries pay an annual interest of $ 600 billion on their debts to rich countries and imperialist financial institutions. Loans that have been repaid many times over! Policies and laws (cuts in custom duties, cheap labour and raw materials, overpriced finished goods and technology, etc) imposed by the WTO, IMF and World Bank cost $ 500 billion to the Third World. In the last decade alone, multinational companies have grabbed lands in various Third World countries equal to the area of entire western Europe. The market price of this land is not less than $ 2 trillion. Such excruciating disparity and ferocious exploitation are not the destiny of the human race. The emancipation of mankind and the survival of civilisation requires the overthrow of this system of injustice and misery: capitalism. The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and international secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at ptudc@hotmail.com