Britain's total net personal wealth rocketed to over £6.3 trillion between 1996 and 2006 - according to the Halifax Bank. We are told this rapid rise is due to the big rise in house prices which accounts for £2.7 trillion of the total - after mortgage debts are subtracted. Savings, pensions and shares make up the rest.

Such a huge amount of money (one trillion is one thousand billion) is impossible for most of us to imagine. But £6 trillion divided up equally among the whole population would give every man, woman and child in this country a cool £100,000 each... which, on the other hand, is a lot easier to get a grip on!

The only problem is that it does not work that way! Capitalism is, of course, a class system, so nobody expects equal wealth distribution. But today's Britain happens to be one of the most unequal societies in the developed industrial world. Just 1% of the population owns as much as 21% of all the country's wealth - which is more than the state's annual budget for the whole population! By contrast, a measly 7% of all the wealth has to be shared between more than half of the population!

So let us go back to that £6 trillion. Because this illustrates that it is possible for everyone, to have plenty. But what do we get instead? A struggle to make ends meet for the many while the rich minority have never had it so good.

And as if to rub it in, this week, Brown's government announced a "rise" in the minimum wage. Of course this remains a 3-tier system, with younger people getting a lot less than the "adult" rate of £5.52 per hour - which represents less than £200 for a 40-hour week after tax - hardly a "living wage"!

With the party conference season in full swing, all the politicians are making plenty of promises which they claim will make Britain a fairer society. Yet not one of their parties is opposed to what causes social injustices - the class society. Because the construction of a society without classes would mean getting rid of the profit system - and only those who do not benefit from exploitation have an interest in such a change. But that just happens to be the vast majority of us, the exploited!