The worker must have bread, but she must have roses too.” These were the words of Rose Schneiderman, the American socialist and feminist, in a speech over a century ago that inspired a rousing song and the slogan “bread and roses”. It meant that, yes, the labour movement had to fight for decent wages on which workers could at least hope to live; but the struggle had to go beyond the odd boost to their pay packet. Life should not be about simply surviving, but about living to the full: about constant improvement, with pleasures and luxuries otherwise restricted to the wealthiest made accessible to all.

The chitter-chatter about “aspiration” that has followed Labour’s catastrophic election result has made me think of Schneiderman’s clarion call. Labour’s wipeout in Scotland and the ensuing anti-SNP backlash in England, the failure to defend Labour’s spending record, the lack of any coherent vision: all of these failures have been eclipsed by Labour’s alleged failure on “aspiration”.

Let me sum up this argument, because it is going to be very prominent in the coming months and years. Yes, food banks and poverty pay are terrible blights, but they affect only a relatively small sliver of the population, who are in any case less likely to vote. Campaigns focusing on these forms of injustice depend too much on appealing to the empathy of others, and have little to say to middle-income workers. The desire to improve your lot in life is natural, and should be nurtured and encouraged, but Labour – and, more broadly, the left – fail to appreciate this.

It would be a tragedy if the Tories and resurgent Blairites were left to define aspiration. In practice, it seems aspiration is left to mean cutting taxes on the rich and the richer, and handing public services over to profit-making companies. It’s also, conveniently, used to justify grotesque social inequalities. There are those who try hard and who are smart who rise to the top because of their own efforts; those who “fail” to rise are at fault, for stupidity, fecklessness, laziness, you name it. Society’s inequalities become a fair reflection of people’s efforts and abilities. I’m no Obama fan, but he summed up this philosophy eloquently in his 2008 presidential nominee acceptance speech: “Born into poverty? Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, even if you don’t have boots. You are on your own.”

The left should steal “aspiration” from the resurgent right both inside and outside the Labour party. “Bread and roses” is as good a slogan as any in the coming fight: because to say that the left shuns aspiration is a rightwing fraud, a strawman. For us, the starting point is, people’s lot in life is improved by making common cause with those with similar problems, hopes and ambitions. Our power is greater combined than when we are alone. This approach improves the lot of more people, too, because it doesn’t simply rely on parachuting a few lucky souls into the upper crust of society.

The fight for a living wage is not simply a struggle for the 22% of all British workers who are paid less than that. As Citizens UK recently uncovered, about £11bn worth of public subsidies is splashed out on in-work benefits each year. The lack of council housing doesn’t simply damage the lives of the 5 million languishing on waiting lists: it means spending billions of pounds on subsidies for private landlords. Would money not be better spent on schools and hospitals and jobs rather than on low-paying bosses and rip-off landlords?

We should stir up as much anger over this chronic waste of public funds – money that could improve the lives of millions – as is currently whipped up over the estimated £1.2bn lost to benefit fraud each year. The aspirations of millions for better wages and houses could be linked to the aspirations of others by freeing up money for better use.

Was the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance not an attack on the aspiration of working-class young people? Is saddling middle-class young people with decades of debt not an attack on the audacity of aspiring to a better education? Education can prove instrumental in improving the life chances and futures of millions, yet the considerable differences in achievement open up almost from birth. Poor housing, poverty, diet: all have an impact, and need to be tackled. But the gap in vocabulary is already huge from an early age, underlining the need for far more resources to be invested in early-years education and childcare. The fight for aspiration starts from birth.

What about the millions of low-income and middle-income families alike punished by a regressive council tax or hit by stamp duty if they want to buy a new home, which they are probably unable even to contemplate because of unsustainable property bubbles? We should scrap council tax and stamp duty, replacing both with a land value tax collected by local authorities. As the economist Jonathan Portes points out, this would help dampen excessive price rises. Here is a more effective alternative to the mansion tax too.

The revenue from new taxes levied on the wealthy should be reserved for programmes promoting aspiration, whether it be in education or housing or the arts. Don’t let the apologists of the rich steal “aspiration” for their own purposes. Reclaim it. Let the genuine left be the real champions of aspiration – aspiration that can be realised only in a just and equal society that Tories repudiate.