According to a recent World Bank report, global poverty reduction has more or less come to a standstill, with 2020–30 ‘set to be a lost decade’. One person in twelve in the world is in extreme poverty (living on less than $2.15 per day).

Two-thirds of the extreme poor live in sub-Saharan Africa, where in addition nearly everyone who is exposed to an extreme weather event will struggle to recover from it.

If current developments continue, it will take decades to eradicate extreme poverty. This in a world that wastes massive resources on wars and all the paraphernalia of the money system, where producing enough for all is achievable now.

With less than 3 weeks to go, the American presidential election is neck and neck. Trump is favoured by workers from poorer backgrounds with lower levels of education and employment prospects. Harris is supported by workers whose social and educational background enables them to expect better paid wage slavery.

Trump is seen as an unspeakable, bigoted monster by Harris supporters. Harris is seen as a ‘soft touch’ for America’s ‘enemies’ by Trump supporters. Whichever wins will take over the running of the capitalist system that operates, in the US as elsewhere, in the profit-making interests of a tiny minority. The direct opposite of the no-profit, production-for-need society that socialists aim to see established on a world scale.

The capitalist media are featuring glowing comments about Alex Salmond who died over lunch at a conference abroad. What a ‘monumental figure’ (Starmer) who ‘inspired a generation’ (Swinney)!

Socialists have a different view. Salmond was the purveyor of a poisonous flag-waving nationalism which should have no place anywhere in the world, and helped to perpetuate the myth that workers have common cause with the owners of the country in which they happen to be born. His ‘legacy’ is as a contributor to the erection at Holyrood of yet one more greasy pole to test the climbing skill of the politicians who run things on behalf of those owners.

When people learned how to produce (and store) food surpluses, it was a huge advance for humanity. Yet it broke the bonds of communal society, paving the way for a minority to take control of others by grabbing the surpluses and developing a new institution, the state, to keep the majority down by force and/or ideology.

The forms the state takes may have shifted, but whenever and wherever it appears, its purpose remains the same – to protect the minority’s position against internal and external threats. Instead of support for one state or another, for one nationalism against another, we urge you to consider our no-state solution. It’s the only guarantee of peace for us all.