In a sensible society, would any aircraft builder conspire to defraud a supervisory body, thereby putting human life at risk? This is just what Boeing has admitted to recently in relation to its 737 Max aeroplane, resulting in the deaths of 346 passengers and crew.

And of course Boeing’s fraudulent behaviour isn’t a one-off. Think Volkswagen, with its falsified pollution figures. Think Arconic (and others), which knowingly supplied dangerously combustible cladding for Grenfell Tower. Or the decades-long conspiracy of silence/denial around cancer by the entire tobacco industry.

Plainly, these are ‘outliers’, abnormal occurrences of a system driven by the need to maximise profits, yet they are one more reason for working to end that system.

Many people will be relieved that the ‘far-right’ National Rally party did less well than expected in the French elections. And many will be pleased that instead some form of ‘left-wing’ government may be set up. But will it make any difference? Such a government will still be forced to try to ‘make capitalism work’ and will not have anywhere on its agenda the moneyless, wageless, classless alternative to capitalism that socialism represents.

In fact no government can simultaneously try to mend capitalism and end capitalism. Administering not ending capitalism is what any new French left-wing government will be aiming to do, which of course will not take that country anywhere different from where it is right now.

Well, a Labour government has been elected, with a really sizeable majority, and the Tories have suffered a big setback, losing well over two hundred MPs. But the real and crucial result was a foregone conclusion, that capitalism would win. It doesn’t matter which capitalist party is in office (Labour, Tories, LibDems, Reform, Greens, SNP, Plaid, and so on), because the wages–prices–profits system will continue until workers see the need for a revolutionary change.

Tory MP Robert Jenrick (who retained his seat) said before the election that a Labour landslide would make Britain ‘unrecognisable’. In fact it will be totally and recognisably business as usual, capitalist business: inequality, poverty, unemployment.

Voting for any of the established parties in the forthcoming election will just mean more of the same. But you do have the opportunity to register your opposition to the existing system of society by writing “WORLD SOCIALISM” across your ballot paper.

When thousands of us are prepared to take this democratic action, there already exists, with modern communications and technology, the means to give everyone on the planet a comfortable life in a society of voluntary cooperation and planned abundance.

We could create a society of free access to all goods and services, without buying and selling, without markets, without leaders, without frontiers – a society where people cooperate freely and produce what is necessary to satisfy everyone’s needs.