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Latter-day Neros
‘The politics that’s needed to prevent the climate catastrophe—it doesn’t exist today. We need to change the system, as if we were in crisis, as if there were a war going on’. Teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg, who shot to global prominence in 2018 by missing school days to go on strike alone outside the…
Climate change: capitalism can’t cope
Last October the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a report on what they consider would have to be done, and by when, to avoid average global temperature rising by the end of the century by more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. They concluded that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would have to be…
A view on Trump
“His cupboard bare; his vision hardwired” – Wire, ‘Internal Exile’ As some wag tweeted after the presidential election, orange is the new black: Trump the Terrible will soon replace Oleaginous Obama as the leader of the world’s most powerful nation. Trump’s white nationalist supporters and hangers-on are naturally ecstatic – and some of them may…
Boeing: the fatal price of competition
Boeing Boing Capitalism’s supporters are always telling us that competition brings out the best in human beings. It is supposed to encourage efficiency and creativity and promote innovation. We are also informed that capitalism’s drive for profit creates high quality goods that most people desire at a competitive price. However, as we have shown time…
Collateral damage in Flint
The wheels of justice turn slowly, and the effects of lead poisoning are also slow and pernicious. The city of Flint’s water crisis began in April 2014. In a cost-saving measure to save around $5m the state-appointed city manager changed the city’s water source from treated Detroit Water and Sewerage Department water, sourced from Lake…
Una sociedad dividida en dos clases sociales
Si usted le pregunta a un sociólogo moderno de cuántas clases sociales existen en nuestra sociedad. Ellos contestarían que son seis, o tal vez tres, o doce, o cualquier otro número que tenga en su fantasía. Existen muchas definiciones de lo que es una clase social. Por lo general esas definiciones son falsas e inútiles…
Elections and the WSP (India)
The class ownership of the means of production and their use to make profits is the basis of modern, capitalist society. It means there are two opposed classes: those who own and those who because they don’t own must work for those who do. Mere democratic reform that leaves untouched this class basis of society…
Material World: Taming the Uighur
Back in September 2014, we carried an article on the Chinese government’s persecution of the Uighurs, a Muslim minority (worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2014/2010s/no-1321-september-2014/material-world-chinas-wild-west/) The Uighur are more akin to the Turkic peoples of Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, than to the Han Chinese. Following a policy conducted in Tibet, China has promoted the mass migration of Han Chinese into Xinjiang…
Heartland of a heartless world
What connects next-generation 5G technology with a geographer’s theory of world conquest from 1904? If you enjoy intellectual breakfast snacks delivered in 5-10 minute videos from the BBC, and you can stomach the usual assumptions of the institutional elite, you could do worse than munch through bbc.com/ideas/playlists, which offers everything from a history of the…
Arguing with President Trump
On February 5 our great flag-hugging president Donald Trump stood before Congress and delivered his State of the Union Address. Among other things he said: Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination, and…