Two new talks have been uploaded to the Party website:

The Ideas of Rutger Bregman

Paul Bennett, 15th July 2022

Human Nature

Richard Field, 22nd July 2022

‘Ordinary’ folk in ordinary situations don’t have enemies. We may know people who hold opinions we don’t share or like, and we may meet people whom we don’t want to have as friends but personal enemies are rare. Most people have no desire to deliberately kill another human being. Even personal disagreements and feuds rarely conclude so drastically.

 Our most dangerous enemies the world over are the insidious, manufactured histories refashioned and spun in favour of the storyteller to keep us onside and supportive of foreign policies. Part-truths, withheld information and fake news as opposed to the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is the norm. The “gratitude” of the ruling class for whom war is fought and won has a quick expiry date.

 A war veteran hopes for the end of all wars as promised in “the war to end all wars” and the new recruit what he has been told, that he one of the ones to finally put the world to rights. Both are disappointed as actual history shows again and again. A world without conflict  can be achieved by the world’s citizens in general agreement that they are no longer prepared to pay the price that has been demanded of them for so long.

It is the duty of the military of each country concerned is ordered, along with the other armed services, to carry out its function as the protector of the foreign interests of its native capitalist class. Not that the protection of capitalist interests will be the reason given for hurling masses of young men, mostly members of the working class, into bloody conflict against other masses of young men, similarly mainly workers. The various propaganda machines will manufacture high-sounding excuses. The war is a fight for “democracy over autocracy”, for “breathing-space”, to defend “the rights of small nations”. Augmented now by hosts of wartime conscripts the task for each army is to wreak what havoc, destruction and death it can upon the armies of the “enemy” countries. For no other reason than that they have been ordered to do so by their respective governments, man kills man so that his masters’ trading interests are furthered or at least protected from damage.

Capitalism is a system whose roots are embedded in military conflict whether under a Labour Government just as much as a Conservative Government. The frenzied scramble for markets and sources of supply, as well as trade routes, culminates in a war when threats and diplomatic jiggery–pokery fail to give sections of the capitalists, in their internal strife, the sought-for supremacy in the limited markets of the world. When the struggle for markets has reached the peak of frantic intensity the shadow of war becomes ominous; capitalists will not lose the privilege of reaping the results of the exploitation of workers without the resort to armed conflict, particularly as these same workers may be persuaded to risk their lives in their masters’ battles. Terrible though the prospects of war are, the capitalist class of the world do not hesitate; in spite of the threat of nuclear missile, so you may be assured that they will not hesitate, as the present concentration on large scale means of destruction makes clearly evident. That the world’s leaders are still prepared to continue their nuclear logic , that they are continually prepared to wipe out millions of their fellow humans to further the interests of a minority should shatter any illusions the future we have will proceed on a different course. While we contemplate the wars, the conflicts and the horrors our masters have in store for us this coming century, it is also important to remember that we as a class hold the power to prevent the same from coming about. The profit motive kills all human feelings and excuses the most fiendish brutality.

There is only one solution to the problem of war, the removal of its cause. War arises out of the private property basis of capitalism, which drives capitalist sections into conflict over the disposal of the wealth produced by the worker. This conflict will only disappear when the workers of the world take possession of the means of production and distribute products freely wherever they are needed. Then there will not be markets to fight for because buying and selling will have been abolished. Socialism is the only solution to the problem of war in the modern world.

As for the workers of Ukraine they will rapidly find that they have just changed one set of rulers for another no matter who prevails in the war. We are not ruled by force or coercion, but by consent. The Putins and the Zelenskyys of this world can only do the things they do because we vote them in, thus legitimising their actions, however detrimental they may be to our interests. War and conflict and all the terrors we dare to imagine only come to pass because we refuse to join together as a class to express our class interests.

 The highest deforestation rates since 2009. The third most active hurricane season on record. Extreme rainfall, floods, and landslides displaced tens of thousands of people. Rising sea levels. Glaciers in Peru lost more than half their size. 2021 was a challenging year for Latin America and the Caribbean. That’s according to the World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Latin America and the Caribbean 2021 report 

 the second most disaster-prone region in the world,

 It states that “sea levels in the region continued to rise in 2021 at a faster rate than globally.

The 2021 Atlantic hurricane season brought 21 named storms that included seven hurricanes and was the sixth consecutive above-average season.

 extreme rainfall led to tens of thousands of homes being destroyed or damaged and hundreds of thousands of people displaced

The record-setting drought in Chile continued in 2021, marking the 13th consecutive year of the “Central Chile Mega-drought,” which placed the country at the center of the region’s water crisis.

Climate Change Impacts Threaten Latin America and the Caribbean | Inter Press Service (ipsnews.net)

 Millions of people will be plunged into “unmanageable” debt this winter unless the government comes up with more support for those struggling to pay their energy bills, the business and energy select committee have warned.

In a report focusing on how to ease punishing energy costs now, while guarding against future crises, said a £15bn package of support for bill payers, announced in May, had already been rendered obsolete by soaring energy prices, a driving force behind a 40-year-high 9.4% inflation rate that has been eroding household finances.

 Bills are now forecast to reach £3,244 when the next price cap takes effect in October. Bills will have risen by nearly £2,000 within a year, compared with the £1,200 that Sunak’s measures will make available to only the most vulnerable households.

Energy bills will push millions into unmanageable debt, MPs warn | Energy industry | The Guardian

Auto Workers (UAW) members made history last November, winning direct elections of national officers (“one member, one vote”) in a membership referendum. The road to the referendum was paved with corruption: officials embezzling and misusing funds and taking bribes from an employer. Many auto workers are frustrated at years of contract concessions that have allowed automakers to build a two-tier workforce, with the number of temporary and lower-paid workers ballooning.

Now delegates are headed to a Constitutional Convention where candidates will be nominated for the top slots. The whole process will put to the test whether reformers can break the iron grip of the Administration Caucus, the one party that has ruled the union for 70 years.

The election will cover 14 positions: president, secretary-treasurer, three vice presidents (traditionally assigned to each of the Big Three automakers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler), plus nine regional directors.

Neil Barofsky, the federal monitor assigned to clean up the scandal-ridden Auto Workers, issued his third report on the state of anti-corruption reform among UAW leadership on July 19, days before the union’s convention.

The report details the monitor’s extreme frustration with union officials’ stonewalling over many months, stating that “the Union’s cooperativeness veered sharply in the wrong direction.”

Top officers “repeatedly failed to even respond to the Monitor’s requests for interviews and documents” and concealed evidence of a high official’s “mishandling of a sum of cash.”

Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD) has put forward a platform for delegate candidates with the motto, “No Corruption. No Tiers. No Concessions!” Dozens of UAWD members have been elected delegates by their locals on this platform. 

UAW Delegates Head to Convention and Prepare for First Direct Elections | Labor Notes

 Around half of U.S. seniors living alone can’t afford their basic necessities.

Fifty-four percent of older U.S. women who live on their own and 45% of older men in the same situation are either impoverished by federal standards or cannot cover their necessary expenses, according to the Elder Index, a project of the Gerontology Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston. 

5M older women living alone, 2M older men living alone, and more than 2M older couples having incomes that made them economically insecure

“…The cost of living is just too high for older Americans, and their earned benefits aren’t keeping pace with these costs,” the Alliance for Retired Americans tweeted.

 Ramsey Alwin, president and chief executive of the National Council on Aging, explained, “There’s a myth that Social Security and Medicare miraculously take care of all of people’s needs in older age. The reality is they don’t, and far too many people are one crisis away from economic insecurity.”

Around Half of US Seniors Living Alone Can’t Afford Basic Expenses: Study (commondreams.org)

 China’s population has slowed significantly and is expected to start to shrink ahead of 2025, the state-backed Global Times reported, citing Yang Wenzhuang, head of population and family affairs at the National Health Commission.

Birth data released late on Sunday showed that the number of new births in 2021 was the lowest in decades in several provinces. The number of births in central Hunan province fell below 500,000 for the first time in nearly 60 years.

China is battling to reverse a rapid shrinkage in natural population growth as many young people opt not to have children due to factors including the high cost and work pressure. A change in China’s laws last year to allow women to have three children has not helped, with many women saying the change comes too late and they have insufficient job security and gender equality.

China’s population expected to start to shrink before 2025 | Reuters

 A heatwave in northern Greenland melted nearly six billion tonnes of ice in just three days 

Greenland lost enough ice over three days to put West Virginia under a foot of water (yahoo.com)

“The northern melt this past week is not normal…” Ted Scambos, a University of Colorado scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told CNN.

 “We’re seeing this global emergency play out and it’s getting worse more quickly than was predicted… things are gonna get a lot worse…and the survival of our civilization is at stake.”- Al Gore, who was vice-president to Bill Clinton between 1993 and 2001.

 Elizabeth Warren warn that the Federal Reserve, the American central bank’s approach to tackling inflation “risks triggering a devastating recession” without directly addressing many of the key drivers of recent price surges.

Warren argued that aggressive rate hikes “are largely ineffective against many of the underlying causes of this inflationary spike,” such as gas and food prices. Last month when asked whether the Fed’s rate hikes are expected to bring down gas and food costs, Jerome Powell, the chairman of the Fed, admitted  forthrightly, “I would not think so, no.” Nevertheless, Fed officials appear poised to stay the course with another 75-basis-point rate hike.

Warren noted that “when the Fed raises interest rates, increasing the cost of borrowing money, it becomes more expensive for businesses to invest in their operations.”

“As a result, employers will slow hiring, cut hours, and fire workers, leaving families with less money,” the senator wrote. “In the bloodless language of economists, that’s referred to as ‘dampening demand.’ But make no mistake: If the Fed cuts too much or too abruptly, the resulting recession will leave millions of people—disproportionately lower-wage workers and workers of color—with smaller paychecks or no paycheck at all.”

Warren went on to directly criticize former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, pointing to his recent claim that the U.S. needs “five years of unemployment above 5% to contain inflation—in other words, we need two years of 7.5% unemployment or five years of 6% unemployment or one year of 10% unemployment.” The current U.S. unemployment rate is 3.6%.

“If Messrs. Powell and Summers have their way, the resulting recession will be brutal. As in past downturns, Republicans in Congress will press for austerity—tax cuts for giant corporations and the rich, weaker regulation on big businesses, and little economic support for the most vulnerable.”

Elizabeth Warren Accuses Fed Chair of Fomenting ‘Devastating Recession’ (commondreams.org)