Cobalt is one of the world’s most sought-after minerals because it is a key ingredient in the batteries that power most electric vehicles (EVs).  Global sales of passenger EVs – excluding hybrids – are expected to soar from 3.3m in 2021 to 66m in 2040. The volume of sales of cobalt into the sector will rise four or fivefold over the coming decade. The World Bank estimates that demand for cobalt production will increase 585% by 2050.

“Pierre” works in Fungurume, in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s southern mining belt. His basic wage is the equivalent of £2.60 ($3.50) a day, but if he works through lunch and puts in hours of overtime, he can make up to about £3.70. Not that lunch is worth waiting for: he claims he is given just two small bread rolls and a carton of juice. If he takes a day off, money is deducted from his wages. If he is sick and misses more than two days in a month, more money is cut. “You can’t even argue. If you do, you’ll be fired,”

Pierre explains, “The mine makes so much and we make so little,” he says. “The relationship between us and the mine is like a slave and a master.”

The harsh and dangerous working conditions endured by miners in the DRC’s informal, or artisanal, cobalt mines – of child labour and miners being buried alive as tunnels cave in – have provoked an international outcry in recent years, forcing the western technology and automotive brands that rely on the mineral to look for ways to source “clean” cobalt, free from human rights abuses. Some companies in the cobalt supply chain have promised to stop sourcing from artisanal mines and instead get the mineral from large-scale industrial mines, which are seen as a safer option both for workers and corporate reputations. 

Pierre is not working at an artisanal mine, however. He is employed, via a subcontractor, at Tenke Fungurume mine (TFM), one of the country’s biggest industrial mines, which is 80% owned by the Chinese company China Molybdenum(CMOC).

Some workers are often employed through subcontractors, allege they are victims of severe exploitation, including wages as low as 30p an hour, precarious employment with no contracts, and paltry food rations. In a number of mines run by Chinese companies, workers made allegations of discrimination and racism reminiscent of the colonial era.

Kolwezi is the DRC’s cobalt capital, a city so defined by mining that some communities sit on the rim of the giant craters that have been excavated in search of copper and cobalt. It is mining on a massive scale, highly mechanised and dependent on cutting-edge technology but powered by thousands of workers – more than 10,000 at TFM – who, like Pierre, are employed as mineral processors, drivers, mechanics, welders, security guards and general workers.In the last 15 years, Chinese companies have begun to enter the mining business, buying out North American and European companies so that they now control the majority of the cobalt and copper mines in southern DRC. And with this change, Congolese workers say, has come abuse, discrimination and racism. They say they are insulted, in some cases beaten, and claim they are paid less than Chinese workers who do the same job. They allege that Chinese supervisors disregard their experience and put production before safety. One Congolese worker at TFM described sitting through a two-hour meeting in Chinese, only to be given a two-minute translation at the end. Almost 70% at TFM, for example – are hired through sub-contractors. The use of subcontractors can leave workers in an extremely precarious position: often hired on short-term contracts, or no contract at all, with limited benefits, low pay and the threat of termination always hanging over them.

Josué Kashal, a lawyer for Centre d’Aide Juridico-Judiciaire, a local organisation that represents miners, says the use of subcontractors can lead to the big mines being able to avoid accountability. Kashal claims are more than 50 subcontractors that have been used by the Kamoto Copper Company (KCC) mine, which is owned by the Swiss commodities and mining giant Glencore.

“Glencore is using many subcontracted workers, so employees depend on the subcontractor, not Glencore. This way they don’t have responsibility and can end a contract at any time,” says Kashal. While some workers said they hoped to get hired directly by KCC, saying it offered better wages than other mines, 44% of KCC’s workers are employed through sub-contractors. 

Congo Dongfang International Mining (CDM) mine and refinery workers say they are employed for as little as £88 a month. “Payslips” seen by the Guardian were written only in Chinese on a pencil-thin strip of paper. CDM is wholly owned by Huayou Cobalt, a Chinese conglomerate with interests in every step of the cobalt supply chain, from mining to cathode production. Renault and Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes-Benz, name CDM among their suppliers.

A report launched today by UK-based corporate watchdog Raid and Congolese lawyers from the Centre d’Aide Juridico-Judiciaire, says many multinational mining companies – and the subcontractors they hire – create poorly paid jobs that keep workers in poverty. Workers said they deeply resented the way they were treated, but felt powerless to protest. “It’s a shocking situation, but I can’t leave the job because there is no other choice,” says one. “Where can I get another job?”

“Cobalt is an essential mineral for the green transition, but we must not turn away from the abusive labour conditions that taint the lithium-ion batteries needed for millions of electric vehicles,” said Raid director Anneke Van Woudenberg

‘Like slave and master’: DRC miners toil for 30p an hour to fuel electric cars | Africa | The Guardian

At the current level of greenhouse gas emissions, the Middle East and North Africa region will suffer scorching heatwaves and impossible living conditions. The Middle East and North Africa is already the hottest and driest region on the planet but climate change could make some areas uninhabitable in the coming decades with temperatures potentially reaching 60 degrees Celsius or higher.

The repercussions throughout the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region would be devastating including chronic water shortages, the inability to grow food because of extreme weather and resulting drought, and a surge in heat-related deaths and health problems.

By 2100 about 600 million inhabitants, or 50 percent of the population of the region, may be exposed to “super-extreme” weather events if current greenhouse gas projections hold, one recent study in the journal Nature noted.

Lasting weeks or even months, the scorching heat would be “potentially life-threatening for humans”, it said. “We anticipate that the maximum temperature during … heatwaves in some urban centres and megacities in the MENA could reach or even exceed 60 °C, which would be tremendously disruptive for society,” the scientists wrote.

George Zittis, lead author of the study, explained, “Heat stress during summers will reach or exceed the thresholds of human survivability, at least in some parts of the region and for the warmest months.”

“Cities will feel an increasing heat island effect and most capital cities in the Middle East could face four months of exceedingly hot days every year,” according to the World Bank.

More than 12 million people in Syria and Iraq are losing access to water, food and electricity because of rising temperatures, record low levels of rainfall, and drought, which are depriving people across the region of drinking and agricultural water. Syria is currently facing its worst drought in 70 years. Aid groups described the situation as an “unprecedented catastrophe”.

Water scarcity will also be a financial burden with estimates suggesting MENA will suffer the most of any region around the world, costing governments 7-14 percent of their gross domestic product by 2050. The agricultural sector, which provides the most jobs in the Middle East and North Africa, could be devastated with water availability declining by as much as 45 percent. Food production is expected to suffer severely as a result with about one-third of the arable land scorched by extreme heat.

THE HYPOCRISY OF PHILANTHROPY

Elon Musk’s wealth has surpassed $200 billion. It would take the median U.S. worker over 4 million years to make that much.

During the first 19 months of the pandemic, U.S. billionaires added $2.1 trillion dollars to their collective wealth and that number continues to rise. 

Jeff Bezos paid no federal income taxes in 2007 or in 2011.

 By 2018, the 400 richest Americans paid a lower overall tax rate than almost anyone else. 

The Trump tax cut enabled individuals to exclude $11.18 million from their estate taxes. That means one couple can pass on more than $22 million to their kids tax-free. Not to mention the very rich often find ways around this tax entirely. As Trump’s former White House National Economic Council director Gary Cohn put it, “only morons pay the estate tax.”

What about capital gains on the soaring values of wealthy people’s stocks, bonds, mansions, and works of art? Here, the biggest loophole is something called the “stepped-up basis.” If the wealthy hold on to these assets until they die, their heirs inherit them without paying any capital gains taxes whatsoever. All the increased value of those assets is simply erased, for tax purposes. This loophole saves heirs an estimated $40 billion a year.

This means that huge accumulations of wealth in the hands of a relatively few households can be passed from generation to generation untaxed—growing along the way—generating comfortable incomes for rich descendants who will never have to work a day of their lives. That’s the dynastic class we’re creating right now.

Wealth inequality in America is far larger than income inequality. 

Income is what you earn each week or month or year. Wealth refers to the sum total of your assets—your car, your stocks and bonds, your home, art—anything else you own that’s valuable. Valuable not only because there’s a market for it—a price other people are willing to pay to buy it—but because wealth itself grows. Wealth compounds over time.

 Personal wealth comes from two sources. The first source is the income you earn but don’t spend. That’s your savings. When you invest those savings in stocks, bonds, or real property or other assets, you create your personal wealth— which, as we’ve seen, grows over time. 

The second source of personal wealth is whatever is handed down to you from your parents, grandparents, and maybe even generations before them—in other words, what you inherit. The Waltons—the family behind the Walmart empire— has seven heirs on the Forbes billionaires list. Their children, and other rich millennials, will soon consolidate even more of the nation’s wealth. America is now on the cusp of the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.

As wealthy boomers pass on, somewhere between $30 to $70 trillion will go to their children over the next three decades. These children will be able to live off of this wealth, and then leave the bulk of it—which will continue growing—to their own children – tax-free. After a few generations of this, almost all of America’s wealth could be in the hands of a few thousand families.  Dynastic wealth continues to grow. Dynastic wealth creates a self-perpetuating aristocracy.

In the 1970s, the wealthiest 1 percent owned about 20 percent of the nation’s total household wealth.

 Now, they own over 35 percent. 

Much of their gains over the last 40 years have come from a dramatic increase in the value of shares of stock. 

For example, if someone invested $1,000 in 1978 in a broad index of stocks—say, the S&P 500 — they would have $31,823 today, adjusted for inflation. 

Who has benefited from this surge? The richest 1 percent, who now own half of the entire stock market. 

But the typical worker’s wages have barely grown. 

Most Americans haven’t earned enough to save anything. 

Before the pandemic, when the economy appeared to be doing well, almost 80 percent were living paycheck to paycheck

Most Americans don’t make enough to save money and build wealth.

 Wealth concentration magnifies gender and race disparities because women and people of color tend to make less, save less, and inherit less.

The typical single woman owns only 32 cents of wealth for every dollar of wealth owned by a man. The pandemic likely increased this gap. 

The racial wealth gap is even starker. The typical Black household owns just 13 cents of wealth for every dollar of wealth owned by the typical white household. The pandemic likely increased this gap, too. 

Opinion | The Cruelest Form of Capitalism in the World | Robert Reich (commondreams.org)

There are more delegates at COP26 associated with the fossil fuel industry than from any single country. Lobbyists are pushing the climate to dangerous extremes by blocking or diluting policies that would reduce the burning of fossil fuels.  Lobbying has come into the spotlight as world leaders  seek compromise on the fate of the planet. 

 One major obstacle to global sustainability is the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) system.

This gives transnational corporations the power to sue governments over actions—including policies to address climate change—that reduce the value of their foreign investments. Allowing corporations to continue to wield this power could undermine whatever agreements might be reached at Glasgow’s COP26.

Clauses in more than 2,600 Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) allow foreign investors to bypass domestic courts and sue sovereign states in international tribunals for millions—and even billions—of dollars.

The World Bank’s International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) is the most commonly used of these arbitration tribunals, followed by the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL). Made up of highly paid, three-person panels of corporate lawyers, these tribunals should not be mistaken for courts of law. This privatized system has little regard for precedent, truth, or justice.

In their lawsuits, corporations most often cite protections in FTAs and BITs against “indirect expropriation.” This is interpreted to mean regulations and other government actions that reduce the value of an investment. Hence, corporations can sue governments over the enforcement of environmental, health, and other public interest laws or measures arising from democratic or judicial processes. While investment tribunals cannot force a government to repeal laws and regulations, time-consuming, costly litigation and the threat of massive awards for damages often put a “chilling effect” on responsible policy-making.

The growth of legal actions brought by extractive industries has been exponential. Since 1995, when an extractive industry brought their first case under an international agreement, they have brought claims demanding at least $195 billion and won awards totaling at least $73.2 billion. Extractives corporations not only use the ISDS system the most, they also receive the largest monetary awards. Out of the 14 known awards for more than $1 billion, 11 pertain to oil, gas and mining.

There are at least 82 known pending ISDS cases brought by extractive industries. Of the 42 where information is available, the companies are demanding a total of $99.1 billion ($71.1 billion by mining companies and $28.1 billion by oil and gas companies).

Notably, there are 40 pending cases where the amounts being claimed are not available, so the figures above are only partial. But from the information available there are at least 14 pending cases for more than $1 billion, with ludicrous suits against Congo for $27 billion and Colombia for $16.5 billion topping the list. Another case in which a corporation is demanding $16 billion, TC v. USA, for the cancellation of the controversial Keystone pipeline by the Biden´s administration, is not included in the table below because it has not yet been registered at ICSID. 

The Institute for Policy Studies report Extraction Casino notes that for transnational extractive industries that pollute the planet and contribute to climate change, ISDS is “yet another opportunity to strike it rich through reckless, casino-style gambling, given the recourse they have to bring suits within a system in which the deck is heavily stacked in their favor, and produce a chilling effect on regulations and policies that address climate change.”

Opinion | Missing From the Climate Talks: Corporate Powers to Sue Governments That Limit Pollution | Manuel Pérez Rocha (commondreams.org)

 Workers at two Weetabix factories will launch four-day strikes from Monday in a dispute over pay and conditions.

Members of Unite at the company’s Kettering and Corby factories have been on strike every Tuesday and Wednesday since September over proposed changes to working practices that they claim could leave them up to £5,000 a year worse off.

The union claims engineers face cuts to their pay, terms and conditions, describing it as an example of a “fire and rehire” policy and Weetbix’s “corporate greed”, which the company denies.

Strikes are to take place every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Weetabix workers to hold four-day strikes over pay and conditions | Food & drink industry | The Guardian

 “There’s no sympathy for billionaires,” – Leon Cooperman, who is worth an estimated $2.5bn

 So far, only a very few activists at COP26 here in Glasgow fully understand the need for socialism, as an alternative society where there will be no private property, no classes, and no state. Despite the indignation and anger evident at all the gatherings, the real opposition to capitalism has yet to be born. It will take shape in the workplace and in the street, in colleges and in communities. Capitalism has outlived its usefulness, but it won’t just fade away of its own accord. It needs to be abolished. We are the majority of the population and we are endowed with eloquent spokespersons and capable organisers, but we don’t exercise any real power – so we are ignored. Yet every day brings a clash between most people’s interests and those of the few who possess the power.

Today, we produce more food than ever before, yet many people around the world go without it. The rot at the core of the modern food system is capitalism where food and land are regarded purely as commodities in a global system of profit. But we have the potential within our lifetime to put an end to food, water and energy shortages; to bring healthcare, access to education to all and where we can create a world of abundance that can meet the basic needs of every man, woman and child on this planet.

Millions are turning away in disgust from the social and political status quo but, so far, only a tiny fraction of the discontented understand the need for socialism. Unrest is mounting. Every day people are more repelled by the present political, economic, and social order, however, many fall into a cynical disillusionment and see no point joining a party, no point in voting, no point in protesting.

It would be quite wrong, however, to believe that most people are apathetic about politics but when they look for solutions they see them in religion, in nationalist myths and the myriad of single-issue and identity politics. Their protest demands amount to mere appeals, petitioning the ruling class for more sops. Is it no wonder people quickly realise that the demands for reforms make little difference even if achieved and even desert those? All the time they are campaigning for palliatives, they never hear the socialist case, never discuss socialist ideas. The time spent making reformist demands is time not heeding the need for revolutionary change. We need to be positively advocating socialism as a practical possibility and an achievable one. The primary purpose of being a socialist is to raise people’s consciousness and to further social democracy. The organisational structures we are creating today and the means we opt to engage in will reflect the type of society the future will inherit so it is important that we should work out forms of organisation and strategies of mass action that are genuinely participatory and empowering. The question of class/party organisation and the question of class consciousness are inseparable, they are two aspects of the same development.



The 19th century Chartists organised enormous petitions, with millions of signatures. These were ignored. And still, petitions circulate in political campaigns. Huge demonstrations have taken place but they too are ignored. But yet we still march. Protest movements have shown a way of transforming parks into public forums and general assemblies but they too failed when faced with the coercive machinery of the state. This is unpalatable but true.

The World Socialist Movement does not present policies for capitalism’s salvation nor offer better capitalism. It isn’t just this form of capitalism or that version we oppose, but capitalism itself. It isn’t just who profits and by how much they plunder that we oppose, but it is the entire concept of profit, which by the way is always generated from the appropriation of surplus labour extracted from the working class by wage slavery.

 William Morris, who was more than just a wallpaper designer and furniture maker, called upon the working class to acquire the “intelligence enough to conceive, courage enough to will, power enough to compel.”  In Marxist terms, a class ‘for itself’ – a class that is not just passively united in its unions because of its position in production, but that is also politically organised to assert its interests against the ruling class. Socialism is in the interests of, and to be fought for by, the whole proletariat; and will transform the whole of social and economic and political life. Forms of collective actions and organisation must include and involve all sections of the class, and not simply those who happen to be employed and organised at their factory floor or office or store. That is why a political party is required, to encompass the working people as a whole and not just particular parts of them.



The society we of the World Socialist Movement seek is one where everybody would be free to contribute ‘according to ability’ and to take ‘according to need’. Production would be for use, not for profit, and would be rationally planned by mutual agreement. Technology would be employed to reduce and eliminate mindless drudgery, allowing people to develop their creative potential to the full. With no class privilege to defend, the state would no longer be required. Socialism would be a free society.



 Capitalism itself surprising has created a supply chain structure from which we can build and integrate. In Britain, most people obtain their food supplies from four or five big firms. The supermarkets are already a model of efficient planning and logistics. However, they have no democratic control and the whole operation is aimed at making maximum profits for shareholders rather than fulfilling the needs of the general welfare; But the mechanism is there, from field to fork, to be adopted and adapted. Socialist society would only need to turn the task of administration and decision-making over to those who participate in the production and distribution process.

Socialist administration is a federation of self-governing collectives largely concerned with their own internal affairs yet collaborating for the purposes that concern all. Marx described it as an “association of free producers”, not any centrally–planned command economy whose roots go back to Prussia’s Otto von Bismarck readily endorsed by Lenin and his Bolsheviks as “state-capitalism”.

As world leaders meet at COP26 to make commitments for climate action, displacement associated with disasters and the impacts of climate change continue.  They threaten homes, livelihoods and lives warns the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre.

Floods and storms forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes across all regions of the world in October. Despite an end to monsoon and rainy seasons in Asia, intense rainfall triggered severe flooding and landslides. Storms hit parts of the United States and Europe still recovering from summer wildfires, which destroyed vegetation — a natural flood defence.

Following a summer of heatwaves, drought and wildfires across parts of the United States and Europe, flooding brought about by storms in October led to evacuations in Evia, Greece and California. The same phenomenon occurred in Australia at the beginning of 2021, as widespread flooding followed an unprecedented bushfire season, forcing tens of thousands into displacement.

Extreme weather also continued across south-east Asia. In China, floods uprooted more than 330,000 people in the provinces of Sichuan, Shanxi and Shaanxi in the first week of October alone. Shanxi experienced its worst flooding since records began, with average rainfall 13-times higher than normal. Heavy rainfall driven by a late monsoon caused severe flooding and landslides in India and Nepal. An estimated half a million people were displaced to relief camps in India’s West Bengal state.

A high-intensity storm in the Mediterranean wrought destruction in Algeria, Italy and Tunisia, while tropical cyclone Kompasu left a trail of destruction across China, Hong Kong, Macau, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Viet Nam. Cyclone Shaheen uprooted around 5,000 people in Oman in early October, and Mexico was struck by hurricanes Pamela and Rick. More severe weather and further displacement is expected in the coming months as the typhoon and cyclone season has only just begun in south-east Asia and the Pacific.

“Displacement in the context of disasters and climate change is one of the defining global challenges of our generation, affecting high and low-income countries alike,” said Alexandra Bilak, Director of the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC). “In 2020, disasters, primarily triggered by weather-related hazards, resulted in 30.7 million forced movements. This is more than three times the number prompted by conflict and violence.”

 Bilak explained, “The scale of this type of displacement worldwide is certainly a cause for concern, as is the very real risk that global warming will lead to more frequent and intense weather events that can upend people’s lives.” 

Another month of extreme weather uproots hundreds of thousands across the globe – World | ReliefWeb