Socialism Today – Page 10 – Socialist Party magazine

Vulnerabilities underlie economic optimism

1 October, 2024Admin

HANNAH SELL assesses prospects for the global economy after the recent US interest rate cut.

On 18 September, the US central bank, ‘the Fed’, cut interest rates by 0.5%, the first cut in four and a half years. The US stock markets, already frothy, responded by surging to record new highs, taking it as an indication that the US economy is heading towards ‘a soft landing’.

Central bankers are also hoping that they might have pulled off a miracle. As Christian Lagarde, President of the European Central Bank, put it, recent years have been a “severe stress test” for capitalism, with “the worst pandemic since the 1920s, the worst conflict in Europe since the 1940s and the worst energy shock since the 1970s”. Now the bankers hopes are rising that they might have successfully weathered those storms.

How can the nightmare be ended?

1 October, 2024Admin

One year on from the 7 October attacks and the start of the horrific Israeli war on Gaza, JUDY BEISHON discusses the prospects for peace and national liberation in Israel/Palestine and the wider region.

Brutal wars have repeatedly been carried out by Israeli military forces on Gaza since a ruthless blockade was imposed on that strip of land in 2007. Each one brought terrible death and destruction but the present war, now approaching a year in duration, has taken the bloodshed and suffering to a horrific new level.

Through twelve months of heavy bombardment with hi-tech weapons, the Gaza strip has been made virtually uninhabitable, with its 2.3 million people trapped there in the most dire conditions imaginable. The number confirmed dead has gone over 41,000, with a further 10,000 reported missing, probably buried in the rubble of destroyed buildings. More than 95,000 have been injured, over a quarter of them to a physically life-changing degree. The reactions of shock and anger worldwide have been heightened by the fact that nearly half the Gaza strip’s population are children, whose trauma and suffering is off the scale.

Where next for Scottish independence?

1 October, 2024Admin

Ten years after the 2014 Scottish independence referendum PHILIP STOTT, Socialist Party Scotland, draws a balance sheet of the independence campaign and discusses its future prospects.

On the face of it, the contrast between the insurgent mood that marked the run-up to the 18 September 2014 referendum and the prospects for Scottish independence today could not be more different. Indyref One was an elemental working-class uprising, primarily on the electoral plane, that shook the capitalist establishment in Britain and internationally.

It was the largest ever turnout in any election or plebiscite since the introduction of universal suffrage in Britain – 85% voted in the referendum. Tens of thousands took part in public meetings, campaigning and demonstrations amidst a ferocious propaganda counter-offensive by big business and the main pro-union capitalist parties. Over 1.6 million defied the dire warnings of the ruling elite by voting Yes to Scottish independence.

How not to combat right-wing populism

1 October, 2024Admin

Another England: How to Reclaim Our National Story

By Caroline Lucas

Published by Hutchinson Heinemann, 2024, £22

Reviewed by Martin Powell-Davies

After a summer when the far-right have managed to mobilise alienated youth and workers across many towns and cities in England, a book that sets out with the intention to “reclaim ‘Englishness’ from the Right” could be worth a read.

That’s what Caroline Lucas, who recently stood down as the Green Party’s first MP, has tried to do in her book, Another England – How to Reclaim Our National Story. Sadly, however, her rambling discussion, largely based on English literature, doesn’t offer much to the urgent debate about how best to undercut the far-right by offering a working-class, socialist, alternative.

The first lightning flashes – and what to do

2 September, 2024Admin

One month after Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party was ‘swept to power’ by a paltry 20% of the electorate – the lowest support base of any government since the introduction of universal male suffrage in 1918 – violent protests and riots, instigated by far-right groups, broke out across the country. For those trapped in asylum-seekers’ hostels or mosques under brutal attack from gangs of rioters, the experience was terrifying. More generally, many Black, Asian and Muslim people feel that their safety is increasingly under threat. Tell Mama, a monitoring group tracking Islamophobic hate crimes, reported a five-fold increase in threats to Muslims compared to the same time last year.

Uni funding crisis: prepare for struggle

2 September, 20242 September, 2024Admin

The risk of universities going bankrupt made it onto Keir Starmer’s pre-election ‘shitlist’ of major early challenges facing a Labour government.

Will Starmer’s Labour government raise tuition fees? Will it be the first to let a university go bankrupt on its watch?

The hydrogen gold rush

2 September, 2024Admin

In early 2024, an unpublished report from the US Geological Survey (USGS) found that there is as much as five trillion tonnes of natural hydrogen underground. A fraction of those five trillion tonnes would be enough to supply all global energy needs for the foreseeable future, claimed USGS researcher Geoffery Ellis reporting to the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Denver earlier this year.

Boy troubles

2 September, 2024Admin

Growing alienation from the ideas and institutions that have historically underpinned capitalist social and economic relations is affecting all strata of society – including young men. CHRISTINE THOMAS looks at changing gender norms and an alleged ‘crisis of masculinity’.

Recently there has been a proliferation of articles, books, reports and surveys looking at boys and young men: the problems they face and their ‘backsliding’ attitudes towards girls, women and feminism. Some of these exaggerate, distort or take a one-sided view of findings in order to promote a ‘gender war’ narrative or argue that feminism has ‘gone too far’. Others are more balanced and nuanced. Catherine Carr’s Radio Four documentary, About the Boys, is in the latter category – a series of interviews with teenage boys from different backgrounds and geographical areas, speaking frankly about the difficulties of being a boy in today’s world.

Changing attitudes through struggle

2 September, 2024Admin

It has been 40 years since the national miners’ strike of 1984-1985 – the biggest industrial dispute in post-war Britain. This strike had a huge and lasting effect on the trade union movement. And, as HEATHER RAWLING explains, it also changed social attitudes to oppressed groups in society in significant ways.

The miners’ strike became a long, bitter industrial dispute. It drew in large layers of the working class, including women, Black and Asian workers, and members of the LGBT community. They gave their time, solidarity, and money to keep the strike going.

Iran rising: Women, Life, Freedom

2 September, 2024Admin

BEA GARDNER reviews a recent book discussing the positive lessons – and missed opportunities – of the 2022-23 uprising in Iran that coalesced around the banner of Women, Life, Freedom.

What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom

By Arash Azizi

Published by Oneworld, 2024, £14.99

What Iranians Want: Women, Life, Freedom is described as the first major book on the 2022-23 uprising in Iran. Protests were sparked in September 2022 after the murder of Masha Amini, a 21-year-old woman from a Kurdish background, who was brutally beaten by the ‘moral security’ division of the Iranian police, dying from her injuries. She had been arrested in Tehran for the “inappropriate wearing of the headscarf”. Thousands came to her funeral, with slogans including “death to the dictator”, and the epitaph on her gravestone was “your name will become a symbol”.