Socialist Party magazine
The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet
By Brett Christophers
Published by Verso, 2024, £22
Reviewed by Paul Kershaw
The hope of keeping global heating in check rests in large measure on the future of electricity generation. Last year was the hottest in recorded history and probably in the last 100,000 years. As The Price is Wrong argues, decarbonising electricity production is one of humanities most pressing tasks.
Read moreHANNAH 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.
Read moreBrutal 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.
Read moreOn 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.
Read moreAnother 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.
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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.
Read moreThe 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?
Read moreIn 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.
Read moreRecently 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.
Read moreThe 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.
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