The World Bank Blog notes that in 2024 32 per cent of the world population, about 2.6 billion people, could not afford to eat a healthy diet. The largest number is in Sub-Saharan Africa, but North America and Europe also had many affected by their inability to afford decent nourishment.
Fill a petrol-powered car with diesel and you will damage the engine. Humans who are forced, through poverty, to eat unhealthy food because it is low cost will also impair their health and well-being.
Under capitalism food is a commodity produced to profit the companies in charge of its production. Socialism, with free access to food, will provide quality sustenance for all.
A recent report has shown that people with learning disabilities and autism are dying on average nearly twenty years younger than the rest of the population. And almost two in five of their deaths are avoidable, caused most commonly by influenza, pneumonia and heart disease. Many people with learning disabilities or autism experience delay in care, or their treatment guidelines are not met.
‘People with a learning disability and their families deserve better,’ said the chief executive of Mencap. ‘In this day and age, no one should die early because they don’t get the right treatment.’
This is a particularly unacceptable example of the shortcomings of health care under capitalism.
Are you proud to be British (or English or Welsh or Scottish)? If so, have you thought how much sense it makes to be proud of something you didn’t have any control over, i.e. the place where you happen to have been born? You can reasonably be proud of things you achieve such as passing your driving test, getting good exam results, making a scientific discovery, working in the community, or helping others. But nationalism is a futile endeavour for workers, prone to feeding on frustration and anger and causing division and conflict.
Why not join with the Socialist Party to campaign for a moneyless, stateless, cooperative society free of nations and borders and the enmities they stir.
Canada’s federal government plans to pass a bill in autumn that ensures First Nations will have a right to access clean water. This has prompted a howl of rage from the state governments of Alberta and Ontario. In a joint letter to federal environment minister Julie Dabrusin, their respective environment ministers Rebecca Schulz and Todd McCarthy sounded off fiercely. To quote: “We are hopeful that this new federal government will move away from policies and legislation that undermine competitiveness, delay project development and disproportionately harm specific provinces and territories without any quantifiable benefits to the natural environment”.
In other words, go ahead with your plans for the development for industry, Native Canadians don’t matter.
Microplastics are found in the human placenta, semen and brain. More than 170 trillion plastic particles are in oceans. Yet the recent Geneva summit on curbing plastic production collapsed, because plastics mean profits for some.
‘A lot of the countries reflected their own feelings of anger, disappointment, sadness, for instance France’s Minister for Ecological Transition said that she was disappointed and angry that a handful of countries, guided by short-term financial interests, had blocked the adoption of an ambitious treaty.’ – Guardian Science Weekly
By 2060, plastic production is expected to triple to a billion tonnes a year. Capitalism is like a rogue algorithm designed to chase money, even at the cost of the planet. We need to upgrade to world socialism.
So-called rare earth elements, such as scandium and terbium, play an essential role in the functioning of mobile phones, electric cars and so on. Most are currently mined in China, at vast environmental cost but with great importance for the country’s finances and bargaining power.
Now, though, Australia is trying to compete, with a vast pit north of Perth. The government has provided a billion dollar loan to a mining company in an attempt to break China’s near-monopoly and expand Australia’s economy and global influence.
Capitalism really is about profits and power, with little attention to ecological impact and true human need.
Do we need leaders? Most people think we do. Even the Green Party, reputed to be one of the most ‘horizontal’ in their organisation, are currently locked in a leadership struggle between different candidates. This is a symptom of the almost universal notion that positive change can only happen if certain exceptional individuals hold power – even though reality has shown us time and time again that this is an illusion.
The kind of society the Socialist Party works for is borderless, wageless and moneyless – and entirely leaderless. It will come about when most people’s sense of powerlessness has given way to a recognition of the need for a society of entirely democratic organisation and decision-making – with no leaders and no followers.
A modest little tale about Cuban snails offers a fine comment on how the capitalist money system values everything in terms of prices, often with disastrous results. Polymita tree snails have spectacular shells like painted artworks. This attracts collectors who then make money by selling the shells. The trade reduces the snail population, and as they become rarer, their price goes up, which makes them even more collectible. This accelerator effect is driving them to the edge of extinction, like so many other hunted animals.
The BBC describes them as ‘threatened by their own beauty’. What really threatens them is capitalism, a profit-hungry beast which won’t stop until it devours everything. Or until we abolish it.
The disgusting slaughter and destruction of war continues in the Middle East, Ukraine and less visibly (at least via mainstream media) in other parts of the world. For sure, some of this madness may be caused by the difficulties and distractions of career politicians, but the context will always be the competition between capitalists for control of trade routes and territory (raw materials and markets). No amount of wishful thinking will change this situation, nor will it end the appalling waste of human effort and resources that are sucked up by the war industries.
As the SPGB has repeatedly said throughout the last 120 years, if you want peace, help prepare for socialism
What’s worse? Being old, disabled, sick and having to pay on average £1406 per week to live in a residential care home, or to be a wage slave in those institutions? The Health Foundation report describes the ‘levels of poverty among the UK residential workforce.’ It says that ‘1.6 million English workers work in social care. They and their families are ‘nearly twice as likely to live in poverty as the average UK worker.’
So is anyone making loadsa money? Yes. ‘Nearly all the largest private providers of care home places are offshore private equity companies for whom profit is the prime motivation. For these companies, economies of scale, low wages, minimum staffing and cost-cutting are the order of the day.’ (Guardian).
