Speaker: Bill Martin
History is the history of class struggle, and before the capitalist class came to power, they had to fight against the dominant feudal class: this talk looks at a case study of commoners revolt in Medieval London and how it related to capitalism coming into being.
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Heat-related deaths now exceed half a million a year, which means about one every minute.
People often just cannot cope with the heat stress caused by continued burning of fossil fuels, quite apart from the air pollution and increased likelihood of wildfires that result.
Governments pay out massive subsidies to fossil fuel companies ($2.5bn a day in 2023), often while spewing out drivel about the benefits of a ‘free market’. At the same time, hundreds of billions of hours of labour are lost because of the heat.
The responsibility for all this is down to capitalism and its motive of making a profit rather than caring for the environment and those who live within it.
Revolution Reclaimed: What It Really Means to Change the World
by
This episode explores how the word “revolution” has been overused and misunderstood, much like marketing buzzwords such as “game-changer.” The speaker argues that revolutions are a normal and essential part of human progress — from mastering fire to agriculture, industry, and modern technologies like AI and genetics. Societal revolutions happen gradually and often unnoticed, just as we don’t feel the Earth spinning. Capitalism isn’t the final stage of history, and future generations will likely view today’s world as outdated.
The episode then presents the socialist vision of the next major revolution: a society where money is abolished and everything is free. The argument is that humanity already produces enough resources — food, housing, clothing — for everyone, but the monetary system artificially restricts access. If goods are free, money becomes unnecessary.
Capitalism requires inequality, fuels environmental destruction, and cannot reform itself. Therefore, real freedom and sustainability require a conscious human push toward this next revolution — a world based on abundance and free access to resources.
World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/world-socialist-radio/
Discussion on recent events.
To connect to a Zoom meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305
The sell-out concert tour of Britain and Europe by Bob Dylan (he’s in his 85th year) presents a prime example of the way capitalism, via its entertainment industry, can sell us meaningless thrills to patch over the uniformity and stress of living in its wage and salary system.
Dylan does have something unique to offer, but the adulation, the hero-worship, as opposed to simple appreciation, of him by the fans at his concerts can only be seen as part of the obsession with celebrity culture that capitalism thrusts upon us as a substitute for mutually cooperative activity. This is something the free access society of economic equality that we call socialism would release.
Your Party – Not Mine
Is it time a
new party was founded?
Sure, the
old one’s comprehensively failed,
The
locomotive of Labour derailed.
It seems
hope is once again unbounded,
As so often
before, another red flag
To be run up
the polls and kept flying.
Then come
the splits, the schisms, the dying,
Such a
weight of expectation to drag
Down the
vision that was always myopic.
The old
nostrums and canards trotted out,
Members who
cannot debate, only shout:
Who is going
to vote for the shambolic?
This challenge
to capitalism’s resolved,
With, at no
point, socialism involved.
D. A.
