Friday, June 20, 2025

SPGB Meeting TONIGHT 20 June 1930 (GMT + 1) ZOOM

 

THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF LANGUAGE (ZOOM)


Event Details

  • Date:  – 

Languages become endangered and can even die out when they are not passed on to new generations. In other circumstances new languages (pidgins and creoles) can emerge. In these cases the lives of speakers have generally been disrupted in various ways. We will look at how and why such developments occur, and the implications this can have for the people involved. See a 2005 article on this here.

Speaker: Paul Bennett

To connect to a Zoom meeting, click https://zoom.us/j/7421974305

Thursday, June 19, 2025

SPGB Summer School sign up

 The latest date to make a booking for Summer School will be 18th July.

For information about the event, go to:

www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/summer-school-2025/


Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Waterloo

 

Waterloo, what does the word conjure up? To fans of popular music it could be both the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest winner that set the Swedish group Abba on the road to fame and fortune. Or it could be The Kinks 1967 song Waterloo Sunset where Terry meets Julie at Waterloo Station every Friday night. The assumption that the two were based upon Terrence Stamp and Julie Christie both well known actors has been debunked. A trainspotter might have a soft spot for the London Waterloo Station opened in 1848.

The Station was opened 33 years after the battle of Waterloo, 18th June 1815, when the Seventh Coalition defeated the army of Napoleon Bonaparte. For military buffs and wargamers this represents a classical military encounter that can be replayed again and again.

Waterloo, what does the word conjure up for socialists? This extract from the Socialist Standard of June 1909 in an article repudiating the Great Men of history theory.

A favourite subject in debating societies is: what would be the present condition of England if Napoleon had won the battle of Waterloo, or Europe if William the Norman had lost the battle of Hastings, or of European civilisation if the Greeks had been beaten at Salames? These questions carry us into the heart of the question of genius and its effect upon social and economic conditions. Carlyle, of course, would answer: without the existence of these mighty men the history of the world must have taken different channels, their influence was incalculable. The Socialist, however, will say: it mattered little to the mass of the people, the working class, whether Napoleon won or was soundly thrashed at Waterloo. National boundaries to-day might be slightly or greatly different, but it is probable that the application of steam power to manufacture would have been the same, and this application caused a revolution more radical and permanent than any ever made by a mighty warrior. Napoleon was beaten at Waterloo, and we are surrounded by social and economic inequality and injustice. Had he won we should still be living in a capitalist state—and one need not say more than this. For the working class that great battle did not mean a higher or a lower standard of living, but, as was usual with all such conflicts, it implied: which nation shall be the paramount buccaneer? For is not capitalism making uniform the lives of the working class in all countries? As HervĂ© has so well put it, “There is at present no country so superior to any other that its working class should get themselves killed in its defence.”’

https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-great-man-fallacy-1909.html

Gustave Herve’s comment is even more apposite today when both countries and individuals consider themselves to be ‘great’. The delusion of these entities equals that of Malvolia. Unfortunately, such delusions carry horrible consequences of all of us who are based firmly in reality.





Enlarging nuclear arsenals

 The extracts below are from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute Yearbook 2025

World’s nuclear arsenals being enlarged and upgraded ‘

'Nearly all of the nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) and Israel—continued intensive nuclear modernisation programmes in 2024, upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions.

Of the total global inventory of an estimated 12 241 warheads in January 2025, about 9614 were in military stockpiles for potential use An estimated 3912 of those warheads were deployed with missiles and aircraft and the rest were in central storage. Around 2100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles. Nearly all of these warheads belonged to Russia or the USA, but China may now keep some warheads on missiles during peacetime. 

Since the end of the cold war, the gradual dismantlement of retired warheads by Russia and the USA has normally outstripped the deployment of new warheads, resulting in an overall year-on-year decrease in the global inventory of nuclear weapons. This trend is likely to be reversed in the coming years, as the pace of dismantlement is slowing, while the deployment of new nuclear weapons is accelerating. 

The era of reductions in the number of nuclear weapons in the world, which had lasted since the end of the cold war, is coming to an end,’ said Hans M. Kristensen, Associate Senior Fellow with SIPRI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programme and Director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). ‘Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric and the abandonment of arms control agreements.’

Russia and the USA together possess around 90 per cent of all nuclear weapons. The sizes of their respective military stockpiles (i.e. useable warheads) seem to have stayed relatively stable in 2024 but both states are implementing extensive modernisation programmes that could increase the size and diversity of their arsenals in the future. If no new agreement is reached to cap their stockpiles, the number of warheads they deploy on strategic missiles seems likely to increase after the bilateral 2010 Treaty on Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (New START) expires in February 2026.

The USA’s comprehensive nuclear modernisation programme is progressing but in 2024 faced planning and funding challenges that could delay and significantly increase the cost of the new strategic arsenal. Moreover, the addition of new non-strategic nuclear weapons to the US arsenal will place further stress on the modernisation programme. 

Russia’s nuclear modernisation programme is also facing challenges that in 2024 included a test failure and the further delay of the new Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) and slower than expected upgrades of other systems. Furthermore, an increase in Russia’s non-strategic nuclear warheads predicted by the USA in 2020 has so far not materialised.

Israel—which does not publicly acknowledge possessing nuclear weapons—is also believed to be modernising its nuclear arsenal. In 2024 it conducted a test of a missile propulsion system that could be related to its Jericho family of nuclear-capable ballistic missiles. Israel also appears to be upgrading its plutonium production reactor site at Dimona.

SIPRI Director Dan Smith warns about the challenges facing nuclear arms control and the prospects of a new nuclear arms race. Smith observes that ‘bilateral nuclear arms control between Russia and the USA entered crisis some years ago and is now almost over’. While New START—the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty limiting Russian and US strategic nuclear forces—remains in force until early 2026, there are no signs of negotiations to renew or replace it, or that either side wants to do so. US President Donald J. Trump insisted during his first term and has now repeated that any future deal should also include limits on China’s nuclear arsenal—something that would add a new layer of complexity to already difficult negotiations.

Smith also issues a stark warning about the risks of a new nuclear arms race: ‘The signs are that a new arms race is gearing up that carries much more risk and uncertainty than the last one.’ The rapid development and application of an array of technologies—for example in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI), cyber capabilities, space assets, missile defence and quantum—are radically redefining nuclear capabilities, deterrence and defence, and thus creating potential sources of instability. Advances in missile defence and the oceanic deployment of quantum technology could ultimately have an impact on the vulnerability of key elements of states’ nuclear arsenals. 

Furthermore, as AI and other technologies speed up decision making in crises, there is a higher risk of a nuclear conflict breaking out as a result of miscommunication, misunderstanding or technical accident.'

https://www.sipri.org/media/press-release/2025/nuclear-risks-grow-new-arms-race-looms-new-sipri-yearbook-out-now


Tuesday, June 17, 2025

Socialist Sonnet No. 196

Trading Blows

 

Market traders in war are grim reapers

Of the spoils, snatching the ground from under

The feet of those living there, torn asunder

By rhetoric, and leaders who’re keepers

Of their nations’ destiny. People, who

Have far more in common than what divides,

Acquiesce to being on opposing sides

By accepting that their just war is true.

Logic and reason having been displaced,

The bombed-out impotently sit and curse,

Wishing those named enemies receive worse:

So does human potential go to waste.

That’s how it must be forever and all,

Until people choose life and take control.

 

D. A.

World Socialist Radio

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The Socialist Party of Great Britain




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The End and the Means

A description of the broad features of socialism, a society of free and democratic co-operation. Excerpt of a longer article... more

09 Jun 2025 · 1 minute

Yet another (Middle East) war for oil


Israel, the US’s rogue proxy in the Middle East with its own agenda, initiated the current war by attacking Iran with the declared aim of physically preventing it acquiring the nuclear bomb.

According to Netanyahu, Iran’s possession of the nuclear bomb would presents an existential threat to the state of Israel. The suggestion is that, if Iran had the bomb, it would use it annihilate Israel. This is just propaganda as Iran wants the bomb for the same reason as the United States, Britain, France, China, India and Pakistan have it — as a deterrent against being attacked. If Iran did have the bomb it would be very foolish of it to use against Israel as Israel itself is a nuclear state.

The real reason for the war — and why the United States, Britain and the others are behind Israel in practice — is to maintain the current the balance of power in the Middle East. In relations between capitalist states ‘might is right’ and Iran’s possession of nuclear weapons would increase its ‘might’ and so shift the balance in its favour. It’s this that the Western states, who currently dominate the area because it is ’s the source of much of the oil and gas they need to power their production, wish to prevent, ideally by diplomacy but Israel has forced their hand. 

To maintain their own domination of the Middle East is why the Western powers are so concerned that Iran should not have nuclear weapons. 

That’s why, then, the Israel-Iran war can legitimately be described as another war for oil. Who controls the oil, and the trade routes and pipelines to get it out, has been the stake in all the many wars in the Middle East since the end of the last World War. On the surface the issue appears to be the existence of the state of Israel, established in 1948 as a ‘Jewish homeland’ on land that been the home for generations of non-Jews. This, in itself, was bound to create resentment but it might have worked had not the United States decided to build up Israel’s military might as its proxy on the ground in the region to defend its economic interests there.  

The rulers of Iran may invoke religion as why they don’t want a Jewish state to control Jerusalem but they are well aware of the economic issues at stake. Here is what Ayatollah Khaomeinei declared on 4 October last year:

‘The insistence of the United States and its allies on ensuring the security of the usurping regime serves as a cover for their murderous policy of transforming the [Zionist] regime into a tool to seize all the resources of this region and use it [this regime] in major global conflicts. Their policy is to transform this regime into a portal for exporting energy from West Asia to the West and importing Western goods and technologies to the region, to ensure the survival of the usurping regime and the dependence of the entire region on them.’  (https://french.khamenei.ir/news/14495 translated from French).

Which capitalist states controls the economic resources of the region is of no concern to the workers and other ordinary people living there. The civilians on both sides are being killed and wounded and buildings and useful infrastructure destroyed, as happens in all wars, for an issue that is only of capitalist concern. As socialists, we once again place on record our abhorrence of capitalist war and assert that it is in the interest of workers in both Israel and Iran is to join with workers everywhere in to bring to an end the war-prone capitalist system.