World Socialist Radio - Basic Skills

 

Basic Skills. How Capitalism Is Failing Us

byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

This Socialist Standard article “Pathfinders – Basic Skills” critiques claims that declining literacy and “cancel culture” stem from abandoning phonics, arguing instead that capitalism’s chaotic priorities—not conspiracies—drive educational failures. It notes that both US and UK literacy levels are poor, worsened by social media and AI, which promote effortless but shallow learning. The author humorously demonstrates AI’s inconsistency in misattributing a quote, concluding that genuine understanding requires “friction” and effort—something neither capitalist education systems nor AI’s “frictionless” convenience can provide.

From the November 2025 issue of The Socialist Standard.

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.

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SPGB Meeting TONIGHT 7 November 1930 GMT ZOOM

 

GOLIATH’S CURSE: THE HISTORY AND FUTURE OF SOCIETAL COLLAPSE

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Event Details

• Date: November 7, 2025 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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Review of book by Luke Kemp
Speaker: Jonathan Chambers

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

War or peace?

Given that the world seems riven with fighting and wars, is it surprising that many people see conflict between humans as the natural state of things? Yet the vast majority of interactions that take place between human beings on a daily basis are cooperative, peaceful and harmonious.

So why the contrast? It’s because the root cause of modern wars lies not in any natural human inclination towards fighting or violence but in the rivalries between governments acting on behalf of their national capitalist classes for control of raw materials, trade routes and markets. In a stateless, moneyless world of cooperative endeavour – socialism – such rivalries would not exist and the natural human ability to cooperate rather than compete would come into its own.

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/

Socialist sonnet No. 210

11.11.11

 

Cataracts of poppies pour into parks

And public spaces. The not forgetting

Has become a theatrical setting

Where the performance of remembrance lurks.

Pieties are preached, lone bagpipes skirled,

The Last Post bugled, cadets paraded.

All observe silence, even the jaded

Are restrained from pointing out how the world

Hasn’t seen war ended, despite the fallen;

Age didn’t wither them, but machine guns did.

National capitals continue to collide,

Yet, should the ranks of workers think again,

Then they might transcend borders that divide

And spurn futility of national pride.

 

D. A.

World Socialist Radio - UFOs Exposed

 UFOs Exposed: How Capitalism’s Crafty Cover-Ups Shape What We Think We See

byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

This episode examines how UFO narratives have been shaped by secrecy, misinterpretation, and capitalist interests. It discusses the BBC4 documentary “What Are UFOs?”, which revisits pilot Alex Dietrich’s 2004 “tic tac” sighting and the 2015 “gimbal” video, both later explained by experts as camera and motion distortions of ordinary aircraft. Many so-called “unidentified” incidents, the article notes, are better understood as sightings of classified military technology—echoing cases like the 1947 Roswell crash, now known to involve Project Mogul, a Cold War nuclear-detection program. Likewise, triangular UFO reports from the 1980s onward likely stem from experimental U.S. stealth craft tested at secret facilities such as Area 51. The piece argues that the UFO craze thrived amid Cold War paranoia, government secrecy, and Hollywood storytelling, eventually evolving into a profitable pop-culture industry. Ultimately, it concludes that the enduring fascination with UFOs reveals more about capitalism’s power to generate fear and fantasy than about life beyond Earth.

From the October 2025 issue of The Socialist Standard.

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.

To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

or, for a free three-issue subscription to The Socialist Standard: spgb.net/podcast

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/world-socialist-radio/

November 2025 SOCIALIST STANDARD Now Available Online FREE

 

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2025/no-1455-november-2025/

Socialist Sonnet No. 209

Halloween

 

Halloween marks the way to the season

Of remembrance: let the dead be recalled

To mark how too frequently peace has stalled,

For which there’s one fundamental reason,

The persistence of capital in its

Voracious pursuit of profit, heedless

Of the inhuman cost, of the needless

Near countless lives lost. The market sits

In impersonal judgement as to where lies,

Not a moral, but the fiscal value,

Wherever barbarism’s breaking through,

No matter which blood drenched flag it flies.

Leaving the haunted, those who always lose,

To appear almost live on rolling news.

 

D. A.