Economic chasm

A recent report endorsed by the economist Joseph Stiglitz warned that the world is facing an ‘inequality emergency’, as an overwhelming share of new wealth goes to those who are already the richest. The economic chasm between them and everyone else will deepen with over $70 trillion passed down to their heirs over the next decade.

But what’s new? We already knew that a tiny proportion of the population owned the vast majority of wealth. The percentages make little difference to most of us whose only resource is the energy we sell to an employer. And that will continue until we vote to bring in a completely new kind of society based on production for need rather than profit.

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

Socialist Sonnet No. 216

Christmas Cheer?

 

Christmas, Yuletide or Saturnalia,

Marking the solstice, the turn of the year

Appears to require wine and good beer

To lubricate momentary failure

Of the social norms of the working week.

It’s the lords of misrule who’re in command

Or so it seems, yet supply and demand

Gift wrapped around the tree quietly speak

Eloquently of Christmas credit cards,

Of budgets stretched and unsettled accounts,

Of this season when profit margins mount,

An imperative no business disregards.

With heads still muzzy and waistbands tighter,

It’ll be back to work, the wallets lighter.

 

D. A.  

World Socialist Radio - Cheating The Reaper

 Cheating The Reaper

byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

This episode article uses recent public comments by authoritarian leaders like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and the broader enthusiasm among billionaires and tech elites for life-extension research, to highlight the hubris of the rich attempting to “cheat death.” It points out the absurdity of autocrats and Silicon Valley figures treating ageing as a technical problem to solve, despite biological limits and deep inequalities in who could even access such treatments. The speaker underscores that while elites fantasise about immortality through organ transplants, genetic tweaks, or radical longevity regimens, these efforts are constrained by hard biological realities.

Taken from the December 2025 edition of The Socialist Standard.

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

SPGB Meeting TONIGHT 19 December 1930 GMT ZOOM

 

EVOLUTION AND THE GOD DELUSION

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Event Details

• Date: December 19, 2025 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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Arguments against Jesuits and JWs.
Speaker: Adam Buick

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

My mate Chris...

 

I feel a bit of a swine sometimes, usually when I’m talking to my mate Chris. Although he knows more than most about Marx’s economics, he recently told me he was pleased about Mamdani’s election as New York mayor because the poor would benefit from free public transport and rent controls. Here’s the swine-ish bit – I reminded him that the law of value applies to every commodity, including labour power, that those two proposals from Mamdani would, if applied, allow employers to reduce wage levels, and perhaps result in a slight shift of wealth from landlords to employers.

‘So it’s nowt to do with socialism then?’

‘That’s right, Chris, sorry!’

For more on this topic see here.

Socialist Sonnet No. 215

Bloody Bondi

 

There’s blood in the sand, sharks circle offshore.

An unridden surf is still surging in

Under an ascendant unflinching sun,

Rapacious gulls hover and dive and soar.

Beach bags wouldn’t have been packed with bandages,

Flip flops and sun block, but no tourniquets.

A day for standing down and being at ease

With the world awhile, away from its rages.

Folk gathered comfortably together,

Sharing a common weal for a few hours,

Unaware agents of much darker powers

Were preparing for a change in the weather.

How the day started! How the day finished!

With humanity, once more, diminished.

 

D. A.

World Socialist Radio - Abolish the Wages System

 

Abolish The Wages System: Why We Need To Get Rid Of Capitalism

byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

This episode is a recording of a talk given by Johnny Mercer at The Socialist Party’s Head Office on 30th November 2025.

The speaker outlines the Socialist Party of Great Britain’s case for abolishing the wage system, arguing that capitalism is rooted in minority ownership of the means of production and in production for profit rather than human need. They reject the idea that capitalism emerged naturally, instead tracing its origins to violent dispossession – from the Enclosures and Highland Clearances in Britain to slavery and colonialism globally – which created a propertyless working class forced to sell its labour. Drawing on Marx, the talk emphasises the exploitative and alienating nature of wage labour, detailing how workers are separated from the products of their work, the labour process, each other, nature, and ultimately their own human potential. Capitalism’s pursuit of endless growth is linked to ecological destruction, and global conflict is framed as competition between capitalist interests fought at the expense of the working class.

The second half outlines the principles of the Socialist Party of Great Britain, founded in 1904 as a breakaway from reformist movements and committed to a leaderless, democratic, revolutionary transformation. The speaker defines socialism as a stateless, moneyless society based on common ownership and production for need, stressing that emancipation must be won consciously by the working class itself. They argue that all other political parties – including those considered left-wing – ultimately support capitalism, offering only reforms rather than systemic change. The talk concludes by urging workers to unite under the SPGB’s banner to replace capitalism’s inequalities with a society grounded in freedom, equality, and genuine human solidarity.

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.

Fictosexuality and capitalism

 Seeking temporary relief from the persistent warmongering emanating from so called Western leaders and also from the ever overarching bullying behaviour of the state of the USA I chanced upon an article in The Spectator about the Japanese Minister for Economic Security.

The Minister is, according to The Spectator, 2D exclusive. This apparently means that individuals ‘only form romantic attachments with animated characters.’

The internet has,’ Fictosexuality is a sexual identity characterized by exclusive or primary sexual attraction to fictional characters, as distinct from real-life individuals. It is often considered an umbrella term within the asexual spectrum, describing people who experience sexual attraction solely toward fictional characters from media such as anime, manga, video games, books, or films’

An individual’s sexuality or sexual preference is their own business. The article’s author is concerned with the effect that such alternative preferences as fictosexuality might be having on Japanese society. 

The sentence which really caught my eye was one which said that the Minister was responsible for revitalising the Japanese economy and she should be concentrating on encouraging a higher birth rate and ensuring that there would be a healthy workforce available in the future. 

That’s capitalism for you folks.Your life is conditioned by the demands of capitalism and capitalism needs bodies it can exploit. In a world where goods and services were produced for need not profit,  human relations would take on a completely different hue.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-strange-world-of-2d-exclusive-japanese-women/

SPGB Meeting TONIGHT 12 December 1930 GMT ZOOM

 

HOW THE CAPITALIST CLASS CAME TO POWER (EVENTUALLY): CLASS STRUGGLE IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND

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Event Details

• Date: December 12, 2025 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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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.

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

Global heating kills!

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.

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

World Socialist Radio - Revolution Reclaimed

 Revolution Reclaimed: What It Really Means to Change the World

byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

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/

SPGB Meeting TONIGHT 5 December 1930 GMT ZOOM

 

HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS? (ZOOM)

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Event Details

• Date: December 5, 2025 7:30 pm – 9:00 pm

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Discussion on recent events.

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

Bread and circuses for today

 

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.

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

Socialist Sonnet No. 214

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.

SOCIALIST STANDARD December 2025 Now Available Online FREE

 

https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2025/no-1456-december-2025/

World Socialist Radio - Violence and War

 

Violence and War: Are They Inevitable? The Long View

by The Socialist Party of Great Britain

This episode argues that war and large-scale violence are not primitive constants built into human nature, but rather they became widespread only with the rise of hierarchical, agrarian and class-based societies. For most of human prehistory — during the long era when humans lived as small, egalitarian hunter-gatherer bands — there is scant evidence of systemic war. It was only with the advent of agriculture, permanent settlements and the resultant scarcity that social hierarchies emerged: a privileged minority gained power over resources and labour, dominance replaced egalitarianism, and the structural conditions for permanent class society were created. Thus, war and institutionalised violence are shown as products of social organisation rather than an inevitable aspect of human biology or “original sin.”

Taken from the December 2025 edition 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.

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