Life and Times: Scumbag or not? (2026)

The Life and Times column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘He’s just a scumbag.’ That’s what my neighbour said to me about a local landlord who’s bought up literally dozens of properties in the areas and is letting them to students room by room. The neighbour doesn’t like to be surrounded by students since she sees them as potentially rowdy and trouble-makers. But she’s also indignant that, whenever this landlord purchases a property, he puts up one of his ‘To Let’ boards at the front. In our street there are currently seven houses in succession with those signs on them. In her estimation it makes the place look untidy – ‘like a slum’, as she puts it. And even when a property is let and people are living there, the board stays up – presumably for publicity purposes.

As for myself, though I don’t mind the students and don’t find them troublesome, like my neighbour I’m not particularly happy about all those boards up there permanently. I contacted the landlord’s letting company and actually spoke with him. He’s a young chap called Nick who I’ve known since he was little when his father ran the now defunct shop at the corner of the street. We had an entirely friendly conversation in which he said that it was ‘letting season’ at the moment but assured me that the boards would come down at the end of the month when that period was over. But the boards stayed up and, when I tried to contact him again, I couldn’t get hold of him personally and was told by people in his office that they’d pass on the message. Nothing happened and I’ve sort of given up on that.

Since his boards are not just in my street but on properties all over the area (there are literally dozens and dozens), I asked one of the local councillors whether landlords were entitled to keep their boards up long-term like that. He told me they weren’t and that local regulations state they should be taken down once properties have been let. But the rub, he told me, was that, since it would take too much in the way of time and resources for the council to go round checking and enforcing, all it would do was to inform landlords of their legal duty but with no follow up.

So is Nick a scumbag for what he’s doing? In fact, are all landlords scumbags, as a friend of mind once suggested, since what they’re doing is exploiting the very basic need people have for shelter and, if they (be they students or anyone else) don’t have the money to pay for it, then tough? But there again isn’t that how the money and buying and selling system works more widely, ie, if you can’t pay, you can’t have? In a conversation I once had with a different landlord about this very thing, he expressed the view that someone who grasps opportunities to make money is doing nothing wrong but simply being enterprising and deserves to be rewarded for, as he put it, ‘showing good judgement’.

Actually, looking around my area there’s a whole range of types of landlords. Some of them own just a single property or maybe two and use the income from that to supplement what they earn from working for an employer or from small-scale self-employed activity. Others, like Nick, make it their living, become small-scale capitalists, and are always looking to expand. Other properties still are bought by large private equity companies who spend significant time and expense improving them before letting them out and don’t need to get back the money they’ve spent on them in the short term, since they’re regarded as long-term investments which will ultimately turn a profit for the companies’ shareholders. Of course, there are also landlords (or would-be landlords) who come a cropper in all this in not being able to find tenants at all. The property or properties they own, and on which they may have taken out mortgages, become an albatross around their neck rather than a source of profit and they end up having to sell, so incurring a loss rather than any kind of profit.

But then that’s the way the dog-eat-dog, anarchic system we live in works at so many different levels. It creates winners and losers even among would-be capitalists. Of course, being a winner or loser in quite that way doesn’t apply to the majority of people, those who are members of what we would call ‘the working class’ and who have to sell their energies to an employer day by day in order to provide for themselves and their families. Some do it fairly comfortably, others a lot less so, but there are very few who don’t live with insecurity about whether their wage or salary will be enough to satisfy their material aspirations and indeed, in many cases, whether the employment that brings in that wage or salary will itself continue to be secure.

But coming back to Nick, is it fair to call him a scumbag? What he’s done is to inherit the couple of properties his father owned and taken things, as another neighbour put it, ‘to a new level’. He’s seen opportunities and grabbed them. Can we blame him for that? Probably not, after all making money is what capitalism invites us all to do if we can. And that will carry on until the majority of us collectively decide to get rid of it and bring in a new society of free access to all goods and services where we’re not constantly pitted against one another but follow the more natural human path of cooperation. Then we’ll truly be able to satisfy all our needs, for shelter as well as for life’s other necessities. In the meantime, no one would object if Nick took down those boards.

Howard Moss

Pathfinders: Big Red Button (2026)

The Pathfinders Column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year Hollywood director Kathryn Bigelow caused a minor stir with A House of Dynamite, an earnest and compelling warning against nuclear war in the tradition of Fail Safe (1964), or its comedy twin Dr Strangelove (1964). Unlike her other films it probably won’t win any gongs though, because it annoyed a lot of people.

Note, this paragraph contains spoilers. Critics complained that the film wasn’t a ‘proper’ story, with a beginning, middle and end, but instead was a looping repeat of the same chain of events from different character viewpoints. Nor did it have an ending. The viewer is just left hanging. Does the missile blow up the city? Does the US launch a retaliatory strike, and against whom? We don’t find out. But that’s ok, because the ending wasn’t the point.

The point of Dynamite is how we got ourselves into this situation in the first place. ‘We all built a house filled with dynamite… and then we just kept on livin’ in it,’ says one character. Jacobin magazine sniffily objected that the film doesn’t really say anything, and is essentially an ‘impotent and unserious exercise in handwringing’. We might sniffily object in turn that anyone who doesn’t advocate the immediate abolition of capitalism is also merely handwringing. Which would include all of the left including Jacobin magazine.

Because while capitalism has done a lot of good things for humanity, it’s also an out-of-control profit-making machine that comes with some catastrophic downsides. Runaway global warming isn’t even the worst of these. We can probably survive that, as a species. But who would survive nuclear Armageddon? Who would even want to?

For all the Boomer generation’s supposed privileges, like free higher education, affordable houses, job security and career advancement, they still had to grow up in the Cold War under the shadow of the Bomb, not knowing whether each day would be their last. Now Gen Z and Gen Alpha, on top of their other problems, may come to know what that feels like. ‘On January 27, 2026, the Doomsday Clock was set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest the Clock has ever been to midnight in its history’.

Who’s got nukes?

Nine countries today have a total of around 13,000 weapons, down from the Cold War’s 60,000, but arsenals are increasing again. You can see the distribution at a glance at armscontrol.org. Most belong to Russia and the US, but China is fast playing catch-up. These are not just nukes, but BIG nukes. ‘For example, the warheads on just one US nuclear-armed submarine have seven times the destructive power of all the bombs dropped during World War II, including the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan. And the United States usually has ten of those submarines at sea’ (ucs.org).

Who wants nukes?

Basically, every country’s ruling elite, following the National Rifle Association’s argument that in an armed society, you’re safer if you’re packing heat too. Ukraine gave up its nukes in 1994 and what happened? It got invaded. Iran keeps being bombed by Israel, but who dares bomb nuclear North Korea? The lesson is obvious and unavoidable. Disarmament is for losers. To paraphrase Mark Carney at Davos, if you’re not at the nuclear table, you’re on the menu.

There are fewer total nukes than in the Cold War era, so why is the threat worse today? Because treaties are easier when there are only two sides to negotiate. After the panic of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War finally settled into stasis with arms control treaties. Now there are three major nuclear powers, and more on the way. In February this year the 2010 START nuclear non-proliferation treaty expired, and no nuclear power shows any interest in reviving or replacing it. Instead, with Russia fighting in Ukraine, China threatening Taiwan, India and Pakistan having cross-border skirmishes, and the US under Trump threatening to remove the ‘extended deterrence’ umbrella from its own NATO allies, the gloves are off. Any country that can get its hands on nukes and more nukes is going gangbusters to do just that, and never mind other internal costs like health and social welfare.

The upshot is proliferation. Now even America worries that, despite its gigantic arsenal, it won’t have enough to go round if adversaries like Russia and China decide to join forces. There is a terrifying escalatory logic at play, as the Economist points out. A country may opt for ‘minimal deterrence’, having just enough nukes to survive a first strike and still deliver unconscionable devastation on enemy cities. But beyond minimal deterrence, military planners aim for ‘damage limitation’, which means having enough missiles to take out all the other side’s nuclear silos, submarines and mobile launchers. If this capacity is achieved, it only drives the other side to acquire further weapons, and so on indefinitely (‘Nukes of Hazard‘).

Even if war is not the immediate result, this multi-sided arms race makes the prospects of any binding arms treaty look more remote, and the chances of a Fail Safe-like accidental launch greater than ever. But we, the vast majority of the world’s people, didn’t do this. We are merely the grunts who do all the work of maintaining what we like to call civilisation. It’s the rich who have built a world of dynamite and are sitting on top of it, smoking fat cigars. Our only mistake is continuing to support and vote for the market system which created the rich, and their nukes, in the first place.

J Robert Oppenheimer, the self-styled ‘destroyer of worlds’, was along with Einstein a founder of the Doomsday Clock that now ticks perilously close to midnight. There’s still time for humanity to claw its way back from the brink, and use its miraculous science and technology purely for the collective benefit, but only if it stops deluding itself. Capitalism is not sustainable, nor our best option. It’s a death cult with a Big Red Button.

Paddy Shannon

Zackonomics — how green can you be? (2026)

From the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

In their party political broadcast on 22 January, the Greens’ new eco-populist leader Zack Polanski ran through the various problems people face and pointed out that a lot of the wealth they create ends up in the pockets of the super-rich. But went on: ‘This isn’t just an economic failure. It’s a failure of leadership. The people we elected choose to serve the wealthy. And, yes, that is obscene. Good leaders put people before profit’.

Self-styled good leaders

So what does Polanski, as a ‘good leader’, propose that a Green Party government would do? Its manifesto for the 2024 general election promised ‘the public ownership of public services’ and talked about ‘taxing wealth fairly and borrowing to invest’, in particular ‘a Wealth Tax of 1% annually on assets above £10 million and of 2% on assets above £1bn’. This is the sort of thing the Labour Party used to advocate and will be one reason why the Greens have had some success in winning over people disillusioned with the Labour Party after Starmer (with a little help from Peter Mandelson) axed its leftwing.

In this sense, the Green Party is reviving the illusion that the Labour Party once entertained that capitalism could gradually be changed, through ‘public’ ownership, tax changes and social reforms, into a less unequal society. The only difference is that the Greens think that ‘good leaders’ should put the environment as well as people before profit (and sometimes before people). All the arguments that socialists have made against Labour Party reformism apply equally against the Greens. Capitalism is an economic system driven by firms, whether private or state (or cooperatives), seeking to make a profit and to accumulate this as more capital to be reinvested for more profit. Putting profit-making first is imposed on those making economic decisions, including governments, as an external coercive force that they ignore at their peril.

Polanski and the Greens, if ever they got to form the government and tried to put people before profit, would be ‘bad leaders’ as far as capitalism was concerned. They would put a spanner in the way capitalism works and provoke an economic downturn, forcing them into a U-turn, as has happened many times to Labour and similar governments in other parts of the world — punished for refusing to put profits before people.

What this means is that, contrary to what Polanski claims, a ‘good leader’, for capitalism, is someone who does put profits before people, someone who applies rather than challenges the economic laws of capitalism. Those individuals who workers elect to govern have no alternative. The nature of capitalism, as a profit-making system that can only work for the profit-takers, obliges them to do this on pain of provoking an economic slow-down.

Replacing them with self-styled ‘good leaders’, like he imagines himself to be, won’t change things despite good intentions. They, too, would end up having to serve the wealthy as that’s the only way that the system can work. What is needed is not a change of leaders, but a change of system. But that’s not what the Greens want.

Cranky economics

The Green Party accepts capitalism. It doesn’t challenge the ownership of the means of life by a minority nor that goods and services are produced primarily for sale on a market with a view to profit. At most, it seems to want to go back to an earlier stage of capitalism in which production was in the hands of small and medium-sized enterprises.

To tell the truth, the Green Party is all over the place when it comes to economics which, anyway, is not the primary interest of most of its members. That — and it’s a perfectly legitimate concern — is to protect and save the environment, which they imagine can be done by pursuing policies and passing laws without changing the basics of the present, capitalist economic system.

The Greens’ relative lack of interest in economics has left them open to all sorts of cranky theories. For instance, their manifesto for the 2015 general election declared that ‘the power to create money must be taken out of the hands of private banks’ and that ‘commercial banks should be no more than the custodians of publicly created money in current accounts’. This reflected a resolution on ‘monetary and financial reform’ carried at their 2013 Conference:

‘97% of the money circulating in the economy takes the form of credit that is created electronically by private banks through the accounting processes they follow when they make loans … The 1844 Bank Charter Act will be updated to prohibit banks from creating national currency in the form of electronic credit. To finance their lending, investment or proprietary trading activities, banks will have to borrow or raise the necessary national currency from savers and investors’.

This would considerably limit what banks would be able to lend, even to individuals let alone to business. But loans to profit-seeking firms are essential to the workings of capitalism as it means that capitalist entrepreneurs do not have to have accumulated all their own money before they can start a business. The role of banks is to make available money for investment that would otherwise lie idle or be scattered in small amounts.

To make up for the fall in bank lending that their scheme would bring about, the 2013 resolution proposed that ‘all national currency (both in cash and electronic form) will be created, free of any associated debt, by a National Monetary Authority (NMA) that is accountable to Parliament’ and that ‘any new money created by the NMA will be credited to the account of the Government as additional revenue, to be spent into circulation in the economy in accordance with the budget approved by Parliament’.

Imagining that banks create money out of thin air and wanting to devise a debt-free money is classic currency crankism. Banks don’t create new money when they make a loan; they lend out money that they have (from deposits and loans) or can quickly acquire (from the money market or the Bank of England) and the interest they receive comes from the future profits of loans to business and from the future wages of those to individuals. The 2013 Green Party resolution and 2015 Green Party general election manifesto were proposing an imagined solution to a false problem, a solution which if applied would lead to financial chaos and roaring inflation.

These days the Green Party does not push this policy much. It wasn’t in their 2019 or 2024 general election manifestos. However, it remains part of their official policy and is included in their Policies for a Sustainable Society. Polanski, who knows a thing or two about selling false remedies and so about what sells and what doesn’t, doesn’t mention the banking reform part and talks only about some National Monetary Authority providing the government with whatever money it needs to pay for a Green Deal and social services.

Magic Money Theory

This has led some, such as Jonathan Prynn, business editor of The Standard (formerly Evening Standard), to accuse Polanski of embracing another mistaken monetary theory  — self-styled ‘Modern Monetary Theory’, or MMT (which also, appropriately enough, stands for Magic Money Tree). This teaches that the government doesn’t need to borrow money but can simply create the money it needs and spend it; this will stimulate the economy and the government will eventually recover the money as increased tax receipts.

It is not clear that Polanski has embraced MMT. He may just be using the naive (and therefore good populist) argument that if the resources are there to save the environment or eliminate poverty (as they are) and the government has the power to create as much money as it wants (as it does), why does the government not simply create the money to use the resources? If it did this, it wouldn’t need to worry about borrowing money and so wouldn’t be in thrall to international speculators. Which is essentially what Polanski and the Greens are saying.

The trouble is that this ignores the way the capitalist economic system works. Wealth is produced in the profit-seeking sector of the economy in response to the prospects of making a profit. Governments as such produce no wealth; to get the money to buy what they need to carry out their activities they have to resort either to taxation of the profit-producing sector or borrow from those who have acquired money from that sector. When the government creates money it is not creating any new wealth, only claims on existing wealth. It can create as much of these claims as it likes but, if it creates more than the economy needs for its buying and selling and other monetary transactions, then the result will be a fall in the purchasing power of the claims and so a rise in the general prices level, or inflation.

If a Green government were to simply create and spend the money to protect the environment or to eliminate poverty or to improve living conditions generally, the most likely result is that there would be a one-time spurt in economic activity but in time there would be an inflation which could get of hand. Apologists for capitalism, such as Prynn, happen to be right when they point this out.

The conclusion to be drawn is not to accept that profits have to come before people, but that it is futile, and even counter-productive, to try to prevent this under capitalism. What is needed is to get rid of the profit system altogether and to use resources to simply and directly produce what people need. But this is only possible on the basis of the common ownership of the world’s productive resources. It would then no longer be a question of what should come first — profits or people? — because profits wouldn’t enter into it at all.

Adam Buick

Material World: Right, left and fake communism (2026)

The Material World column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Modern politics is often presented as a battlefield between two irreconcilable forces: the right and the left. However, this opposition is more apparent than real.

Both currents are internal factions of the capitalist mode of production. The right defends the market, private initiative and competition as the engine of the economy; the left, for its part, advocates nationalisation, a regulated economy and state control. Two different paths, yes, but both leading to the same destination: the perpetuation of capitalist relations of production.

Many people, out of ignorance or historical unawareness, believe that nationalisation is equivalent to socialism. They confuse the presence of the state in the economy with the abolition of class struggle. But authentic socialism is not reduced to the state administering companies or nationalising strategic sectors. Socialism implies that workers directly control the means of production, that exploitation disappears and that society is organised consciously and collectively.

In countries that proclaimed themselves socialist — the USSR, China, Cuba, Venezuela — what was actually established was state capitalism. There was no disappearance of property or wage labour. Individual private property was replaced by collective ownership by the state bureaucracy, not by direct management by the workers.

The worker continued to sell his labour power in exchange for a wage, while the surplus value was appropriated by the state. The fundamental difference is that, in private capitalism, exploitation is exercised by one individual over another; in state capitalism, exploitation is exercised by the state over the individual.

Lenin himself acknowledged in his pamphlet The State and Revolution that the USSR had not achieved communism, but was in a phase of state capitalism. What was established there was a system where the state absorbed the economy, centralised production and organised exploitation more efficiently, but without abolishing fundamental capitalist relations.

China repeated the same pattern. Under the slogan of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics,’ it merged private and state capital. Today it is a capitalist power that competes in the world market with the same rules of value, competition, and exploitation as any other country.

In Cuba, massive nationalisations created the appearance of a society without a bourgeoisie, but state bureaucrats enjoyed privileges far superior to those of any worker. Centralised planning did not eliminate exploitation, it simply reorganised it under an omnipresent state apparatus.

Venezuela, for its part, used socialist rhetoric as a political banner, while keeping capitalist relations of production intact. Oil, the engine of its economy, was administered by the state as national capital, not as the collective heritage of the workers. Inequality, corruption and dependence on the world market are proof that communism was not built there, but rather a variant of state capitalism.

Authentic communism, understood as the abolition of social classes and the direct management of production by workers, has never existed in these countries. What has reigned is a hypertrophied, cold and bureaucratic state that devours civil society and presents itself as a saviour while perpetuating exploitation. State intervention is not a rationalisation of capitalism, but a manifestation of its decadence. It is a desperate attempt to sustain a system that can no longer spontaneously organise human relations and needs violence and bureaucracy to stay afloat.

In conclusion, the right and the left are two sides of the same coin: one defends the market, the other defends nationalisation. Both reproduce the same exploitative relationships. Countries that proclaimed themselves socialist have never been so; they are examples of how state capitalism can disguise itself as revolution, appropriate symbols and words, and construct one of the greatest mystifications in history. True socialism remains a pending task, yet to be realised in any corner of the planet.

(Translation of an article by Juan Morel Perez published in El Neuvo Diario in the Dominican Republic.)

The cost of money (2026)

From the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A musical ensemble undergoing a restructuring has formed a small committee to consider the details. An important factor was the membership fee. Although the musicians were all amateurs, in the best sense of that word, there were regular costs to be met. This meant that while the fees were not exorbitant, none the less they were significant. This raised an issue: an aim of the ensemble was to encourage players of various abilities to participate, including those whose financial circumstances would make the fees prohibitively expensive.

The simple solution was to accept that individual circumstances could be taken into consideration, with fees reduced or waived. One committee member, in particular, was enthusiastic in his support of this arrangement, declaring, ‘As a socialist I’m all in favour.’ He was an active member of the Labour Party, obviously mistaking a commendable act of social altruism as an expression of socialism. Indeed, it could appear to conform with the socialist maxim, from each according to ability, to each according to need.

However, while individual needs in this specific context were to be met, the ability referred to in this instance was the ability to pay, not play. A skilled musician’s opportunity to play would depend on a financial arrangement. If at some future time expenses were such that an accommodation of non-fee payers was no longer sustainable by the ensemble then the concession could be withdrawn. The player’s desire and ability to play would still exist, but would be denied.

The determining factor, money, remains decisive in straightened circumstances. The ensemble’s proposed inclusive action is an example of solidarity, again giving the lie to the oft-voiced opinion that human nature is greedy and selfish. There is no requirement for the ensemble to be so considerate as there are a goodly number of members already. It has grown over the decade of its existence and continues to grow. It is now looking to develop a youth section if that can be funded. Back to money again as the crucial factor before the needs and abilities of young people can be identified and met.

The ensemble meets weekly to develop its skills and programme of public performances. The individual musicians devote a significant portion of their time to daily practice at home. In other words they work hard, but entirely unremunerated. Another refutation of the seemingly ‘common sense’ argument that people will not work unless paid. Rather, they pay to work.

This is but one example of what is happening across society, people working voluntarily in a wide range of circumstances, already freely giving of their abilities to fulfil needs both personal and communal.

A moment’s consideration should enable most people to think of those they know and circumstances where they come across volunteers. If all volunteers withdrew their efforts tomorrow, society would severely suffer as a consequence. There are many volunteers who devote more time and enthusiasm to their volunteer activities than ever they do, or did, to the drudgery of their paid employment. This seems particularly the case for those who are officially retired.

The claim that socialism won’t succeed, because it relies on the great majority working cooperatively and voluntarily without financial incentives, is contradicted by the evidence. It is happening now, even though the dominant ethos is all about money. If the social, economic and political context was socialism, having been actively achieved by the vast majority, then what might now be termed altruism would actually be the norm. Very different to how things are presently arranged.

Council services

The borough in which the ensemble operates has recently issued its council tax requirements for the coming financial year. The rate has risen again, to a chorus of much grumbling. There is also a breakdown of the council’s spending. Two major items of expenditure are social care and children’s services. In the jargon these are ‘big ticket’ items. The problem is they become ever more expensive year on year. Social care has become a huge fiscal responsibility because many more people are failing to die in their seventies as was the case until fairly recently. Medical science and technology has advanced markedly, while working in the unhealthy atmospheres of heavy industry has declined, along with smoking,

What should be a cause of widespread celebration is marred by the cost. That science and technology comes at a price, as does the residential and home care for those requiring it. Families opening their council tax bills see the increase as putting further strain on stretched household budgets.

While the council is working under legal obligations to provide these services, a sense of responsibility also motivates councillors to do their best for those with needs. As Labour councillors they may well consider themselves socialists in this context. Theirs is a ‘socialism’ trying to mitigate the worst consequences of capitalism. Social care, for example, to look after elderly workers past the stage of being exploitable labour. In previous times it would have been the workhouse. The workhouse system was developed, at least in part, as a response to perceived rising costs on the parish rates of poor relief, such as the Speenhamland system. Council tax is the modern equivalent of the parish rates and is equally a matter of contention amongst those who must pay.

The bottom line, as it is often called these days, determines how needs are met. Whether it’s being involved in an ensemble, or some similar group, or looking after the elderly or children, the fundamental factor is money. No matter the political perspective, left, right or centre, debates and discussions revolve around the sums of money involved. For some such as the ensemble the decisions are collective ones, made by the whole group.

With public finance, local or national, the arbiter is the law. The price, paid by those who are dependent on what is described as the public purse, is rationing. If a need cannot be met due to there being insufficient funds to pay for it, then it will remain unmet. Even if provision is made it may not be sufficient or of suitable quality. Even in a social, and sociable, organisation such as the ensemble, a change in financial circumstances amongst those who pay may result in the withdrawal of concessions for those who can’t, albeit with heartfelt regret.

Socialism requires the maxim – from each according to ability, to each according to need – to be fully realised for everyone. This can only occur in a society in which the profit motive no longer operates and there are no prices for anything, money having become redundant. Until then, the Labour – and all too common – misunderstanding of socialism will continue to equate it with forms of charity, whether voluntary or legally enforced.

D. A.

Myths of race and nation (2026)

From the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Nationalism teaches you to hate people you never met and to take pride in accomplishments you had no part in.’ So said the American comedian, author and actor, Doug Stanhope. Given that this dictum appears to state something obvious and irrefutable, we might expect it to be widely accepted and so for nationalism to get overwhelmingly rejected by the large-brained creatures that we are. Yet we know that this is not what happens. Almost wherever you look in the world, nationalism is alive and well, and in fact, with the rise of populism, an increasing number of people seem to be openly espousing it together with its brother-in-arms, racism.

Why? The simplest explanation is to be found in the word ‘insecurity’. The system of society that dominates the world – capitalism – by its very nature makes most of those who live under it feel insecure. It forces the overwhelming majority of us to sell our energies to an employer for a wage or salary throughout most of our lives. And we never quite know whether the living provided by that wage or salary will continue, become precarious or be thrown into disarray by the uncontrollable market forces that govern the capitalist system. The instability this generates makes most of us easy prey to the idea, often spread or at least bolstered by governments (or by those waiting in the wings who would like to govern), that people who don’t appear ‘native’ to a particular country are somehow to blame for that insecurity. The idea prevails among many that it is those non-natives that cause it, that make things go wrong by taking ‘our’ jobs, consuming ‘our’ resources, and even committing most acts of criminality.

Of course such a notion is not just recent. It has been present throughout the history of capitalism and indeed, despite its apparent surge via ugly right-wing populism in recent times, it has actually been far worse in past times. In the recent news has been the outcry over the alleged blatant anti-semitism exhibited by Nigel Farage in his youth, and all Jewish people will know that in those years such anti-semitism was widespread and almost ‘normal’. This writer has a clear memory of such incidents in his own school years, for example an occasion when in front of the whole of the class one pupil turned to someone and loudly addressed him as a ‘big fat yid’. No one batted an eyelid then. Now they certainly would. In fact such an incident would be far less likely to happen at all today or, if it did, would cause significant consternation and lead to consequences for the person responsible.

Of course, even worse humiliation and discrimination was suffered by people of colour in those years. Older generations sometimes talk about the open, unabated, taken-for-granted racism they suffered. In a recent BBC Profile programme, for example, about the black screen and stage actor David Harewood, we heard of him being chased through the streets by skinheads and bricks being thrown through the family’s windows. Such open racism is clearly far less virulent today. And even if the clock may seem to be turning backwards in certain ways and in certain countries, the fact is that not long ago the US had a black president, it currently has a Moslem mayor in its major city, and in recent years in the UK too, many major political figures have ethnic minority backgrounds, including the current leader of the Conservative Party. All this would have seemed unimaginable just 40-50 years ago.

Further evidence of this increased acceptance of ‘others’ and diminution of racism is to be found in the UK’s most popular sport, football. People from a great diversity of backgrounds play together on the pitch and are often idolized by supporters, themselves often of diverse origins and skin shades, who mingle together in the stands. Again this is something new compared to previous years when teams had few foreign or black players and football fans from ethnic minorities even avoided going to matches for fear of abuse or attack. One incident among others that this writer remembers from the 1980s (so a relatively short time ago) was being in the crowd at a match between Manchester United and Norwich City and hearing the one black player on the pitch, Ruel Fox, repeatedly having the word ‘coonie’ shouted at him – something that no one seemed to find unusual. One could almost rule out such a scenario today.

Overall, therefore, despite the fact that those with racist notions and tendencies may feel emboldened by phenomena such as the Brexit vote, the rise of Reform UK, the election of Donald Trump, and the emergence in Europe of right-wing populist parties and governments, it remains very much the exception rather than the norm for racism and nationalism to be expressed crudely and publicly. Such expression tends to exist rather in the echo chambers of social media. That is not of course to say that the divide and rule weapons of nationalism and racism are likely to be put aside by those governing – or aiming to govern – a system that is by its very nature riven with insecurity and instability. It serves the purpose of distracting attention from the real reason for that insecurity and instability, which is the division of society into two classes – on the one hand the minority who own most of the wealth (the capitalist class) and on the other the overwhelming majority who own little and can only survive by selling their energies for a wage or salary (the working class). Divide and rule will only be transcended when the members of the majority class decide to act collectively and democratically to win the political power which is needed to shift society from production for the profit of the few to production for the needs of all. Then we will be free of the divisions of ‘race’ and of ‘nation’ that afflict humans across the planet. Then we will be able to focus on what unites rather than divides us.

Howard Moss

Cooking The Books: Capitalism to blame not ‘neoliberalism’ (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Adnan Hussain, MP for Blackburn, one of the four pro-Gaza MPs who are allied with Corbyn in the Independent Alliance parliamentary group, was as such one of the provisional leaders of Your Party. He subsequently quit Your Party but is still a member of the Independent Alliance and he still agrees with the new party’s basic position that capitalism can be reformed so as to benefit the many.

The Socialist (the paper of one of the remnants of the Militant Tendency) reported that he told a meeting in Blackburn on 30 August:

‘“Neoliberal policies have destroyed the unity of communities”, creating loneliness, isolation, and mental ill-health. He said that the new party will fight for the funding needed for housing, health, education, and transport, and to reopen youth clubs and community centres’.

Normal reformist rhetoric, encouraging the mistaken belief that capitalism could be made to provide adequately these essential services that people need.

That it is ‘neoliberalism’ that is the problem has been a constant theme of his tweets. For instance, this on 23 October:

‘Capitalism, unrestrained, measures everything, even human life, by its economic yield. Neoliberalism then sanctifies this as “freedom.” The result? A society where dignity is traded for productivity and compassion is seen as inefficiency’.

This suggests that it is neoliberalism — unrestrained capitalism, or giving capitalist enterprises freer rein to pursue profits as they see fit — that results in this, and that state intervention to restrain capitalism could prevent it. But it wouldn’t.

All the things he criticises — communities destroyed, people treated as things — have happened, but because of capitalism. Governments have had to give priority to profit-making as that is what drives the capitalist economy. Public services and amenities are paid for out of taxes and taxes fall in the end on profits. So, after the post-war boom came to an end in the mid-1970s, governments had to decide between maintaining these services and encouraging profit-making. It wasn’t a real choice as, capitalism being what it is, a system driven by profit, they had to give priority to profit-making.

Corbyn himself always criticises neoliberalism rather than capitalism itself. But it is not the ‘neoliberal capitalist order’ that is the problem. It is the capitalist production-for-profit system as such. Neoliberalism is not a system but a policy forced on governments, particularly since the 1980s, of reducing state intervention in the economy. A return to more state intervention won’t prevent capitalism measuring everything by its ‘economic yield’ or putting productivity before dignity and efficiency before compassion. No action by a reformist government can change that. In fact, any serious attempt to restrain capitalism from giving priority to profit-making and to spend more on meeting people’s needs would provoke an economic downturn as the search for profits is what drives the economy.

Britain’s energy trilemma (2026)

From the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The approach of the UK government to energy is characterised by a trilemma. It tries to balance out the need to reduce carbon emissions, supporting national energy security and control the costs of the transition. The hidden premise behind all of these, is the class nature of society and the need for the government to negotiate with the owners of energy generating resources, without threatening their control of their property and securing a tribute from them to allow the change.

People speak about the costs of transferring to renewables. Initially this was largely down to the fact that the infrastructure for generating energy through fossil fuels already existed. The cost of energy, like any commodity, depends on how much labour it typically takes to produce it. Capital, that is past labour, reduces the need for fresh effort. So, no good or process has an inherent cost, just the relative cost of how much society is geared towards carrying out the activity.

Renewables and other sources of generation originally appear more costly compared to oil and gas, but that is only because the means of obtaining and using the latter are already in place. To build a renewable energy network within a capitalist society means persuading the owners of capital that there will be profits to be made in carrying out that activity: but the structural advantage fossil fuels have means that the markets, of their own accord, will not promote this change.

UK government has created designed markets. Renewable Obligation Certificates were used, as a means of transferring payments from people who obtain their electricity from fossil fuels to renewable companies. These are still supported by the government, but the scheme is closed, and has been replaced by Contracts for Difference (CFDs): the government auctions off licences to supply energy at a fixed cost, the supplier will repay any excess income, or be paid if market prices for electricity fall below the fixed ‘strike price’. This removes volatility from the market, and allows capitalists to invest with an almost guaranteed rate of return.

Even then, there have been auctions where few firms applied at the stated strike price, and the government has had to raise their offer in order to entice more investment.

Finally, there is a cost of ‘balancing the grid’, paying producers to stop producing or start producing, to offset the unbalanced and intermittent nature of renewables (or if, say, the wind is generating energy too far away from where the grid can carry it to be used adequately). This is expected to reach a cost of £8 billion per year by 2030. Effectively transferring profits to the energy producers via taxation.

The overall market price tends to be set by the most expensive resource, which in the case of energy, is unsubsidised gas on the world market. The loss of Russian gas from the market (and the wider shocks of the Russia-Ukraine war) has pushed the cost of gas up, which means, overall, we have seen significant upward pressure on energy bills, which in the end hit the consumer. Those on fixed incomes will bear the brunt, whilst workers in employment will struggle to pass on the burden to their employers.

This isn’t helped by the anti-democratic approach governments take. In order to hide their powerlessness in the face of the capitalists’ interest, they simply plough on with the policy behind closed doors. The system of subsidy and incentive is opaque (at best) alongside the complicated character of the energy markets that have grown up. Most people will only see the cost of heating their homes going up.

Into that space step voices which claim climate change is a hoax, that subsidies to renewables are making electricity more expensive and that if we just resumed extracting fossil fuels bills would come down. Such voices have the backing of some in the energy industry, or other capitalists who rely on cheap energy for their operations. They would put immediate profits against the cost of the effects of climate change (or even gambling that the costs won’t affect them primarily).

In the meantime, the changes already made have been impressive. In 1991, according to the National Grid, only 2 percent of electricity came from renewable sources compared to over 50 percent by 2023. Coal has been practically eliminated as an electricity generation source. The UK has a target of <50gCO2 per kW hour, in 2023 the average was 140g. Nonetheless, total emissions were 50 percent of those in 1990.

Total renewable energy generation needs to double by 2030 to stay on track. Most of that, apparently, is planned. This will be helped by the tumbling of the costs of renewable generation on a global scale, partly due to China’s massive investment in renewable energy. Although over half of China’s electricity comes from coal, growth of coal generation there is slowing, and renewables are expanding faster. This enables China to export renewable technology. For the first time, this year, less than 50 percent of a growing electricity output worldwide came from non-renewable sources.

This fall in costs, though, presents a problem for the subsidised capitalists, as it means that overall renewable electricity generation will never be as profitable as they would hope.

As we build socialism, we will be confronted by the context of climate change, and will inherit the energy system as it is now. Obviously, we would be able collectively and democratically to discontinue some wasteful branches of energy use, but we would still need to heat homes and provide power for the projects we do want to carry out. The Royal Society has carried out research that suggests all of the UK’s energy needs could be met from wind and solar alone (with sufficient capacity for storage in the form of hydrogen).

The issues of energy generation and climate change are solvable, even within capitalism, but the need is urgent and worldwide democratic co-operation offers us the best and speediest chance and that will require ending the tribute to capital.

Pik Smeet

SPGB Snippets: If only . . . (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

March 18, 2026

… there existed an international organisation that could protect the world against the scourge of war, that acted in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, that settled international disputes by peaceful means.

Wait … there’s been one around since 1945, called the UN. But its solemn Charter, from which we nicked the verbiage above, is just fantasy. The real world under capitalism is better described by a nasty piece of work, Stephen Miller, who seems to have a big say in US policy at present:

“talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world … governed by strength … by force …by power.”

Yep, under capitalism. might is right.

World Socialist Radio - Peter Mandelson: Arch Labour Party Careerist (2026)

Adapted from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Peter Mandelson: Arch Labour Party Careerist byThe Socialist Party of Great Britain

Peter Mandelson exemplifies a lifelong “careerist” within the Labour Party. His political trajectory was driven more by personal advancement than by principled commitment to socialism. He rose through the party not from grassroots activism but via roles in communications and media management, becoming a key architect of “New Labour.”

This episode uses Mandelson as a case study to criticise Labour, arguing that figures like him demonstrate how the party is dominated by professional politicians focused on power and status, rather than pursuing genuine socialist change.

Taken from the March 2026 edition of The Socialist Standard.

RSS Feed for Peter Mandelson: Arch Labour Party Careerist

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Featuring music: ‘Pushing P (Instrumental)’ by Tiga Maine x Deejay Boe. Source: Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

Socialist Sonnet No. 227: Telling Lies (2026)

   From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Telling Lies

 Listen! ‘Tell me lies about Vietnam’*

And Suez, Korea, Afghanistan,

Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran…

War’s the very worst deliberate scam,

Always a gross act of misdirection,

By which the misdirected lend consent

To their leaders’ malevolent intent:

All, of course, for the good of the nation.

What does victory look like? Much the same

As defeat! Inspired by cupidity,

Or even hubristic stupidity.

To the Lords of Misrule it’s still the Great Game.

The news will be encouraging no doubt;

Appear bare-faced, ‘tell me lies about…’*

D.A.

*From: 'To Whom It May Concern'

             Adrian Mitchell (1968)    

Futuristic (2026)

Book Review from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

What We Can Know. By Ian McEwan. Jonathan Cape. 2025. 301pp.

What a fine novelist Ian McEwan is. Apart from being a superb craftsman of language and plot and a massively perceptive observer of human behaviour, his widely read fiction often contains strong social or socio-political elements offering serious food for reflection. Even more trenchant on this front than others of his novels is his latest, What We Can Know, which also stands out for its strong futuristic content. Yet, set as it is in the year 2119, it also reflects back on the present day at a moment before climate change and nuclear conflict have caused global populations to halve, seas to rise massively and biodiversity to decline. And it offers a constant interplay between the imagined future, which humanity’s response (or lack of response) has shaped, and the world of today.

As it moves between these two time periods, it reveals the details of what is imagined to have happened through human mismanagement of the planet and its resources and technology. So, for example, scores of cities, including Glasgow and New York, have vanished and there is no longer any kind of globalised economy. Yet despite the wars, genocides, floods, famines, viruses, droughts, tsunamis, starvation and disease that have decimated the population, human society has carried on (‘we scraped through’ is the expression survivors use). As for Britain, what is left of it is an archipelago (ie a group of small islands) that is all the remaining population has left following the inundations caused by rising seas, and whose ‘finest achievement was not to be at war’. Though run by corrupt elite ‘Citizens Committees’, there is relative order in society and formal education still takes place. We are told that: ‘Significant parts of the knowledge base were preserved. Many institutions crawled through the gaps between catastrophes. People lived at poverty level but they lived.’

The main character is an academic at the University of the South Downs teaching history (for which he receives half the pay of his science and technology colleagues) and at the same time working on the biography of a poet who lived 100 years earlier. Hence his interest in that (our) era. Could those pre-inundation populations not have done ‘something other than grow their economies and wage war?’, asks one of his students, which makes the teacher himself wonder whether ‘many of humanity’s problems could have been solved’ before planetary havoc set in. But could it have been different? The question is left in the air.

Obviously the precise circumstances laid out as having led up to this future are no more than speculation. Yet it is speculation plausibly depicted, building on the political and environmental instability of the world we live in today, in which, as the author puts it, ‘capitalism… invents furiously and persuades us of new needs’. Not that his well-founded and pungent comments on various aspects of current or recent reality (for example, ‘These were the early Thatcher years, and there was crazy greed in the air’) are accompanied by any proposed solution or clear course of action regarding the problems he perceives. Little more in fact than the kind of wishy-washy statement he made in a recent interview to the magazine Positive News that: ‘We just have to stop doing bad things and do good things’. No recognition, therefore, that those ‘bad things’ come out of a bad system, which, in order to stop those things getting worse, needs to be replaced by a better system.

But it would be wrong-headed not to recognise that What We Can Know is a work of fiction and that, in the final analysis, there is no obligation for fiction to be prescriptive or to propose remedies. The main virtue of McEwan’s writing lies in its power to create believable human character and interaction through effective use of language, so allowing the reader to see truthfulness in what is depicted. It is especially in the clever and nuanced ‘looking-back’ element of his story that the author does this most consistently. He captures some highly recognisable realities of the social and political mores of the current age, while also managing to weave much ‘human interest’ into his narrative, for example a highly sensitive portrayal of early onset Alzheimer’s, a love story or two, and a crime of passion. No short review can in fact do justice to the book’s overall literary merit, but the following passage can be seen as a typical example of its acuteness of perception and mastery of language: ‘Memory is a sponge. It soaks up material from other times, other places and leaks it all over the moment in question. Its unreliability was one of the discoveries of twentieth-century psychology’.

Howard Moss

Letter: A View from the Hospital Basement (2026)

Letter to the Editors from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A View from the Hospital Basement

To the Editors,

I write to you as a 53 year old working class logistics porter for NHS Scotland, and someone who has recently come to terms with a lifelong reality: I am autistic. Having spent my younger years in the frantic ‘activism’ of the far left, I find myself now, in the quiet of my fifties, looking at the world through a lens sharpened by both my diagnosis and the consistent logic of socialism.

For the autistic worker, capitalism is not merely an exploitative system; it is a sensory and social assault. The ‘wages system’ demands a specific type of human raw material, one that is flexible, socially performative, and capable of enduring the chaotic, profit driven environments of modern industry. If you cannot ‘mask’ your traits, if you cannot navigate the arbitrary social hierarchies of management, or if your nervous system recoils at the bright, loud, and disorganised nature of the capitalist workplace, you are branded ‘inefficient’.

In my eighteen years within the NHS, I have seen the machinery of the state attempt to patch up a broken population. We are a class of ‘repair men’ trying to fix the damage caused by a system that prioritizes the accumulation of capital over human well being. My job as a porter relies on lists, logic, and routine, elements that suit my autistic mind. Yet, the overarching system is one of irrationality. We see the ‘crisis’ in our hospitals not as a failure of funding, but as a failure of a system that treats health as a commodity and workers as mere expenses on a balance sheet.

The Socialist Party’s ‘Impossibilist’ stance, the refusal to advocate for the mere ‘crumbs’ of reform resonates deeply with the autistic need for systemic consistency. In my youth, I chased the ‘immediate demands’ of reformism, only to find that every hard won ‘right’ can be stripped away by the next budget or the next shift in the market. For my daughters, one who shares my neurodivergent wiring, I have no interest in fighting for a ‘better’ version of their exploitation.

A socialist society, one based on the common ownership of the means of life and production for use, is the only environment in which the neurodivergent person can truly thrive. Consider the logic:

First, the abolition of the ‘interview’ and the ‘personality test’. In a world of voluntary labour, the social ritual of ‘selling oneself’ to a master disappears. An autistic person’s focus and ‘special interests’ cease to be a commodity and become a direct contribution to the community.

Second, the end of sensory exploitation. Capitalism builds cheap, high stress environments because they are profitable. A society producing for human need would, for the first time, design spaces for human comfort, accounting for the diverse sensory needs of all its members.

Third, the removal of social hierarchy. My alexithymia and my struggle with social cues are only ‘disabilities’ because capitalism demands a specific type of social compliance to maintain the master servant relationship. In a society of equals, where no one has the power to command another’s labour, the ‘unwritten rules’ of the workplace vanish.

I have stopped apologising for the way I am wired. I have realised that my autistic brain, with its preference for facts over rhetoric and systems over leaders. We do not need charismatic leaders to tell us we are exploited; we need only to look at the ledgers of our lives.

Socialism offers a ‘case’ that does not shift with the political winds. It is a list of principles that holds up to the most rigorous logical scrutiny. For the worker in Scotland, for the porter in the basement, and for the autistic child yet to enter the fray, the message must remain clear: the system cannot be mended. It must be ended.

Yours for the Revolution,

Pablo Wilcox

Scotland

Letter: Engels (2026)

Letter to the Editors from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Engels

Hello

There’s a certain irony in being accused (Pathfinders, February) of not having read Engels when my point (very much a side point) was that Engels’ arguments were based on no evidence of how people organised themselves in prehistory. My main point was that no, prehistory was not a feminist utopia, but there was a huge diversity of relations between men and women of which, until recently, we were completely ignorant. My reason for not including Engels in Further Reading was not that it was old hat, though perhaps even the author of this piece would agree that Engels’ ideas have been around a while, but that the rule for that particular section of The Guardian’s books pages is that it should be inspired by recent thinking and recent books – which are then cited in Further Reading. If this author were himself better read, he would know that I’ve written on this subject in greater depth, with a less restrictive word count, for New Scientist – written and he would, I hope, feel a little ashamed of his groundless (rather like Engels’) statements.

Best wishes,

Laura Spinney

Reply from the writer

As a New Scientist subscriber for twenty years I’ve appreciated many of your interesting articles, but I must have missed the one you wrote on Engels. You say there’s no evidence for his hypothesis on the subjection of women (actually derived from pioneering anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan), even calling it ‘groundless’. This seems a little harsh given that whole theoretical edifices are sometimes constructed based on one finger bone. The evidence of patriarchy is all around you and everywhere in history. Is the alternative origin story simply that ‘it’s complicated?’ To discuss Engels’ argument while omitting the crucial role of emerging property relations is a bit like discussing gravity without mentioning mass, or Newton, or relativity. That’s why your representation of Engels came across as woolly, hence the speculation that you might not have gone to the source. Angela Saini, as the article points out, instead takes the argument and runs with it in a way that sheds further light rather than confusion on the subject.

PJS

Proper Gander: Reporting on reporting (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the March 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Journalist Steve Rosenberg hasn’t chosen the easiest of careers. His appearances on BBC News as their correspondent in Russia raise questions about how free he is to investigate and report on what’s happening there, especially since the war in Ukraine reignited in 2022. The Panorama episode Our Man In Moscow (BBC One) offers an answer by showing what Rosenberg, his producer and camera operator do between the times we see him on air. Their trip to the city of Tver to interview people on the street is interrupted by both the police and state media asking what they’re doing, with the producer saying this could have turned out to be ‘much worse’ than an identity check. The forums and summits which they and other journalists attend are as slickly presented as those anywhere else. Although Rosenberg says that some of the attendees are now reluctant to speak to the BBC, he has put in questions to Putin on a couple of occasions. At an annual press conference, Rosenberg lists some of Russia’s problems then asks Putin ‘do you think you have taken care of your country?’, to which he predictably replies in the affirmative. The following year, Rosenberg asks what future Putin plans for Russia, including militarily, and is told ‘there will be no operations if you treat us with respect’. Rosenberg’s analysis is that the Kremlin’s confidence is fuelled by Europe being weakened because it is distanced from Trump’s America.

Steve Rosenberg became interested in Russian culture and language during his teenage years in Chingford. His first visit to Russia was in 1987, when the Soviet Union was starting to open up more to global markets, and he was there a few years later when it broke up. Having lived and worked as a reporter in Moscow since the mid-1990s, Rosenberg is now the BBC’s Russia Editor. He’s nostalgic for the country he saw when he was younger, which he tells us had more optimism. He describes the time when Putin came to power by saying ‘it felt as if this huge black cloud had come over’. Being a journalist there now is compared to walking on a tightrope: ‘You can’t relax, really, for a second. You want to report accurately and honestly about what’s happening, but you don’t want to fall off the tightrope onto the minefield below, and hit a mine’.

According to Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index, Russia ranks 171st out of 180 countries, making it among the most restricted places for what news is reported, how and by whom. Virtually all media produced there comes from state-owned or affiliated organisations, with controls on its content increased further due to the war. Military personnel are banned from speaking to journalists, and the dissemination of ‘unreliable information’ about the armed forces is punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Dozens of critics of the authorities and the war are currently jailed, some for spying charges, and most foreign reporters have left the country. Rosenberg explains that he’s one of the few western journalists remaining in Moscow, as he walks through an empty office which used to be bustling with colleagues.

Rosenberg and his crew have got used to being monitored by the state, learning that it’s safest to calmly present the required documents when approached by the police while out reporting. They are also followed by plain-clothes agents, one of whom denies this when Rosenberg challenges him. These agents wouldn’t be too concerned that they have been rumbled, for the reason that Rosenberg is likely to be more unsettled and restrained being aware that they’re watching him. The authorities will probably watch the Panorama documentary too, which Rosenberg, his colleagues and BBC executives would realise, and so they wouldn’t have included anything too incriminating.

Rosenberg isn’t popular with the nation’s state-owned media either, which depicts him as an anti-Russian propagandist by selectively editing quotes from his reports. We see some Russian journalists questioning him on his reporting, albeit in their role as state lackeys. Television is more prominent as a source of information in Russia than in western countries: nearly two-thirds of its citizens mainly get their news in this way, according to Reporters Without Borders. We see a clip of an angry TV show host calling Rosenberg a ‘conscious enemy of our country’ and (oddly) a ‘defecating squirrel, constantly surprised by things’. Admirably, Rosenberg perseveres with his job despite the tense position it places him in, walking his tightrope. He comes across as professional and sincere, having developed a personal understanding of Russian culture and politics.

While the context Rosenberg works in is different to that of most reporters, it illustrates how journalism isn’t as simple as a dogged pursuit of the truth. In Russia more than elsewhere, the restrictions and threats hanging over journalists will shape their approaches and the words they use. Many have been silenced completely, further limiting awareness and viewpoints. Alongside this, the Russian state’s media has become even more empowered, dominating the market. Legislating speech is an obvious admission by the state that it wants to control the narrative, skewed to promote both the ruling elite and the system which enables it.

Journalism is moulded not only by regulation, but also by what’s acceptable to the organisations which produce it. Being an employee of the BBC, Rosenberg has to work within the corporation’s frame of reference. This isn’t just its editorial guidelines, but its overall ethos as part of the establishment, creating both conscious and subconscious bias in its news output. So, the war between Russia and Ukraine is analysed only on the surface level of capitalist politics, between rival governments. Mainstream journalism, whether in Britain, Russia or anywhere else wouldn’t examine more fundamentally how the war is between factions of the capitalist class for their economic interests, not those of the working class.

Mike Foster