The Middle East powder keg explodes (2026)

From the September 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

President Trump probably didn’t realise it but when the United States joined Israel in an attack on Iran at the end of February he lit a fuse that caused the Middle East powder keg to explode and with it his ridiculous dream of getting the Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, every single country in the region — Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, Israel and even, on one occasion, Egypt — has been bombed. At stake has been control of the oil and natural gas resources of the region and the trade routes taking these and their by-products out to other parts of the world.

The Carter Doctrine

In his State of the Union message to Congress in January 1980 President Jimmy Carter read out what has since come to be known as the Carter Doctrine. It was a reaction to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

He set out the reasoning behind the doctrine:

‘The region which is now threatened by Soviet troops in Afghanistan is of great strategic importance: It contains more than two-thirds of the world’s exportable oil. The Soviet effort to dominate Afghanistan has brought Soviet military forces to within 300 miles of the Indian Ocean and close to the Straits [sic] of Hormuz, a waterway through which most of the world’s oil must flow. The Soviet Union is now attempting to consolidate a strategic position, therefore, that poses a grave threat to the free movement of Middle East oil.’

And concluded:

‘Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force’.

The United States had already built up, and paid for, the military power of Israel to be its proxy in the region. Following the overthrow of the self-styled Shah of Iran in 1979 in an ‘Islamic revolution’ which installed a hostile regime under Ayatollah Khomeini, Israel was the only powerfully armed state in the region that they could rely on. The US also had established a permanent military base in all the Gulf states except for Oman.

Taking out Iraq

In the end it wasn’t military action by Russia that led to the Carter Doctrine being activated. By the beginning of the 1990s the state-capitalist regime there was collapsing, on the way to the final dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. It was the action of Iraq, whose leaders decided in August 1990 to invade and annex Kuwait in order to get free access to the Persian Gulf for its oil exports. This led to the First Gulf War in which Iraq was driven out of Kuwait by a United Nations authorised coalition led by the US. The coalition stopped after driving Iraq out of Kuwait, leaving the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein still in power.

The US continued to regard the Iraq regime as a threat to its interests in the region and in 2003 decided to finish the job on the pretext that Iraq was developing ‘weapons of mass destruction’, including nuclear ones. This time they didn’t get UN support, only that of Tony Blair’s Labour government. The Second Gulf War was a walkover and Saddam Hussein was quickly overthrown. No WMDs were discovered but a regime opposed to US control of the region had been eliminated.

This turned out to have an unintended consequence. The Saddam regime, which was Sunni Muslim, had repressed the Shia majority in the South as well as the Kurds in the North. With that regime gone, the exclusion of the Shia majority in Iraq ended, opening the way for the Shia Islamic regime in Iran to gain influence there. In short, it strengthened another regime that threatened US control of the Gulf.

The current line-up

Just as the US had established a string of bases in the Middle East so in effect did Iran, made up of Shia militias in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. There are Shias in other Arab states. Bahrain has a Shia majority while Saudi Arabia’s oil fields are situated in a Shia majority area. Both dynastic regimes ruled by Sunni despots severely suppress any sign of Shia political activity.

The regime in Iran had always seen Israel as a key element in maintaining US domination of the Gulf, denouncing it as a ‘Zionist entity’ to be wiped off the map. This was couched in religious terms, but behind it were strategic considerations to do with control of the Gulf. Israel returned the compliment and regarded the Iran regime as an existential threat to be destroyed.

The scene, then, was set for any military confrontation. On the one side the US with military bases in friendly Sunni Arab states and Israel as its (unruly) attack dog and, on the other, Iran with proxy Shia militias in Iraq, Lebanon and Yemen. Israel took the initiative in June last year when it bombed Iran, resulting in a twelve-day war between the two states, in which the US joined to bomb nuclear sites in Iran.

The pretext was that Iran was developing a nuclear bomb. That might or might not be true but, in terms of the principle of ‘might is right’ that governs relations between capitalist states, it wouldn’t be surprising if it was true. Iran would have an interest in having the Bomb just as the US would have an interest in it not having one.  A nuclear Iran would shift the balance of power in the Middle East in its favour. Trump’s claim that if Iran had the Bomb it would use it on Israel is most likely nonsense, especially as Israel is a nuclear power too. States acquire nuclear weapons not necessarily to use them but more as a deterrent and to increase their might, and so their bargaining power, in relations with other states.

Better than the Bomb

At the end of February, Israel and the US again attacked Iran for the same reason. Again, this has had an unintended consequence. Iran discovered that it has a better bargaining chip than the Bomb and one which it could actually use — the capacity to disrupt traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, the trade route which, as Carter noted, vital exports for the world economy of oil and natural gas from the Gulf have to take. Which it has used to its advantage. Trump has egg on his face while Israel is frustrated and may be tempted to have another go.

Socialists have always contended that wars break out when one side considers vital capitalist interests are at stake, over control of natural resources, trade routes, markets and investment outlets and strategic points and areas to acquire or protect these. The killings and destruction in the Middle East are a textbook confirmation of this.

Adam Buick

Action Replay: Breaks, shirts and cards (2026)

The Action Replay column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard 

 

‘Football unites the world’ is a FIFA slogan, but the recent World Cup tournament did a great deal to point up the divisions which currently exist.

With three host countries and long travelling distances, it was always going to be a complicated enterprise. A total of 48 teams, 104 matches and 52 referees, all far more than previously: just 64 games in recent years and, when England hosted in 1966, 16 teams and 32 matches. There were plenty of complaints about the prices for tickets, food and drink, accommodation and travel. But then the whole thing is largely about money, with an estimate of $80bn being the economic ‘output’ of the whole competition, both qualifying matches and the finals.  A number of games did have quite a lot of empty seats, though.

There was plenty of politics involved too. The Uruguay team had to undergo searches of their luggage when they arrived in the US, and a Somalian referee and some Iranian supporters were denied entry there. Haiti were forced to change their shirts for the finals, on the grounds that their first choice was political, in that it showed a flag which referred to the Haitian ‘revolution’ and the country’s ‘independence’ in 1804. Not that the anthems and ubiquitous flags are in any way political.

Then there was Trump’s intervention. A US player was sent off against Bosnia-Herzegovina, which, according to the regulations, meant he should miss the next match, a last-sixteen tie against Belgium. But Trump has a record of pardoning people, even for serious offences, and he appealed to the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, to have the suspension overturned. Infantino is a bit of a lapdog for Trump, having awarded him the fantasy FIFA Peace Prize, and indeed the player in question was allowed to take part against Belgium. Not that it did much good, as Belgium won 4–1, and the shenanigans may even have inspired the Belgian players a bit.

The hydration breaks in each half might be a good idea, given the temperatures at some games. But they have happened on cooler days too, and they are officially Powerade hydration breaks, sponsored by a sports drink. On US TV the breaks are occupied by commercials. There have been claims, too, that the breaks can alter the momentum of a match, giving one or other side an advantage. So a game of two halves may be becoming a game of four quarters.

One thing the competition has shown, though, is the extent of migration and the impact it has on ‘national’ teams. Many squads consist in large part of sons of migrants or of ex-pats, people who moved to another country but whose family still have links of some kind to their original ‘home’. Football may not unite the world, but it demonstrates how the world and its population are changing.

Paul Bennett

Material World: It’s the Economy, Stupid! (2026)

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

So said James Carville, a political strategist on Bill Clinton’s successful campaign to win the American presidency in 1992. It was written up on a whiteboard in Clinton’s Little Rock headquarters, as a reminder to campaign workers to remain focused on the recession then affecting voters.

A decade and a half earlier the Italian historian, Carlo M. Cipolla, wrote his essay, ‘The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity’. His basic contention was that everyone always underestimates the number of stupid people there are.

Stupidity is generally defined as acting foolishly or carelessly, in an apparently stunned or blank manner, or being ridiculous to an extreme degree. It is important at this point to establish that Cipolla wasn’t using stupidity as a synonym for idiocy or lack of intelligence. But rather it is a human feature of many, perhaps all, whatever an individual’s mental acuity.

Everyone, if they are honest with themselves, will be able to identify personal examples of their own stupidity, indeed they are likely to be many and various. Usually, they do not result in anything too serious, more often nothing worse than inconvenience or embarrassment. Occasionally, though there is injury, or worse

At the Kremlin

Consider two presidents, one Russian, the other American and their current wars. If there is one huge lesson the Second World War should have taught Russia’s present leader it’s that a powerful military force can be thwarted by a determined population.

Stalingrad was thoroughly bombed, shelled and otherwise blasted for over five months. 90 percent of the city was taken by the aggressors with almost half a million military and 40,000 civilian casualties. Yet not only did it not surrender but became the instance from which the invaders suffered ultimate defeat. Four decades later the Russians became the insurgent force in Afghanistan only to suffer defeat and expulsion at the hands of a seemingly inferior military.

So what induces the present Kremlin incumbent to consider victory in Ukraine likely? Dreadful as they are, the missiles and drones launched against the cities are not anything like the razing of Stalingrad. If the intention was to thwart NATO, the consequence has been to strengthen its resolve and expand it. To have expected otherwise, in the face of previous experiences, appears to be an exemplar of stupidity, at an awful and avoidable cost.

In the White House

Meanwhile, in the White House, stupidity seems to be the order of the day. The Vietnam War is not so long ago its conduct and outcome can have been forgotten. B52 bombers that were to return Hanoi to the Stone Age proved far less effective than bicycles down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. America’s own, more recent, experience in Afghanistan, with the eventual return to government of the Taliban should have highlighted how all too easy it is to become embroiled in bellicose misadventures.

The setting aside once more of historical experience has ensnared the Commander in Chief in a conflict he is having great difficulty in extricating himself from. Indeed, it could well lead to the regime in Tehran becoming stronger. Stupidity wrapped in stars and stripes.

It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to identify any war the outcome of which was an unmitigated success for a winner. For any supposed winner there may be some short-term spoils, but any such resolution is subsequently unravelled by further conflict arising directly or indirectly from that martial discord.

Following leaders

The present system is driven by the accumulation of capital, which requires nation states to compete for resources, trade routes and markets, competition that all too often manifests as armed conflict. Governments of all types have to serve the interests of capital, the unfettered, as far as possible, pursuit of profit. It doesn’t matter what governments or politicians promise their citizens – better welfare at home or conquests abroad – the imperative of profit will be the deciding factor.

There are of course those for whom war is not stupidity writ large, the arms manufacturers. A huge industry worldwide it consumes massive amounts of scientific research time, resources and labour power, as well as the lives of multitudinous casualties military and civilian.

Consider how humanity worldwide would benefit if that effort was focused on meeting people’s needs rather than profiting from their deaths. It must be stupidity to persevere with maintaining a system that cannot be anything other than careless of human need.

Any campaigning against the arms industry is opposed not only by shareholders who want their dividend from the profits, governments covetous of tax revenue and, also, the trade unions of those employed in the industry. Yet the best interests of all, even the shareholders, would be in establishing a cooperative worldwide society that wasn’t riven by nationalism, wars, terrorism and all such manifestations of inhumanity.

However, for as long as people continue to lend their support, via the ballot box or other means, to political individuals or parties while expecting, or hoping for, better outcomes they are denying their own experiences. Rather than accepting the need to play an active part in determining a very different society, they continue to be passive recipients of whatever capitalism deigns to spare them. This is not congenital, but elective, which means it is eminently possible to choose otherwise.

One of the basic laws Cipolla formulated in his pamphlet was ‘A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or a group of persons while himself deriving no gain or even possibly incurring losses’.

Consider the two leaders referred to above, along with leaders in general, in the light of Ciprolla’s law. How long is humanity to be subjected to leadership stupidity? How long is humanity going to continue the stupidity of following leaders?

James Carville was certainly no socialist, but he unintentionally acceded to socialist understanding. Because it is the economy, the worldwide economy that is ultimately the determining factor of the quality of life to be shared by all.

D. A.

Editorial: Stop blaming politicians (2026)

Editorial from the June 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Public debate today is obsessed with personalities. Political life is reduced to a revolving cast of individuals who are either demonised as the source of society’s problems or celebrated as its saviours. Few illustrate this better than Donald Trump.

But focusing on individuals like Trump misses the central issue. He is not an anomaly, nor the cause of the problems people associate with him. He is a product of the system in which he operates.

Modern society is organised around production for profit, competition, and the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a minority. At the heart of this system lies the wage relationship: the majority of people must sell their ability to work in order to live, while a minority owns and controls the means of producing wealth.

This is where exploitation occurs—not as an exception, but as a normal feature of the system. Workers produce more value than they receive back in wages, and that surplus is taken as profit. It is this process that generates wealth at one pole and insecurity at the other.

Within this framework, politics is not a neutral arena. Governments, regardless of who leads them, are compelled to maintain the conditions for profitable production. This limits what any politician can do. They may differ in style, rhetoric, or policy details, but they operate within the same economic constraints.

In such conditions, it is hardly surprising that figures emerge who are aggressive, self-promoting, and skilled at channelling frustration. They speak to real discontent—but redirect it away from the structure of society and towards scapegoats, rivals, or personalities.

The public, meanwhile, is encouraged to focus on those personalities. Outrage is directed at individuals, elections are framed as moral contests, and political engagement becomes a matter of choosing sides. This keeps attention away from the wage system itself—the very mechanism that produces inequality, instability, and recurring dissatisfaction.

Whether it is Trump or any other political figure, the pattern remains. Different individuals come and go, but the underlying relationship between those who work for wages and those who live from profit continues unchanged.

From this perspective, attacking individual politicians is not only insufficient, it is a distraction. It creates the illusion that replacing one leader will solve problems that are rooted in how society is organised at a much deeper level.

As long as the wage system remains—where the majority must work for wages and a minority appropriates the surplus—inequality and conflict are inevitable, and the kinds of political figures people argue over will continue to emerge.

If there is to be meaningful change, the focus has to shift away from personalities and towards the structure itself. The real question is not who governs, but whether a system based on wages, profit, and class division can ever serve the interests of the majority.

Until that question is faced, the cycle will continue—and so will the conditions that produce figures like Donald Trump.

Material World: Gangsterism rules OK (2026)

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

Whether you believe the stories about US officials issuing veiled threats by reminding Vatican diplomats of the Avignon Popes (when the French Crown asserted secular power over the church and moved the seat of the Bishop of Rome to France), that they are circulating at all is a sign of the widely held sense of American lawlessness. An American official, according to the gossip, opined that the US has the power to do what it likes in the world, and the Catholic Church should take sides. Some have seen this as a threat to the Pope.

It has been doing what it likes for decades. In 2001 the US Congress passed a resolution, Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001, which stated:

‘That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.’

In justification, it noted:

‘the President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States.’

This became the basis for the campaign of targeted killing by executive order, as part of the so-called War on Terror. It was a carte blanche, and, as with any executive authority, the office holders since that date have sought to strengthen and extend the scope of authority for actions taken under this resolution. It extended from the battlefields of Afghanistan to become a universal reach, justifying strikes in Libya, Somalia, Oman and even, under the present administration, to the strikes against alleged narcotrafficking boats in Venezuelan waters.

In 2011 even Obama took the step of killing an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, in an overseas strike.

Although there are no exact figures available, the estimate is that in over 14,000 strikes, over 10,000 people were killed and wounded, of whom around 15 percent were civilians, including hundreds of children.

The laws of war

The ‘rules of war’ permit civilian casualties in proportion to the value of the military objective to be achieved: that is, the decision to adopt the targeted killing policy was a decision in advance to kill entirely innocent civilians.

The argument of presidents and their hangers-on is that such death tolls save more lives and stretch the limits of liberty and legality less than alternatives. But it does, in the end, put the President in the same place as a gangster, killing anyone who might get in his way (and threatening anyone thinking of doing the same). It turns the end sequence of the first Godfather film, where Michael Corleone orchestrates a string of murders of rival bosses, from a fictional scene into real government policy.

Of course Trump, who most likely will have encountered the real-world mafia in his career as New York real estate developer and casino owner, has extended this policy even further. His strikes on Iran this year included the direct slaying of the Iranian head of state, as well as top government officials. This is close to saying all bets are off.

The laws of war, such as they are, were developed by professional militaries and soldiers to make a life of warfare possible. They limit the actions either side can make to prevent a cycle of violence so destructive that the entire game of war grinds to an exhausted halt. It was always a hypocritical gloss on the murderous business, but it did offer some respite and protection.

The chief victims of Trump’s extension of the remote murder strategy are likely to be members of other governments. The US position is that it will retaliate with untold ferocity should someone dare to slay its head of state: but other governments may not have that luxury. And, as Iran has demonstrated, the technology for a sudden and surgical missile strike is within the reach of many countries.

Iran, for its part, has come out swinging: its retaliation against US bases and the countries that host US bases has been to try and impose costs on any US attempt to repeat the Iraq adventure of siege and invasion. They aim to pressure the US to back off by causing pain to US allies.

Whilst the fog of war still prevails, it’s clear that deaths have been many and widespread: at the time of writing over 2,000 Iranians have been killed, with over 20,000 injured. Around 15,000 have been injured in US-allied states (with around half of those in Israel), and about 200 dead (including 15 Americans).

Given the interconnected worldwide system we all rely on, the direct casualties in modern wars are very likely dwarfed by the number of deaths later incurred due to damage to infrastructure. Both sides in this war have threatened desalination plants essential for life in the region, as well as power plants (including nuclear installations).

Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz will lead to disruption around the world, as we see fuel prices rise dramatically (already there are serious fuel protests in Ireland).

With Trump threatening to counter-blockade the strait (which will bring the US navy within range of Iranian missiles), the prospect of damaging the world economy in the medium term is real.

Leaving simple morality to one side, war makes us all poorer. Every death is the loss of a mind that might have come up with brilliant insights in the future. Houses, roads, bridges all get destroyed and inhibit economic activity in a wide area (the same has already happened in the war between Russia’s and Ukraine).

Universal gangsterism over trade routes and resources means everyone has a stake in ending war, and the only means to do that is the common ownership of the world.

Pik Smeet

Halo Halo (2026)

The Halo Halo Column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent speculation is that an individual who is nominally in charge of one of the most powerful capitalistic entities on the planet and ‘has his finger on the nuclear button’, may be the ‘Antichrist’. Karl Marx noted that recourse to the ‘mist-enveloped regions of the religious world’ show that ‘in that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race.’ The Antichrist is, along with other made-up things, a product of the human mind so we’re not taking it seriously.

Pope Leo XIV has incurred the wrath of the megalomaniac currently spreading death, destruction and mayhem everywhere. On his social media the egoist said, ‘he’s WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.  I don’t want a Pope who criticises the President of the United States.’ It’s not known if he’s asked how many divisions the Pope has yet.

The ‘leader’ of the ‘most powerful nation’ on earth, one comprising a hell (sic) of a lot of Christians who look forward to the ‘end times’, also posted an AI-generated image of himself as a Jewish soothsayer. One of his previous gung-ho supporters said it’s ‘more than blasphemy’ and ‘it’s an Antichrist spirit.’ Given how ‘his’ adherents proclaim the sanctity of life and love for your neighbour, their continuing support for someone who threatened to blast a civilisation back to the stone age ain’t very Christian at all.

Is the Islamic Republic of Iran still fighting with the Great Satan and the Little Satan? Back in 1979 when Iran’s monarchy was replaced by an Islamic theocracy a ‘leader’ coined the Satan expressions including the Lesser Satan (the Soviet Union). In July 2014 the Socialist Standard noted that Pope Francis blamed Satan for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians saying ‘More than once we have been on the verge of peace, but the evil one has succeeded in blocking it’.

Quoted in the Mail Online from an original podcast run by an American Christian ex-Navy SEAL, a Catholic priest suggested that the time of the Antichrist may be near. He said that the AC would rule the world through ‘economies’ and that ‘modern financial systems and emerging digital technologies could potentially create the kind of centralised economic control described in biblical prophecy’. Revelation 13;16-17: ‘And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads; And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name’.

Sounding more like an anti-globalist, he opined, ‘one of the ways how he’s going to control people is through digital currencies, and he’s going to just shut people off, and that’s how they’ll be able to basically starve people out…’

DC

Socialist Sonnet No. 228: Conflicted (2026)

  From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Conflicted

Infallible leader! The Commander

In Chief, fashioning and refashioning

The earth moment by moment to bring

It into line with his propaganda.

Bothered neither by doubt or modesty,

He’s a political Janus who says

What he sees myopically looking both ways

At once: the world as he wants it to be.

He will make America great again

Through the power of his personality:

A few thousand deaths, mere banality.

First tariffs followed by missiles; but then

A new policy when the old won’t abide,

When share prices fall and markets decide.

 

D. A.

Socialist Sonnet No. 226: Spectacular Stories (2026)

   From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Spectacular Stories

Headlines were about a sex marketeer,

Spiced with possible royal relations,

The media was alive with sensations.

Until the tale changed and it became clear

The Commander in Chief had his eagle eye

On Greenland; cue a sharp change to the script.

How easily sovereignty can be stripped

Away, without a by your leave or why.

But, then on to the next cause, the next plan,

Kidnap an inconvenient head of state.

Yet hardly had he succumbed to his fate

When the world’s focus was moved to Iran.

Not letting news settle on a topic,

Spectacles might make people myopic.

 

D. A.

Gangster strategy (2026)

From the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Famously, US President Theodore Roosevelt said ‘speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far’. He expanded: ‘If you simply speak softly the other man will bully you. If you leave your stick at home you will find the other man did not. If you carry the stick only and forget to speak softly in nine cases out of ten, the other man will have a bigger stick’. In practice for international relations, this has been interpreted as having credible military capacity, relying on diplomacy and ‘soft power’ first.

In effect, this is the ideology of gangsters. The aim is to get your way by any means, talk backed up by force is the easy way. As the late David Graeber observed, capitalism was founded on an ‘alliance of financiers and warriors’ so this gangsterism cuts to the essence of the worldwide system in which we live. The talking quietly part, though, usually entails telling stories that deny this gangsterism and instead making the narrative about democracy versus autocracy or good versus evil.

The current US President seems willing to dispense with the ‘speak softly’, as evidenced by the recently published National Security Strategy (2025) which with typical modesty envisages a ‘roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history which possesses ‘inherent greatness and decency’. Much of it reads as much of a manifesto as a strategy document, but it is very revealing, especially considering that for years we and others have been arguing that the goals of state foreign policies are to support their access to trade routes and vital resources, and here they are admitting this is the case. Take this piece of nonsensical bombast:

‘President Trump’s foreign policy is pragmatic without being “pragmatist,” realistic without being “realist,” principled without being “idealistic,” muscular without being “hawkish,” and restrained without being “dovish.” It is not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America—or, in two words, “America First”’.

This can be summed up as flexible, self-interested and unprincipled. However, the document is clear about the strategic way to achieve that self-interest:

‘We want to recruit, train, equip, and field the world’s most powerful, lethal, and technologically advanced military to protect our interests, deter wars, and—if necessary—win them quickly and decisively, with the lowest possible casualties to our forces’.

They want to do this to keep ‘the Indo-Pacific free and open, preserving freedom of navigation in all crucial sea lanes, and maintaining secure and reliable supply chains and access to critical materials.’ Given this was precisely the background to the wars in Vietnam and Korea, this merely displays Palmerston’s axiom ‘We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow’.

The document recognises, however, that ‘As the United States rejects the ill-fated concept of global domination for itself, we must prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others’. Securing these interests means preventing anyone else being able to challenge them. Hence ‘We want to prevent an adversarial power from dominating the Middle East, its oil and gas supplies, and the chokepoints through which they pass’. This is at least an honest expression of what has been America’s long-term strategy in the Middle East, except with a determination not to become embroiled in war there.

More broadly: ‘We stand for the sovereign rights of nations, against the sovereignty-sapping incursions of the most intrusive transnational organizations, and for reforming those institutions so that they assist rather than hinder individual sovereignty and further American interests’.

National interests above human or individual rights, a bleak authoritarian doctrine, especially, as the strategy affirms: ‘The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations.’ Indeed, the aim seems to be precisely to enable such domination by inhibiting transnational bodies.

This can be seen in the section about Europe: ‘We want to support our allies in preserving the freedom and security of Europe, while restoring Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity’. The fetishised ‘Western identity’ politics that sees America as a successor to Rome lives in the minds of many of the current faction in charge of the government there. Hence they also state ‘America is, understandably, sentimentally attached to the European continent— and, of course, to Britain and Ireland’.

The document sees ‘the larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty.’ To that end ‘America encourages its political allies in Europe to promote this revival of spirit, and the growing influence of patriotic European parties indeed gives cause for great optimism.’ In other words, the strategy document seeks to fragment Europe into nation states, which the US can dominate and use.

An interesting note is that the US seeks to end ‘the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance’ and to ‘reestablish strategic stability with Russia,’ and ‘prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war’ in Ukraine.

The real focus is on the Indo-Pacific part of the globe which ‘is already the source of almost half the world’s GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP), and one third based on nominal GDP. That share is certain to grow over the 21st century’. The US there seeks to avoid war ‘by preserving military overmatch’ and to deal with China as a near peer.

Perhaps most unfortunately, the strategy states ‘We reject the disastrous “climate change” and “Net Zero” ideologies that have so greatly harmed Europe, threaten the United States, and subsidize our adversaries’. Climate change is a real security threat, that pales all the rest. This document envisages energy dominance and using energy resources to grow the American economy and military power.

This dismal manifesto sees the world continuing to settle disputes, as Shaw put it ‘as dogs settle a dispute over a bone’.

Pik Smeet

Venezuela: what has really happened and what may lie ahead (2026)

From the February 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Venezuela has once again been making headlines around the world. Explosions, military movements, international pressure, mutual accusations and a great deal of confusion. To understand what has happened so far, it is necessary to look beyond the propaganda, both from the Venezuelan government and the US, and from those who defend one gang or the other.

It’s nothing to do with democracy or freedom

The first thing that needs to be made clear is this: the US is not acting out of a desire to defend the Venezuelan people, nor out of love for democracy or human rights. We have seen this many times before in other countries. When a major power intervenes, directly or indirectly, it does so to defend its own economic and strategic interests.

Talk of fighting drug trafficking or restoring democracy serves to justify actions that, at heart, are about political control, natural resources and regional power.

Nor is it about defending ‘sovereignty’

On the other hand, the Venezuelan government and its allies present what has happened as an imperialist attack on national sovereignty. But here is another uncomfortable truth: the Venezuelan state does not represent the interests of the majority of the working class.

For years, millions of people have suffered from inflation, low wages, forced emigration, deteriorating services and repression. All this happened without direct foreign intervention, under a government that claimed to rule on behalf of the people.

Will there be any real change?

There is much talk of ‘regime change’, but in reality what is happening is, at most, a change of administrators within the same system.

As long as there is:

• wage labour,
• production for the market,
• social inequality,
• a state that protects the property and power of a minority,

the lives of the majority will not fundamentally change. Changing a president or a ruling group does not change the system that produces poverty and insecurity.

Will there be more attacks or more pressure?

No one can predict exactly what will happen, but there is a clear logic: as long as Venezuela remains a strategic country because of its oil and geographical position, the pressure will continue, whether military, economic or diplomatic.

This does not depend on whether a government is ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but on how states function in a capitalist world in constant competition.

The role of China and other powers

Some believe that China or Russia are a fairer alternative to the United States. But these powers do not act out of solidarity, but out of their own interests. China invests, lends money and negotiates to secure access to resources, economic benefits and international influence.

It is not a struggle between good and evil, but a dispute between great powers, where the workers get caught in the middle.

Internal betrayal?

There is much talk of betrayal, but such language tends to confuse more than it clarifies.

High-ranking officials, the generals and politicians do not betray the people, because they have never governed on their behalf, but rather in accordance with their own interests and privileges. When they switch sides or negotiate, they do so to protect their position, not to improve the lives of the majority.

Who loses out in all this?

The answer is clear: the working class in Venezuela, as well as in the United States and other countries.

Workers do not decide on wars, they do not benefit from sanctions, they do not control resources, and they always pay the price with more insecurity and less of a future.

An uncomfortable but necessary conclusion

What is happening in Venezuela will not be resolved by choosing between Maduro or the US, nor between Washington or Beijing. They all operate within the same system, a system that puts profit and power above human needs. As long as that system remains intact, crises will repeat themselves, with different names and different countries, but with the same losers.

The real solution will not come from leaders, armies or foreign powers, but from the conscious organisation of ordinary people, here and around the world, to build a society where production and wealth are at the service of all and not just a few.

SOCIALISTA MUNDIAL

(Translated from a contribution to a discussion on our Spanish-language Facebook page)

Planlessness (2026)

Book Review from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Economic Consequences of Mr Trump: What the Trade War Means for the World. By Philip Coggan. Profile £7.99.

A first reaction to this book is that it was likely to be out of date by the time it was published. Given Trump’s tendency to change his mind, anything said would probably no longer apply after a month or two. The author does indeed record Trump’s decisions about tariffs and his repeated revisions of them, describing him as ‘a man without a plan’ who based the calculation of tariff rates on an absurd formula. But he also notes some ideas that underlie Trump’s policies.

The main reason seems to be the intention to return manufacturing industries (and jobs) to the US, but this is unlikely to be successful. In 2013, as an illustration, Motorola opened a smartphone factory in Texas, but it closed after a year because of high costs. Even when it does pay off, building new factories takes time and the US has a shortage of factory workers; they might come from abroad, but of course Trump is clamping down on immigration. The US will simply not re-enter ‘a golden age of manufacturing employment’.

On the whole Coggan adopts an orthodox economic perspective, arguing, for example, that tariffs interfere with market signals about the causes of rising and falling prices. Tariffs have varied over the centuries and protectionism was more widespread between the two world wars. But since the 1960s tariffs have generally been falling, from a global average of 14 percent then to 10.9 per cent in 2000 and 2.5 per cent in 2021. Free trade, he says, is good for an economy, though there has rarely been completely free trade.

One good point he makes is about the interconnectedness of global production, with long and complex supply chains. An iPhone is based on 187 suppliers across twenty-eight countries, while cars imported to the US from Mexico consist largely of components made in the US. Around eighty per cent of the toys sold in US shops are made in China, so the massive tariffs Trump wanted to impose on imports from China were a non-starter, and they have now been scaled back in a major way. American workers are already complaining about higher food prices as a result of the various tariffs, such as bread doubling in price (Guardian 19 October).

The whole world, Coggan suggests at the end of this short volume, ‘will suffer the adverse economic consequences of Mr Trump’. But really these are the consequences of the capitalist system, not the result of the idiosyncrasies of one man.

Paul Bennett

Editorial: New year, same shit . . . (2026)

Editorial from the January 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last year, 2025, could only be considered a success story for capitalism in the sense that the world didn’t end in total destruction. For many though, it was a disaster. Think Gaza, where survivors starve among the ruins after a genocidal slaughter that will only cause further wars. No wonder states don’t want to pay to rebuild Gaza, just to see it levelled again. Think Darfur and South Sudan, with massacres committed by the Rapid Support Force using weapons purchased by the United Arab Emirates from western states including the UK, and allegedly donated as part of an arms-for-gold deal. The gold mines of Darfur have been a ghastly resource curse. The locals have paid with their lives so that capitalist deals get done.

Two corrupt power blocs on the European landmass continued putting human beings into the meat grinder of war, while the very people elected or appointed to serve the Ukrainian people instead trousered over a hundred million dollars intended to protect energy infrastructure and keep the winter lights on. This is what nationalism gets you. Workers die in trenches while the bosses find ways to get rich out of it.

Many other wars got less media coverage, including the ongoing multi-sided slaughter in Myanmar, a real-world example of the Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’. When a big earthquake struck the country in March, killing around 5,000 people, some rebel groups called for a ceasefire as they sent aid workers into affected areas. The military junta, according to reports, had no such humanitarian concerns and instead bombed and strafed the aid workers.

Despite glimmers of hopeful news as Generation Z protesters overthrew a brutal regime in Nepal, world politics in 2025 seemed to be all about tearing up of the rules-based order, led with orgiastic zeal by Donald Trump and his coterie of talentless sycophants. Seeing the world’s politicians cravenly kissing this man’s feet in the hope of favours was stomach-turning, and it didn’t work anyway. The far-right in almost every country has been given a huge boost as this deluded Caligula lays waste to every human principle of fairness and decency, merit and reason, equality and environmental safety. No capitalist politician is ever going to ‘fix’ capitalism, but some seem determined to make it worse. The name of Trump may come to be spat on by posterity as a loathsome icon of narcissism, ‘grab ’em by the pussy’ sexism, and kleptocratic greed. He’s already being sued over his stupid ballroom, so maybe that will be demolished too.

But in a way Trump has done the world a favour, by ripping off the civilised veneer and showing everyone what capitalism really is, instead of what it pretends to be. It was never a rules-based order. It’s always been ‘might equals right’ and screw the little guy.

Meanwhile over in the UK, the fractured left try once again to unite around a vague wish-list of reforms aimed at making capitalism just a tiny bit less awful. What they should be doing is calling for the end of capitalism, because that’s the only thing that will work. Instead they clamber back on the carousel horse of reformism to go round one more time, learning nothing, changing nothing, in a perpetual triumph of hope over experience. This year, if you can find a way, help us get the message across: end capitalism, before it ends us.

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the December 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard 

Brazil, Russia, and South Africa top the list for wealth inequality, each posting Gini coefficients around the low 0.8s. These scores imply a highly concentrated distribution of assets relative to the rest of the population. Several energy-rich economies—such as the UAE and Saudi Arabia—also rank high, reflecting significant concentrations of financial and real assets among upper tiers of wealth holders. Country Gini Coefficient 2024: Brazil 0.82, Russia 0.82, South Africa 0.81, United Arab Emirates 0.81, Saudi Arabia 0.78, Sweden 0.75.

[ZeroHedge]

. . . Latin America remains the only region in the world that has not shown a clear decline in child marriage over the last three decades. Nicaragua has the highest rates within the region and ranks 14th globally with 10% of girls marrying or entering a union before age 15. Among boys, 19% marry or enter a union before the age of 18. Here are the main reasons for child marriage in Nicaragua… Poverty continues to affect a large portion of Nicaragua’s population. The United Nations reports that 48% of people live below the poverty line. Continual climate disruptions devastate the environment and worsen economic conditions. High levels of organized crime and human trafficking also contribute to insecurity. Many families marry off their children to ease financial hardship and improve their economic situation, resulting in increased levels of child marriage in Nicaragua. Furthermore, Nicaraguan society continues to enforce cultural and gender norms that pressure girls to marry young and bear children.

[The Borgen Project]

At the centre of the criminality in Gaza today are armed gangs, whose members are often drawn from the territory’s powerful clans. These clans are extended families that have historically played leading roles in their communities – but have also, at times, operated like local mafia. During the recent conflict, clans have settled old scores with violence. Gangs associated with the clans have expanded into racketeering, drug dealing, kidnapping, robbery and extortion. 

[The Conversation]

The rally was a good time with a positive vibe, and I’m glad to see Americans coming together in opposition to one tyrant. But until and unless we start coming together in opposition to tyranny itself — the state per se — and in support of liberty for all, the only question is how much more kingly and despotic our next ruler will get than the previous one got. 

[CounterPunch]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Cooking the Books: Has Trump gone state-capitalist? (2025)

The Cooking the Books column from the October 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Trump embraces state capitalism’ declared the US news site Foreign Policy in July: ‘the level of U.S. government economic intervention under Trump 2.0 is off the charts’. In August the Wall Street Journal took up the theme in an article by its chief economics commentator, Greg Ig: ‘The U.S. Marches Toward State Capitalism With American Characteristics’, he wrote, ‘President Trump is imitating Chinese Communist Party by extending political control ever deeper into economy’.

Ig instanced ‘Trump’s demand that Intel’s chief executive resign; the 15% of certain chip sales to China that Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices will share with Washington; the “golden share” Washington will get in U.S. Steel as a condition of Nippon Steel’s takeover; and the $1.5 trillion of promised investment from trading partners Trump plans to personally direct’. He commented:

‘This isn’t socialism, in which the state owns the means of production. It is more like state capitalism, a hybrid between socialism and capitalism in which the state guides the decisions of nominally private enterprises. China calls its hybrid “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The U.S. hasn’t gone as far as China or even milder practitioners of state capitalism such as Russia, Brazil and, at times, France. So call this variant “state capitalism with American characteristics.”’

This is one definition of state capitalism, but state ownership is not socialism; nor can there be any hybrid between socialism and capitalism. Capitalism exists whenever there is minority ownership of the means of production, wage-labour and production for sale and profit, irrespective of whether that ownership is via individual ownership, a limited company or a nationalised industry.

The term ‘state capitalism’ first came into use towards the end of the 19th century, to describe instances where the government performs the role of capitalist by employing wage-labour and selling the product or service to realise a profit, such as state-owned and run mines and railways. After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Lenin extended the term to include the development of private capitalism under the direction and control of the state. Others later extended the meaning further to include a nationalised economy without private capitalists but still with wage-labour, production for the market and a privileged ruling class such as eventually developed in Russia.

It was a term used more by critics than by supporters of capitalism. Latterly, however, it has come to be used routinely in the media to describe the economic system in China where political control is firmly in the hands of a single party but where profit-seeking private enterprises are allowed to operate, where their shares are traded and where state-owned enterprises compete on the world market with the same aim and methods as private capitalist enterprises.

Politically motivated government intervention in the economy is not new — governments have always done this to one degree or another via taxes, subsidies, tariffs, and monetary policy — but calling this ‘state capitalism’ is new, at least in openly pro-capitalist circles. This could even be seen as a step forward in that, previously, they called it ‘socialism’, ‘communism’, ‘Marxism’, a travesty of these words. The more backward of them still do, as this from Fortune (12 August) magazine:

‘Many free-market economists and business leaders who have long worshipped the free-market ideals of Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman should be aware that their idols would be rolling in their graves right now, as rather than pursue standard laissez-faire conservative economic policies, MAGA has gone Marxist and even, increasingly, Maoist’).

Even though it is quite ludicrous to say that Trump has ‘gone Marxist’, there is a delicious irony in him being accused of undermining capitalism. Not that he is of course. He is using state power in what he considers to be the general interest of the US capitalist class.

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global warming is not the inevitable result of “‘human nature,”’ argues economist Parrique in this blistering debut study. Instead, “‘the primary cause of ecological derailment is… capitalism,”’ more specifically “‘the frantic pursuit of growth,”’ or increased production. 

[Publishers Weekly]

When challenges combatting the majority in India, from unemployment, lack of basic amenities, threat of their houses being demolished or being actually razed to the ground and more are taken note of, each is a pointer to the hard reality –- that of bleak future for those already facing hard circumstances. In essence, these certainly are not suggestive of their being raised above their present economic status. They certainly cannot be counted among those who seem to have been raised above the index of extreme poverty. 

[Counter Punch]

The regime has systematically abandoned United Nations agencies that have questioned its rule. First came the Food and Agriculture Organization in February, after it ranked Nicaragua among the countries with the highest levels of hunger in the world… The logic is simple: the regime rejects any body that questions it, seeking to consolidate absolute control by eliminating all external oversight.

[Civicus Lens]

In a new report, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said the government has missed most of its key targets to tackle AMR [antimicrobial resistance]. It’s also dropped the ball on its surveillance programme, on improving environmental protection and on engaging with other countries on the subject. Instead of taking responsibility, the PAC said, the government is dialling down what it actually wants to achieve. “‘There is arguably no more haunting silhouette on the horizon for the entire world than AMR,”’ the committee’s chair, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, said. “‘If left unchecked, it could rewind medical progress by a century.”’ 

[TBJ Uncovered]

Trump deported, via removals and returns, approximately 1.8 million people during his first term. By comparison, Biden oversaw approximately 2 million deportations, excluding Title 42 order expulsions. Obama, once labeled as “‘deporter in chief,”’, removed about 5.2 million over his eight years. In his current term, Trump has struggled to meet internal ICE targets…. The more Trump lashes out, the more it becomes clear he cannot control the system he claims to command.

[The Hill]

Trump’s approach is not new, and criticisms of it are not either. As labor organizer Emma Goldman wrote over a century ago, “‘The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature.”’ Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are charlatans selling us a lie about people in our communities being inherently dangerous. Just like Hitler, who used similar language about “‘blood poisoning”’ to justify his atrocities. Every despot in history has had to first convince people that other humans aren’t worthy of moral consideration… And every act of solidarity proves what despots fear most: that true power is our commitment to one another, our refusal to dehumanize and discard anyone in our community.

[Common Dreams]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Tiny Tips (2025)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

The watch is a limited edition of only 150 pieces that’s already being delivered to customers. The retail price is $330,000…prices on the secondary market will get a bit bonkers. 

[HODINKEE]

Pakistan’s claims to all of Kashmir are driven by the region’s hydrological importance, its majority-Muslim population, and the military’s interest in rallying the nation behind it on these grounds. 

[Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter]

‘That’s where I sleep, under that bridge’ he says, pointing to a nearby cluster of tents beneath a highway overpass. ‘And the dogs are up there with their own private pool. They probably eat more in a day than we do in a month’. 

[NPR]

Underage workers, in some cases, have been hired to kill poultry flocks, handle dead carcasses and clean industrial poultry farms. Workers sometimes lack personal protective equipment or receive damaged gear, despite the risk of the virus jumping from animals to people. Dealing with a federal backlog, some farms have used killing methods considered inhumane, because it can be quicker and cheaper. ‘The biggest factor in agricultural safety is the urgency’ said Bethany Alcauter, director of research and public health for the National Center for Farmworker Health, a Texas-based nonprofit that advocates for worker safety and health. ‘Everything has to get done in a short amount of time, and that really can be problematic because there’s not the same amount of time to adequately train workers’.

[truthdig]

‘Trump’s view of a man at a desk moving pieces of the economy around like rooks and pawns on a chessboard is what socialism is all about—though the old tyrants in Moscow at least had the humility to assume that a committee of experts would be necessary to manage the economy according to ‘scientific‘ principles or at least the guile to pretend that they believed it, whereas Trump apparently has swallowed his own silly god-man horsepucky, being, as he is, an ass of exceptional asininity’. 

[MEDIAITE]

On July 28, 2024, Venezuelans turned out to vote in large numbers despite more than a decade of systematic repression and human rights violations under President Nicolás Maduro. Hours after polls closed, the Electoral Council declared that Maduro had been re-elected, with over 51 percent of the vote. The United Nations Electoral Technical Team and the Carter Center, which observed the elections, said the process lacked transparency and integrity, and questioned the declared result. The Carter Center said that the precinct-level tally sheets published by the opposition, which seemed to indicate that opposition candidate Edmundo González had won, were reliable and ‘authentic’. The Electoral Council failed to release the official tally sheets and did not conduct the required audits or citizen verification processes mandated by law. Thousands of protesters took to the streets in demonstrations, most of them peaceful, demanding a transparent and fair counting of the votes. They were met with brutal repression.

[HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH]

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Pathfinders: The ‘doged’ pursuit of knowledge (2025)

The Pathfinders Column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

A funny thing about touted scientific breakthroughs is that, just like politicians’ promises, they make a lot of noise at first, but then are apt to quietly fizzle out later when nobody’s looking. So it may have been for the strangely headline-grabbing announcement back in March that a new ‘Dark Energy experiment’ was challenging Einstein’s theory of the universe. Wait, what, they’ve disproved Einstein, you gasp? But no, it’s not quite that big an earthquake. Stargazers at the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) in Arizona’s Kitt Peak National Observatory had found a ‘blip’ in the cosmological measurements that suggested that the mysterious dark energy force supposedly driving the expansion of the universe might have slightly weakened over time. Though the key phrase is ‘might have’, this immediately got everyone terribly excited at the prospect of ‘new physics’ and the possible need to rewrite the cosmological standard model. Years of funded research and potential Nobel prizes glistered like the starry firmament, but cosmologists were quick to point out that this was in no way a certain result and would require vital independent confirmation from other sources, notably Europe’s Euclid space telescope and NASA’s forthcoming Nancy Grace Roman space telescope (tinyurl.com/4sv65khx).

So it may be something and it may be nothing, which is fair enough. But then why did it make such huge headlines, as if it was a genuine discovery? Well, let’s play devil’s advocate for a moment and pretend that we are jaded and cynical observers of capitalism, and ask ourselves what other factors might be at play here. Let’s in particular imagine the following entirely fictitious bit of dialogue: “Trump’s threatening to cut the NASA budget in half!” “Oh shit, we need to big up a breakthrough, pronto!”

Yup, when suddenly you can’t pay your mortgage or bills moments after having a safe and respectable long-term government-funded science career at the National Institutes of Health (proposed to be cut by 37 percent), the National Science Foundation (50+ percent), the Department of Energy (14 percent), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (24 percent), the US Geological Survey (33+ percent), the Department of Agriculture (18 percent), the Environmental Protection Agency (46 percent), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (39 percent), the Forest Service (62 percent), or the innocuous National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services – funding anthropology and archaeology – and the Marine Mammal Commission – saving the whales – (all 100 percent), you know you’ve been ‘Doged’. And few agencies are being hit harder than NASA, with an eye-watering 53 percent cut (tinyurl.com/3crbp648). Obviously all its Earth science climate projects will be the first to go, as the Drill Baby is not interested in those. But one of the other projects which might also bite the dust is the aforementioned Nancy Grace Roman space telescope, now coincidentally being cited as vital for confirming the Einstein-busting dark energy result (tinyurl.com/hejv2ztr).

It’s not that Trump is anti-science per se. He’s all for science as long as it makes him look good. So he was redneck-hot for the Artemis programme to plant NASA astronauts in MAGA hats back on the moon, especially if they could do it before the Chinese got there. President Bush originally also had a moon programme, called Constellation, that Obama subsequently cancelled, and Trump brought back as Artemis. But here, observers say, NASA was its own worst enemy, by being too institutionalised and cavalier about cost overruns, and using legacy suppliers like Boeing, whose own Starliner vehicle turned out to be an embarrassment (Pathfinders, October 2024). Asked to build a new rocket that could get humans to the moon, NASA simply came up with an adaptation of the previous Constellation-era Ares V rocket, rebranded as the Space Launch System (SLS). Despite this now being the era of cheap and reusable rockets, the SLS is a disappointing and hugely expensive replica of the old single-use Saturn V model. The US is now planning to ‘retire’ the SLS, possibly before it’s even launched, instead looking to private capital in the form of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which is offering to do the same job for around one fortieth of the SLS cost ($100m versus $4bn).

NASA is more than an agency, it’s an icon, with an almost reverential status in US history for putting Neil Armstrong on the moon. Savaging its funding must seem to many like burning your own sacred temple to spite the priests. But it’s also a monument from another age, when private capitalists were not nearly as rich as they are today, and only governments had the resources to fund space programmes. Now, tech bros like Bezos and Musk are doing their own space programmes, and doing them in some ways better than NASA. This is incidentally rather awkward to explain for those people who think ‘socialism’ is the state ownership of industries and that this is somehow an improvement on private capitalism. It’s not. State and private capitalism are as bad as each other, and both exploit workers and give them no real say.

As far as capitalist science is concerned, the goal is generally profit not the pursuit of knowledge. The rich get to decide what it pursues, either directly through their own purse, or indirectly through their complicit governments. Obama’s 2015 Space Act, cravenly endorsed by 43 countries, is widely seen as the new ‘enclosures’ for legalising space mining for profit (tinyurl.com/3va6mkdf). But once workers recognise their true common interest and abolish capitalism, what would happen to these capitalist-era plans to go to the Moon, or Mars? They’ll probably slide right down the global To Do list, below more pressing priorities like sustainable universal nutrition, health and housing, but possibly not off it entirely. The final frontier is always going to fascinate humans. The key difference is, when a socialist world looks up at the night sky, it will look with eyes of wonder, and not with an eye to plunder.

Paddy Shannon

Canada versus Trump (2025)

From the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

From the Socialist Party of Canada’s monthly newsletter.

Canada versus Trump

You are all aware of the declaration of trade war Trump imposed on the rest of the world on April 2. In Canada there was a sigh of relief that it wasn’t as bad as many feared. Nevertheless, he kept the existing 25 percent tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminium and will maintain tariffs on Canadian goods that don’t comply with the North American trade deal that sets rules about limiting foreign content.

Though Canada hasn’t been hit with tariffs as hard as some countries, nevertheless its effects are still felt. A survey conducted by the city of Toronto showed that Toronto businesses are bracing for job cuts and cost increases. Of the 513 businesses that responded, one third said they were implementing hiring freezes, while another third were expecting job cuts. Three quarters were anticipating rising costs, which was the most common concern, while about half are expecting major disruptions to their operations. The city promised to allow companies who can show they’ve suffered because of tariffs, a six-month property tax reprieve.

American companies will not get contracts from the city. Other cities across Ontario are also bracing for the impact; at a conference of city mayors on April 3, they asked the provincial and federal governments for a portion of ‘any stimulus package’, especially for infrastructure funding. Most Canadians are hoping for the federal government, elected on April 28, to be able to deal with the worst aspects of tariffs.

Canada is hitting back at Trump’s tariffs with import taxes as much as 25 percent on vehicles assembled in the U.S. Ford, GM and Stellantis are the automakers with the biggest share of Canadian sales that rely on imports from the U.S. For all three companies a majority of the products they sell in Canada are made in the U.S. Under Canada’s new rules, the amount of tariffs on a vehicle will depend on its components, though Mexican parts are exempt. If a car is assembled in the U.S. with 80 percent U.S. parts and 20 percent Mexican or Canadian components, the 25 percent levy will apply to the U.S. content, resulting in a total tariff rate of 20 percent. One thing about capitalism, life under it gets more complicated every day.

One positive thing about the stupid trade war is the fact that thousands of American physicians want to come to Canada. John Philpott, CEO of CanAm Physician Recruiting Inc., a Canadian company which specializes in bringing international medical personnel to Canada, said since Trump took office there has been a 63 percent increase in registrations from American doctors wanting to work in Canada. Philpott said, ‘My phone’s been ringing off the hook.’ The surge in interest comes as the U.S. faces health care funding cuts, mass layoffs and hiring freezes, including at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which has lost 2,400 jobs. Before Trump was elected many Canadian doctors went to the U.S. for more money; Trump quickly and surely changed that. Of course this can only be beneficial to Canada’s shaky health system, but it’s just an improvement within capitalism which we as socialists work to abolish.

We of the SPC as individuals are against Canada becoming the 51st. state, but politically we will not work against Trump’s mad intention. Whether Canada remains Canada or becomes part of the U.S. it still means exploitation of the working class.

Federal election

The Liberals under Mark Carney won 169 seats at the federal election on April 28. This was 3 seats short of the majority they needed; the Progressive Conservatives (PC) winning 144. The leftist New Democratic Party (NDP) won 7, the Bloc Quebecois 22 and the Greens won one. Most people thought it would be a tight race which it was. Both Pierre Poilievre and Jagmeet Singh lost their seats, which must’ve been humiliating. In Poilievre’s case it may well have been his smart-ass personality and his constant personal attacks on his opponents which done-him-in. With Singh, whose party lost 7 seats, it was probably because so many would-be N.D.P. voters voted Liberal, not wanting to split its vote, thinking Carney would do a better job of standing up to Trump than Poilievre, which was the main election issue.

The Toronto Star endorsed the PCs in the election on April 28. Its main points were that Canadians should support a government that is for free enterprise, eliminates barriers such as cutting red tape, restores fiscal discipline, reforms the tax system and develops ‘our’ natural resources and ‘That is why we are supporting Pierre Poilivere and the Conservative Party of Canada’. Since its founding in 1892, the Star’s main mantra has been to this effect, ‘Hey listen up folks, capitalism isn’t the economic piece of junk Marxists would have you think it is. No Siree, it’ll work just fine if you smooth away its rough edges’. You might think that with their crusading and reforming zeal they would support an openly reformist party like the NDP or its predecessor the CCF, but no, they go for a blatantly ‘screw the working class party’.

Of all the provincial Premiers, Alberta’s Danielle Smith seems the likeliest to make a deal with Trump. This is probably because Alberta does a lot of business with the United States selling oil and energy. Recently Smith showed some of her conservative friends she had painted her toenails red to show her support for Canada which fooled few, if any. A Leger poll conducted in March showed that 15 percent of Albertans would like to be part of the 51st state, as 9 percent of the population as a whole. This amazed me as every Canadian I’ve spoken to and of those I’ve read in print are dead against it. Smith has given Carney a list of energy-related demands which includes scrapping a federal tax on oil and gas emissions, eliminating an electrical vehicle mandate and ending prohibitions on single-use plastics. That sounds tough, but some of those issues apply to other provinces.

Carney now has to form a coalition of sorts to get legislation through. Besides taking on Trump’s junk, Carney will have to deal with a possible postal strike, a health system in near chaos, crime which is out of control, housing problems galore including homelessness and a soaring cost-of-living, especially grocery prices; like, ‘Good Luck Mate’. For the working class in Canada, life would be slightly better if Canada did not become state 51, but nevertheless exploitation is exploitation and whether one is exploited as an American or a Canadian it sucks and not a one of the recently elected MPs will take a stand against it.

Cooking the Books: The rich remained rich (2025)

The Cooking The Books column from the June 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘Why’, the Times asked a few days after Trump announced the imposition of tariffs on imports into the US, ‘are global stock markets in a tailspin?’ Their answer was substantially correct and surprisingly honest:

‘The short answer is President Trump’s tariffs. The longer answer is that global investors are betting that the president’s tariff walls will result in a fall in corporate profits as companies face higher costs and lower demand for their goods. The prospect of falling profits encourages investors to sell their shares because it means companies will not be able to pay as much out in dividends and will be worth less in future’ (8 April).

Shares are, as the word suggests, a share in the ownership of a business and entitle their owner to some of the profits of that business. They can be traded in their own right independently of the activity of the business. The price at which they are bought and sold depends on the anticipated future profits of the business and is mainly arrived at through the expected stream of future profits being expressed as a notional capital sum which, if invested, would bring in the same amount. But this sum only exists as a share of anticipated future wealth which may or may not be realised.

This is where the Times was being honest in talking about ‘betting’ because that’s what trading in shares is partly about. Traders buy shares at a certain price because they calculate that the shares will bring in a bigger dividend or that they can be sold later at a higher price. But there is no guarantee that either will happen, any more than there is a guarantee that a horse you bet on will win. It may but, then again, it may not.

However, the stock exchange is not just a casino. It is also a place where a business can raise new or extra capital to invest by selling new shares. But once these have been issued and bought they can be traded and subject to betting and speculation just like any other shares. If their price goes up that does not of itself mean that the business that issued them has more capital to invest. Similarly, if their price falls, that doesn’t of itself reduce that capital.

The movement of the prices of shares does not affect, either way, the value of the real wealth in which capital has been invested. Obviously it does affect the amount of notional capital attributed to shareholders:

‘The world’s 500 richest people lost a collective $536bn (£417bn) in the first two days of stock market trading after Trump’s “liberation day” announcement last Wednesday. It was the biggest two-day loss of wealth ever recorded by Bloomberg’s billionaires index’ (Guardian, 7 April).

The losses here are calculated from the fall in the price of the huge holdings of shares that Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos and the others hold in the companies they founded. But it was not a reduction in the capital value of the real wealth they own as the means of production held by their companies. That remained the same. It was a reduction in the size of a notional capital sum based on expected future profits, as traders adjusted their bets on the size of these. To some extent, a reflection of a change of betting odds.

The fall in share prices sparked by Trump’s tariffs did not mean that the value of any of the real underlying wealth the billionaires owned was wiped out, simply that the current market valuation of it was reduced.