anti capitalist musings

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Close-up of a British two pence coin, copper-coloured, showing a heraldic lion in a crosshatched frame with fleur-de-lis corners and the words “TWO PENCE” at the top.
Labour Government

Rachel Reeves and the 2p Trap

The chancellor’s proposed income tax shuffle is clever accountancy but toxic politics — a pledge-break disguised as fiscal discipline, and proof that Labour has trapped itself in rules it cannot escape.

An illustration of a red fish (Herring) in profile against a pale background, with the words “RED TERROR” in bold black capitals beneath it.
Charlie Kirk

Red Herring, Not Red Terror

David Frost calls it a new “Red Terror.” The truth is plainer: it’s the Right’s wars, coups and crackdowns that have spilt the deepest blood in politics.

Donald J Trump

The Invention of the Narco-Terrorist

Trump’s latest “kinetic strike” killed three unknown Venezuelans he labelled “narco-terrorists.” The phrase is not law but incantation, a word that strips away humanity and legitimises killing. From Vietnam body counts to Obama’s “signature strikes,” America has always named its enemies into existence, and into death.

Britain

Beyond Creeping Fascism

To call Robinson’s rally “populist” or “right-wing” is to miss the point. Fascism doesn’t require every marcher to be a coherent ideologue; it requires a mass, a scapegoat, and leaders prepared to turn grievance into violence. That is what we saw in London.

Screenshot of a Telegraph article by Camilla Tominey titled “The killing of Charlie Kirk shows just how poisonous Left-wing politics now is,” with the subheading “Speech has consequences – we have once more learnt that lesson from the horrifying events in Utah.” Below the headline is a photo showing two people in jeans holding a poster with a portrait of Charlie Kirk.
Camilla Tominey

Tominey’s doublethink

Camilla Tominey’s sainthood act for Charlie Kirk trades politics for piety. The Right already owns the machinery (press, finance, courts, police) and Kirk was part of the drive shaft. A death certificate doesn’t wash clean a career built on making violence respectable.

Britain

Flatlining Growth, Rising Crisis

The ONS reports zero growth in July. The papers call it “grim news” for Rachel Reeves. In reality, it is the latest entry in a long obituary for British capitalism — a system now sustained only by euphemism, stagnation, and decline.

Theft by Design: How Right to Buy Looted the Public Realm

Right to Buy was never just a housing policy. It was a weapon. It stripped councils of their power, turned tenants into property owners, and recast collective provision as individual gain. The result wasn’t freedom but fragmentation: social housing gutted, rents soaring, and the right to strike undermined by the threat of eviction. Thatcher didn’t just sell homes. She sold a new class alignment, and we’re still living in its ruins.

Eighty Years Since Hiroshima. We’re Closer Now.

In 1984, we built a nuclear bunker out of cardboard boxes in the corner of our classroom. Each of us brought something for survival—Look-In mags, tins of beans, but no tin opener. Even as kids, we knew it was useless. That was the point. You couldn’t market nuclear war as survivable. Forty years on, the language has changed but the logic remains. The bomb hasn’t gone away, it’s just become background noise. The treaties are gone. The madmen are in charge. And the system that built the bomb still holds it, not to use necessarily, but to remind us who gets to decide if we live.

A close-up photograph of a dark grey suit jacket with a red circular badge pinned to the left lapel. The badge features bold white text that reads "JOIN A UNION" in all capital letters. The image is softly lit, with the badge clearly in focus and the texture of the suit fabric visible in the background.

The Right to Strike Is Not a Threat—It’s a Minimum Demand

The modern-day barons don’t run trade unions, they sail £100 million yachts and bankroll governments. Yet it’s the rail cleaner or the guard who’s cast as the threat. What’s truly appalling is not that Eddie Dempsey wants to strike fast, but that workers can’t strike in solidarity with Palestinians, can’t refuse to load weapons bound for Gaza, can’t use their collective strength to win better conditions across sectors. The right fears not chaos—but class power.

A textured graphic illustration shows a large, vivid blue water droplet set against a cracked, parched earth background. The droplet appears smooth and stylised, contrasting sharply with the grainy beige soil and jagged black fissures, evoking drought, scarcity, and the fragile symbolism of water amid environmental collapse.

The Mirage of Water: On Filippo Menga’s Thirst

Water isn’t just drying up, it’s being sold back to us in bottles, summits, and charity hashtags. Filippo Menga’s Thirst shows how crisis becomes currency, how scarcity is manufactured, managed, and monetised. This isn’t about saving water, it’s about saving meaning.

A red membership card with bold white text reading “YOUR PARTY” and smaller text below that says “MEMBERSHIP CARD,” set against a light wooden surface. The design is clean and modern, with rounded corners and a thin white border around the edge of the card.

They have launched with policies the public already supports. But without structure, it’s just another mailing list. A party means organisation, or it means nothing.

Steamships and Settlers

“Palestine is not a digression from the climate movement. It is its centre.” That’s the force of Andreas Malm’s pamphlet, The Destruction of Palestine Is the Destruction of the Earth. It doesn’t ask for reflection. It demands action. This isn’t a balanced account of Gaza or a theory of climate collapse. Instead it’s a weaponised intervention against the politics of impunity. What Malm offers is a raw and necessary link: between the bombs that fall on Jabaliya and the storms that drown Derna, between settler colonialism and fossil capital, between the rubble of Akka in 1840 and the rubble of Gaza in 2024. The pamphlet is furious, and entirely justified. It should be read, and used.