THE world appears to be facing one of its most dangerous moments for many years.  

In the Middle East Israel menaces Lebanon and Syria and pushes forward its genocidal project across Palestine.  

In Sudan and DR Congo proxy wars continue — as they do also in south-east Asia. In the Americas Trump encircles Venezuela — striking at vital energy supplies for Cuba.  

Nearer home full-scale war in Ukraine remains unabated — with Britain apparently engaged with France and Germany in seizing funds for a continuation of the bloodshed.

These military conflicts accompany what appears to be the makings of a major economic crisis. Last week the general manager of the Bank of International Settlements, responsible for global solvency, Pablo Hernandez de Cos, described US markets as in bubble territory and, two weeks before, his annual report warned of a global debt crisis worse than any since World War II, including the Great Financial Crisis of 2008-10.  

He identified government debt as likely to reach to an unprecedented level of 120 per cent of global national income within four years and at the same time pointed to the rapidly advancing dominance of largely unregulated “non-banks.”

Today these vehicles for the speculations of the very rich hold financial assets that are notionally worth the equivalent of 225 per cent of global GDP as against 175 per cent held by regulated banks.  

You might well ask how this vast credit mountain can exist when growth and profit levels in the advanced capitalist nations are unprecedentedly low. In the core nations of Europe growth has been negative over the past three years.

In the US growth has apparently been higher. But on what is it based? The 6 per cent profit level masks a dangerous reality. Once the profits for the big tech monopolies are taken out profits across much of manufacturing and many services are, as in Europe, minimal to negative.

This is a crisis reminiscent of that described by Lenin just before the first world war. Today war, or the threat of war, appears to supply an escape route enabling governments to demand higher taxes to fund military production by the big monopoly firms.

Our own government’s November Budget is an example. For current spending it gives defence its scheduled but still very significant increase. What was not so widely noticed were the figures for capital expenditure. Military spending got the biggest allotment of all: £25.9 billion. Health and social care was allocated just £14bn. Housing got only £9.6bn — with 350,000 people classified homeless and a 20 per cent increase in those sleeping rough.

It is in these circumstances that we see the rise of the far right and the shrinkage of support for “established” parties.  

But on this front we need to be careful. Is this really support for the ideas of the far right or a repudiation of established parties?  

Research published by Nuffield in November shows that three times as many people abandoning Labour gave economic insecurity as the reason — not opposition to immigration.  

This supplies an important pointer. If war is to be avoided and the extreme right denied access to parliamentary power, there remains a basis for mobilising opposition.  

It demands a movement that reaches into communities and work environments in a new way. Papers like the Morning Star can print the arguments. But actual people have to take them where people are — however different workplaces and communities are today and whatever the opposition in the big unions and the Labour Party. It gives immediate urgency to a resolution of the crisis of the left both within and outside the Labour Party.  

Neither war nor economic crisis will wait.