Both Conservative and Labour administrations have now refused to release research showing PIP payments are vital for disabled people’s survival, exposing the ideological nature of planned welfare ‘reforms,’ writes Dr DYLAN MURPHY
What’s the future with AI?
The increased efficiency of any aspect of capitalism will not automatically lead to its collapse and transformation — avoiding the dangers and realising the potential of AI will involve struggle, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Western media dismisses the National People’s Congress while ignoring its extensive consultation processes, massive public participation mechanisms, and a tiered structure involving millions of deputies, explains JENNY CLEGG
Despite caring for vulnerable children and often covering classes, support staff remain undervalued, with some earning less than supermarket workers — but GMB’s campaigning offers new hope, argues DONNA SPICER
NICK WRIGHT examines how Farage’s party has attracted five distinct voter tribes with incompatible views on economics, immigration and state intervention — presenting both a challenge and opportunity for left organising
Man-made canals like Panama and Suez face unprecedented challenges from extreme weather patterns and geopolitical tensions that reveal the fragility of our global trade networks, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
As climate change makes vast mineral deposits accessible, the island’s 56,000 residents face unprecedented pressure from Trump’s territorial ambitions while struggling to maintain their traditional way of life, writes JOHN GREEN
Student Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and threatened deportation are terrifying — but the moribund Democrats are still failing to mount any meaningful resistance against the slide toward autocracy, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
PART ONE of this answer emphasised that information technologies, from “good old-fashioned artificial intelligence” of the 1960s and ’70s to robotics and machine learning today, greatly magnify the contradictions of capitalism.
They raise a host of questions: whether development should focus on medical diagnostics or personal surveillance; whether “we” need driverless cars and “just walk out” shopping and if so, whether they should be limited to those who can afford them or “owned” collectively; — and in either case, under whose control and scrutiny.
At a deeper level, it raises fundamental issues about the structural changes within global capitalism, the use of technologies for social control, repression — and war — and the required left and labour movement response.
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Most currently popular arguments for degrowth describe a real problem without recognising its true cause – capitalism’s insatiable need to accumulate, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Most phenomena have an explanation, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY, but occasionally ‘anomalous’ events have led to new scientific understanding
The fight to defend public services is as important as the struggle over wages, but presents different challenges to workplace organising — especially with regards to bourgeois propaganda and conditioning, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Marx and Engels’ concern with soil provides a focus for understanding the relationship between capitalism and the environment, argues the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
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Software engineer SCOTT ALSWORTH explains to his mother
The ‘degrowth’ debate raises critical issues to which only a Marxist approach can provide answers, argues the Marx Memorial Library
The fight to defend public services is as important as the struggle over wages, but presents different challenges to workplace organising — especially with regards to bourgeois propaganda and conditioning, writes the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
The impact of AI depends on who controls it and for what purpose, argues the Marx Memorial Library