Without energy and without a strategic partner, Cuba is currently fighting for its survival. While the population is literally sitting in the dark, the Trump administration is trying to definitively break the socialist project through economic blackmail. What lies ahead for the island, asks MARC VANDEPITTE
Inflation is a class issue
As ministers and the mass media try to block pay rises using the threat of further inflation, STEWART McGILL looks at why prices are rising and what we should do about it
A setback for IG Metall at Tesla’s Berlin plant has ignited claims of intimidation and raised fears for the future of collective bargaining and workplace democracy, says TONY BURKE
The question for the media, in the US and across the globe, says ROGER McKENZIE, is will they do their job fearlessly and call Donald Trump out?
A recent Financial Times column on the Iran war exemplifies how the Western elite worldview is more concerned with strategy and power than legality or human life, writes ANDREW MURRAY
STEVE BISHOP considers the prospects for a settlement of the conflict and how the demands of both sides are being viewed
The PM is drawing cautious distance from Donald Trump over Iran – but history suggests Britain’s support may run deeper than it appears, just as it did during the Vietnam war, says KEITH FLETT
CAPITALIST economics maintains that cost increases, particularly wage rises, have to be passed onto the consumer as if it’s a law of physics.
They never ask why profit margins have to be maintained and real wages suppressed. Prices only have to go up to maintain the profits that go to capital. Inflation is like anything else in capitalism, a function of unequal power relations and the drive to accumulate, “profit-pull”, not “cost-push”.
The Economic Policy Institute in the United States showed that since mid-2020, 54 per cent of price rises were attributable to fatter profit margins, only 8 per cent to increased labour costs.
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Under current policy, welfare cuts are just a small downpayment on future austerity, argues MICHAEL BURKE
