When Trump's "victory" in the US election became clear, there was a very telling, huge "rally" of shares in Tesla, crypto-currency, banks and prison "operators"... and the dollar...
Apparently the president-elect's proposals for tariffs against foreign imports and mass deportation of "illegal" workers did not have the expected dampening effect on the financial markets. Although of course the particular "winners" of this share-rally kind of says it all... Musk's expensive electric car enterprise, a phoney currency and private prisons...
It also confirms that no matter who the particular (or peculiar) character is, who wins the race to sit in the White House, or indeed 10 Downing Street, capitalism will always "rally". Because the one thing they cannot put into question is the profit system. If they did, they wouldn't get elected.
And forget about the puzzling contradictions - a billionaire Trump-advisor like Musk whose factory makes electric cars, while Trump wants the use of fossil fuels to carry on indefinitely (he will "drill, drill, drill!"). Or the crypto-currency boost, when this virtual currency rests on absolutely no real value at all.
Yes, it's all such a con. Electorates are promised everything and its opposite and are meant to keep calm and carry on... yes, carry on putting up with a class system which swaps around political leaders every few years in an ever-more transparent pretence of "democracy"...
Their fragile system can be overthrown
In fact all the recent elections - whether here in Britain, in France, in the USA, even Japan, the "incumbent" party either got kicked out or suffered broken front teeth (metaphorically speaking)...
But it was also the case that in almost all these countries the "active" electorate has shrunk, with turnouts falling and many not even registering to vote - when they are not actually excluded from doing so. The working classes of this world understand perfectly well about the "political choices" they are offered.
But what then is to be done? It's true that given the way society is structured, it takes a lot to mount a significant challenge to these rotten alternatives. The class system places a minority in power over a majority and relies on "armed bodies of men" (and women) to keep the minority in place. But these armed men and women are recruited from the majority, and therefore act against its (and their own) interests... Can they always be relied upon to carry out their "duty"?
In fact when an economic crisis gets bad enough, the structures start to fall apart. Of course that is not happening in the wealthy countries like Britain and the USA today. Although the US population got a small taste of it in 2020, when Trump's supporters tried to contest the election result and stormed Capitol Hill. In other words the system is far more fragile than it looks. Political leaders know very well that it's not a question of "if" they and their system are despatched, but "when".
We're all "legitimate" Earthlings!
Based on the experience of the last economic crisis political experts warn of world war. But the biggest threat to existence on this planet today - aggravated by climate change - is the total inability of the worldwide capitalist system to sustain human life in the poorest two-thirds of the globe.
So there is mass movement going on - across deserts and seas. Hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing wars consequent upon shrinking resources and rivalries to seize mineral wealth; they are fleeing catastrophic famine and economic hardship. And they risk their lives: death from thirst in the desert; death from drowning in the sea.
And what does this utterly pernicious and bankrupt system offer in response? Across the rich world, every single politician in power talks about strengthening borders, bringing in anti-refugee and anti-migrant measures, and - as Trump has proposed - mass deportations. They claim to be targeting "illegal" immigrants. But in truth, their concept of "legality" is absurd.
How can there be a "right to remain" here, or there, on this earth when planetary society has evolved to the point where there can be no further evolution, that is, progress, unless the whole of the earth's territory is managed as one land mass whose resources are available to all inhabitants, as needed?
But just at the precise moment in human history where it has become critical to open all borders, reactionary forces are closing them!
In 1919, Russian revolutionaries who had just overthrown the czar, held a conference in Baku - obviously not about climate change (!), but in the name of revolutionary internationalism. Their object - already 105 years ago - was to build a world without borders, starting with what had been the oppressive Russian Empire. In the end, they did not succeed. But today the task of getting rid of all national borders can surely not be delayed any further.