Dave Murray, Socialist Party Eastern Region Secretary
Kicking off, appropriately enough, on Friday 13 February, The Munich Security Conference brought together over 50 heads of state and their representatives to discuss the world’s most pressing ‘security challenges’. There was no agenda item headed ‘Are we the baddies?’ though – in a world where there are much fewer than six degrees of separation between most of the attendees and Jeffrey Epstein, there doesn’t need to be.
For Keir Starmer, the timing of the conference was perfect. He could push for European re-armament as if he will still be Prime Minister for much longer. To a world of war, genocide, repression, exploitation and ecological catastrophe he offered more taxes to buy more bombs. Unironically, he insisted that European politicians need to be more honest with their electorates. Whatever levels of honesty it is delivered with, the message: ‘Our food banks are the envy of the world – we will defend them with your lives,’ is not going to be popular!
In name, the representatives at Munich speak for the people of the world. In fact, they speak for the tiny segment of humanity that makes up the billionaire capitalist class – the real beneficiaries of capitalism globally. They are easy to ridicule but it’s hard to laugh when you consider the enormity of their crimes. The global ambitions of these cannibals will be paid for by a permanent assault on wages and living standards of the working classes internationally. To try to help them get away with it they will try to sew divisions in the working class by summoning the demons of xenophobia and racism.
In an increasingly unstable world with growing conflicts, there can be a feeling among some that ‘we have to be able to defend ourselves’. But the billionaire bosses and their politicians only have defence of their profits and power in mind.
One voice that was definitely not heard at the conference was that of the working class. Although in making any of their decisions, the super-rich are always aware of the risks of provoking a working-class fightback – such as the mass protests against the slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, including the general strike action in Italy last autumn, for example.
Overwhelmingly internationally, including in Britain, the working class has not yet assembled a political voice of its own. If you want an alternative to permanent austerity and the threat of war, you must become part of the process of putting that right. If you, like us, would back socialism against barbarism, your next step should be to join the Socialist Party.
