James Collett, South West Socialist Party organiser
World leaders gathered in New York last week for the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, a circus of lies, hypocrisy and blather.
Delegates who walked out as the Israeli Prime Minister began his speech were labelled “moral cowards” by Benjamin Netanyahu. Any talk of morality loses its meaning in the mouth of this butcher whose government has slaughtered at least 74,000 Palestinians in the genocide of the last three years, but token gestures by capitalist politicians are equally meaningless. Later in his speech, Netanyahu claimed that Israel’s destruction of Gaza had “prevented genocide” and that the war on Iran was launched in order to “save civilisation”.
Which “civilisation” is being saved? The leaders assembled preside over a world in catastrophic turmoil and conflict. The governments of 193 nations are represented in the UN General Assembly, all of them in competition with one another, all of them presiding over a system which exploits and oppresses the working class and poor inside and outside their borders. For all the words they twist and contort, they can offer nothing but carnage. They have no solution to the environmental destruction and mass poverty created by their system.
With his right-wing coalition trailing in polls and elections due in October, Netanyahu was aiming his speech at a domestic audience, and at an American public whose support for Israel is rapidly falling. He wants to revive his image as ‘Mr Security’ but what becomes clearer every day is that there is no real long-lasting security for anyone within the capitalist system.
Trump’s bluster
Donald Trump in his own speech said that he will choose whether to “annihilate Iran” or to make it a “great country” (allegedly Trump’s team had provided him with the word “annihilate” because he’d become bored with saying “obliterate”). But the choice is not his: the US and Israel’s war on Iran has demonstrated US imperialism’s weakened position in this era and has triggered a new phase of wild instability for the world economy. Although in long-term relative decline, the US is still the world’s most successful capitalist nation, but what does this success look like? The top 1% of US households now have almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%! This ‘civilisation’ is built on obscene inequality.
The Palestinian delegates, for the second year in a row, were denied visas so couldn’t attend. Protesters at the Jewish Voice for Peace demonstration outside the Assembly were arrested and carted away. Inside, the murderous pantomime continued and empty phrases were uttered while the world burns.
Amidst the torrential outpourings of deceit, a few truthful words were accidentally spoken by the president of the European Council, Antonio Costa: “Alone, no country can prevent a pandemic, stabilise the climate, secure resilient supply chains, regulate artificial intelligence, ensure financial stability or deliver sustainable development. Alone, no country, however powerful, can build lasting peace.”
The lesson which will never be drawn by the UN, European Council, or any other capitalist institution, but which must be drawn by the working class, is that capitalism cannot overcome its systemic crisis. Based on exploitation, it is a system incapable of solving any of the fundamental threats facing the world. The disparity between words and their meanings at the UN is no surprise. The United Nations is not united. The ruling classes are not fit to rule. Only the working class can end this deadly system and replace it completely with what we need: an international socialist plan of production to harness the abilities and resources of the human race in the interests of people and the planet.
