With the recent surge in food prices and unemployment rates, the highly uneven effects of the pandemic-related economic collapse – acutely reflected in the three apartheids of our times: money, medicine, and food – reveal a deeper structural crisis. Economic policies to deal effectively with these issues are non-existent. We need a long-term plan to exit this neoliberal nightmare. For this reason, under the leadership of ALBA-TCP and in dialogue with a network of like-minded research institutes, we have begun to draft a Plan for the 7.9 Billion. Help us develop such an agenda.

Our ecological footprint suggests that we do not live on one Earth, but on 1.6 Earths. By our encroachment and destruction of biodiversity, our degradation of land, and our air and water pollution, we are cannibalising the planet. On World Environment Day, 5 June, the theme ‘Ecosystem Restoration’ emphasises how the capitalist system has eroded the earth’s capacity to sustain life. We can no longer ignore the calls made by the burning forests and flooding waters.

By 1870, it was clear to Paris’ working class that the wreck of France had to be taken into their hands. But, after seventy-two days, on 28 May 1871, the Paris Commune collapsed. Every defeat is a school for working people, every attempt to build socialism teaches us lessons for our next experiment. One hundred and fifty years after the defeat of the Commune, we reflect on the Commune itself and on the lessons that emerged from it. The Commune sustains an electrical political charge in our time, from communes in Venezuela to land occupations in South Africa.

Israel’s war machine, fully backed by the US, attacks Palestinian territories with total disregard for international law. Genuine multipolarity, based on strengthening institutions such as BRICS, would prevent the US from using its force against the Palestinians, the Yemenis, and others. The defeat of the right-wing ruling classes in countries such as Brazil and India is essential for the advancement of the popular goals of the Palestinians and others; for this reason, debates in Brazil’s left over how to regain political stewardship of the country and Lula’s renewed eligibility to run for president have far-reaching consequences from Palestine to Colombia.

From the violent repression of protestors in Colombia to the political persecution of political activists in West Bengal and shack dweller activists in South Africa, ugliness defines the mood of the state’s reaction to popular demands and organisations of the people. Images of security forces cracking down on people trying to express their political rights have become commonplace. Yet, underlying these events and amidst the range of feelings that shape them lies a sense of refusal, the Great Refusal, the refusal to accept the terms dictated from those in power and the refusal to express this refusal in polite terms.