From Yan’an in 1942 to today’s Occupied Palestine, the purpose of art is to be relevant to the major historical and contemporary processes of our time. But art cannot by itself remedy the problems. For that, one turns to the organisations and the movements that churn society into something new. Art forms must breathe in the sensibilities of the working class and the peasantry and breathe out new cultural propositions; these interventions, alongside the tide of humanity that refuses to submit to oppression, leads us into new possibilities.

The COVID-19 pandemic had the potential to bring people together and rebuild public health systems. Instead, we have seen 14.9 million excess deaths, as public health sectors around the world have only received small portions of increased budgets and private health expenditure has steadily risen. In the state of Kerala, India, however, an agenda of compassion offers hope.

United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, has warned that we are ‘firmly on track towards an unliveable world’. However, in 2021, the world spent over $2 trillion on war (led by the United States which accounted for 40 percent of total military expenditure), but only invested $750 billion in clean energy and energy efficiency. There is an endless flow of money for weapons but less than a pittance to avert planetary catastrophe.

The International Monetary Fund has released its annual World Economic Outlook, forecasting a severe global economic slowdown and soaring inflation. While US President Joe Biden has blamed the economic crisis on Russia’s war in Ukraine, in fact, it is the United States which has destabilised the world economy; here, US military spending, the scale of the United States in global consumption, the role of the Wall Street-Dollar-IMF regime, and other factors play a key role.

Argentina recently reached a $45 billion deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to shore up its shaky finances. This marks the latest chapter in the country’s cycle of debt and despair, dating back to the IMF’s funding of its military junta (1976–83). Although China’s growing ties with Latin America and the Caribbean opens new avenues for development, the government does not seem eager to break with the status quo of integration into the Western-dominated capitalist marketplace.