This episode examines how UFO narratives have been shaped by secrecy, misinterpretation, and capitalist interests. It discusses the BBC4 documentary “What Are UFOs?”, which revisits pilot Alex Dietrich’s 2004 “tic tac” sighting and the 2015 “gimbal” video, both later explained by experts as camera and motion distortions of ordinary aircraft. Many so-called “unidentified” incidents, the article notes, are better understood as sightings of classified military technology—echoing cases like the 1947 Roswell crash, now known to involve Project Mogul, a Cold War nuclear-detection program. Likewise, triangular UFO reports from the 1980s onward likely stem from experimental U.S. stealth craft tested at secret facilities such as Area 51. The piece argues that the UFO craze thrived amid Cold War paranoia, government secrecy, and Hollywood storytelling, eventually evolving into a profitable pop-culture industry. Ultimately, it concludes that the enduring fascination with UFOs reveals more about capitalism’s power to generate fear and fantasy than about life beyond Earth.

From the October 2025 issue of The Socialist Standard.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

or, for a free three-issue subscription to The Socialist Standard: spgb.net/podcast

Featuring music: 'Pushing P (Instrumental)' by Tiga Maine x Deejay Boe. Source: Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

Even in a socialist society the legacy of capitalism would pose deep challenges—particularly in areas tied to personal behavior, health and consumption. The episode points to obesity, processed foods, addictions, pollution, synthetic drugs and industrial toxins as examples of harms created under capitalism, and raises the question of how a socialist world would responsibly manage them without exacerbating individual dependency or imposing authoritarian controls. While acknowledging that some “withdrawal symptoms” might result from removing harmful, profit-driven products, a democratic socialist society would not perpetuate illnesses for profit, and would need to find ethical, collective ways to address lifestyle and health issues.

From the October 2025 issue of The Socialist Standard.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

or, for a free three-issue subscription to The Socialist Standard: spgb.net/podcast

Featuring music: 'Pushing P (Instrumental)' by Tiga Maine x Deejay Boe. Source: Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

This episode criticises Kirk’s activist legacy, arguing that his aggressive right-wing tactics — including demonisation of queer people, unions, and students — laid the grounds for the backlash that culminated in his assassination. It frames his death not simply as violence against a provocateur, but as the inevitable consequence of a combative ideology that treats politics as warfare rather than debate.

From the October 2025 issue of The Socialist Standard

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

or, for a free three-issue subscription to The Socialist Standard: spgb.net/podcast

Featuring music: 'Pushing P (Instrumental)' by Tiga Maine x Deejay Boe. Source: Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

This episode criticises how Labour and other self-described “socialist” parties trumpet the label without a coherent understanding of socialism, arguing that most of their proposed reforms—such as nationalisation, higher taxes, expanded public services—do nothing to challenge capitalism’s fundamental logic of production for profit. It describes a “Your Party” meeting, where despite participants’ rhetoric about socialism, discussion centered on reforms rather than systemic change. True socialism means abolishing the market system entirely in favour of a moneyless, cooperative society, and that efforts to rebrand or tweak capitalism as “socialist” are misleading.

From the October 2025 issue of The Socialist Standard

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

or, for a free three-issue subscription to The Socialist Standard: spgb.net/podcast

Featuring music: 'Pushing P (Instrumental)' by Tiga Maine x Deejay Boe. Source: Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

From the October 2025 issue of The Socialist Standard, written by Robin Cox

Nationalism is a product of capitalism: it emerges to glue culturally diverse societies under a shared identity, but in fact tends to erase local diversity and enable state control. This episode traces nationalism’s rise alongside capitalism’s growth (via literacy, print culture, mobility), shows how “traditions” are often artificially invented to bolster national identity, and highlights the tension between nationalism and globalising forces (e.g. big business, migration) which capitalism also fosters. The result is a backlash: as neoliberal globalisation falters, resurgent nationalism—often reactionary and exclusionary—becomes a rallying point against the perceived threats of migration and cultural dilution.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

or, for a free three-issue subscription to The Socialist Standard: spgb.net/podcast

Featuring music: 'Pushing P (Instrumental)' by Tiga Maine x Deejay Boe. Source: Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

From the September 2025 issue of The Socialist Standard:

This article warns of the growing crisis posed by generative AI’s propensity for “hallucinations”—fabrication of false or harmful content presented as fact. It highlights alarming examples, including a case where Google’s AI falsely informed council-house tenants they could be evicted to make way for asylum seekers—dismissed by a housing solicitor as “horseshit of the highest order.” It also discusses Musk’s AI, Grok, which—especially in its “spicy” mode—can generate explicit deepfake imagery of celebrities without prompting. The piece critiques the Trump administration’s deregulatory stance on these technologies, despite widespread calls from U.S. states and even tech leaders for safeguards. Concerns escalate when chatbots are reported to advise children on dangerous behaviours like abusing substances, hiding eating disorders, or drafting suicide letters. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, acknowledges a deeper problem of “emotional overreliance” among young users, who may defer critical life decisions to AI, a phenomenon he finds deeply troubling.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

or, for a free three-issue subscription to The Socialist Standard: spgb.net/podcast

Featuring music: 'Pushing P (Instrumental)' by Tiga Maine x Deejay Boe. Source: Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

Creating an egalitarian society through a redistribution of wealth within capitalism is a pipe-dream as it goes against the logic of the system. Capitalism is based on a minority owning the means of wealth production and on these being used to generate profits that are accumulated as more wealth for the owners. Inequality of wealth ownership and the tendency for the wealthy to get wealthier are built into the system.

Attempting to counter this will mean that the new party will end up being a mere party of protest, spending its time criticising the government for not doing what it ‘demands’ and ‘resisting’ when the workings of the capitalist economy force the government to make things worse.

---

The Times’s obituary (4 August) of the economist Lord Desai who died at the end of July recounted the following anecdote:

‘“Marx wasn’t against home ownership. In fact he owned his own house,” Desai insisted when challenged about his own two properties. What Marx was against, he added, was using property to exploit workers. “Marx had no objection to the ownership of consumer durables”.’

Taken from the September 2025 edition of The Socialist Standard.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

or, for a free three-issue subscription to The Socialist Standard: spgb.net/podcast

Featuring music: 'Pushing P (Instrumental)' by Tiga Maine x Deejay Boe. Source: Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0

Labour didn’t fundamentally reform capitalism. Instead, capitalism reshaped Labour, gradually pulling it away from egalitarian ideals toward embracing profit-driven policies and business-friendly governance.

Originally formed in 1906 as a trade union pressure group in parliament, in 1918 the Labour Party adopted as its long-term aim a nationalised economy. This, together with a redistribution of wealth to create a less unequal society, was to be achieved gradually by measures taken by a succession of Labour governments.

This strategy — Labourism — failed, and how! Instead of Labour gradually changing capitalism, it was capitalism that gradually changed Labour. Learning from the experience of being in government, that the only way capitalism can run is as an economic system driven by profit-making and that this has to be given priority, Labour gradually evolved from an alleged labour party into an avowed capitalist party.

Here is how it happened.

Taken from the September 2025 edition of The Socialist Standard.

World Socialist Radio is the official podcast of The Socialist Party of Great Britain. We have one single aim: the establishment of a society in which all productive resources – land, water, factories, transport, etc. – are taken into common ownership, and in which the sole motive for production is the fulfilment of human needs and wants.

To read more news, views, and analysis please visit: worldsocialism.org/spgb

or, for a free three-issue subscription to The Socialist Standard: spgb.net/podcast

Featuring music: 'Pushing P (Instrumental)' by Tiga Maine x Deejay Boe. Source: Free Music Archive, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY 4.0