Fusion breakthroughs: how capitalist profiteering impedes clean, unlimited energy

The future of our planet depends on the successful transition from fossil fuels to clean energy. We are in a race against time. Climate scientists estimate there is a 50 percent chance of global temperatures exceeding pre-industrial levels by 1.5C in the next five years. Recently, a flurry of major breakthroughs in fusion energy have demonstrated the viability of this technology as a limitless, zero-carbon source of energy, harnessing the same process that powers our sun. And yet, scandalously, investment in this technology has been throttled for the past 50 years. Why? Because it was deemed unprofitable.

The New Anticapitalist Party (NPA) in France – formed in 2009 by members of the now-disbanded Revolutionary Communist League (LCR), with the primary intention of uniting France’s far-left – announced at its 5th congress in December it would be undergoing a split, into two roughly similar-sized groups. The following article by Révolution, the French section of the IMT, draws the lessons of this split.

La situación mundial está marcada por la profundización de la crisis económica y la inestabilidad política del régimen capitalista, con la lucha de clases expresándose en diferentes lugares y por diferentes medios. La guerra de Ucrania, con todas sus implicaciones y consecuencias, es un concentrado de estas contradicciones y del estancamiento histórico del capitalismo en su fase imperialista.

La scission du NPA n’a pas suscité beaucoup d’intérêt dans la masse de la population et ne changera rien au développement de la lutte des classes en France. Cependant, une couche de la jeunesse et du salariat sympathisait avec le profil « anticapitaliste » de cette organisation. Certains s’interrogent sur la signification de cet événement. Tâchons de les éclairer.

Nel primo numero del nuovo anno, Der Spiegel pubblica un interessante articolo che si intitola “Marx aveva ragione, dopotutto?” Pieno di osservazioni acute sullo stato del capitalismo, è un articolo sintomatico delle preoccupazioni della classe dominante. Ma le “soluzioni” che propone – idee reazionarie e utopiche basate sulla salvaguardia del capitalismo, come la “decrescita” e il keynesismo – in realtà non sono affatto soluzioni.