Countries that have taken a republican direction under the banner of “liberté, egalité, fraternité” have found other means to enforce social hierarchies and exploitative social relations. Still, the monarchy remains an exceptionally potent weapon in preserving a notion of a ‘natural’ social hierarchy that normalizes social inequality.

We should support all efforts to protect the natural environments that cruise ships threaten, the destinations they plunder and the workers they exploit. These floating palaces represent everything that is greedy and destructive in this society and we must struggle for a world based on principles of rationality, global justice and ecological sustainability.

The political base cultivated by mainstream conservative politicians has been in a snarly mood for some time and the current cost of living crisis is exacerbating it. Those who look to the right for answers in this situation are hardening their outlook and the politicians and parties seeking their political support must take this into account.

The drastic weakening of social benefits for unemployed and disabled people has been a central component of the whole neoliberal agenda. It has contributed enormously to the intensification of exploitation, the growth of a vulnerable and low-paid workforce and the undermining of union strength. The present moment, however, makes the need for stronger income support systems an even more vital working class issue.

Elections are important and this one is significant. In the current period, however, a preponderant focus on electoral politics is misplaced. We need rejuvenated powerful unions and a strong sense of unity and solidarity among communities under attack. Such a social mobilization would actually generate the conditions where a serious left electoral force could make enormous gains.

The present inflationary shock is one more confirmation of the need for militant and powerful social resistance in the post-pandemic period. Working class people didn’t cause the pandemic, nor did they provoke the crises that are emerging in its wake. But to foil the attempts to impose the burden on us we must be prepared to organize resistance in our workplaces and communities.

As state power is reluctantly and belatedly deployed against the far-right’s laughably named Freedom Convoy, it’s time for the political left in Canada to ask itself some very serious questions. How could a gaggle of white supremacists manage to capture the political momentum and undertake “the biggest protest organized by the Canadian far-right since the 1930s”?

Returning to the graveside of trade unionist and a coal miner Joseph Mairs in Ladysmith, British Columbia, we are reminded of a powerful and inspiring history of working class people refusing to submit to exploitation and repression or give in to despair. Not only can we can learn from this history, but we can build on it at this challenging juncture.

A movement with a distorted sense of individual rights that would seek to hamper vaccination in the midst of a global health crisis is reactionary to the core and hostile to human life itself. The dangerous rise of the anti-vax far-right is a symptom of a sickness in this society that we will still be confronting well after the last wave of the pandemic has finally receded.

While those who hold political power drag their feet when dealing with the causes and impacts of climate change, it is instructive to consider the circumstances in which they demonstrate that they are perfectly capable of taking swift and decisive action. Indeed, when it comes to protecting fossil fuel interests, supporting corporate profits, crushing Indigenous resistance, their alacrity was fully on display in BC.