The endemic trauma in American society, which is getting worse under the onslaught of the gig economy, pronounced social inequality, the climate crisis and the seizure of the political process and most institutions by corporations and the ruling oligarchs, is our most serious public health crisis. It has grave individual, social and political consequences.

The three-day summit of the BRICS leaders ends today. The BRICS are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Russian leader Vladimir Putin was not present in person. The five BRICS nations now have a combined GDP larger than that of the G7 in purchasing power parity terms (a measure of what GDP can buy domestically in goods and services).

To an ever greater degree and in ways we can’t yet fully appreciate, the unfolding climate disaster is transforming the class struggle and posing massive challenges in the process. In our unions and communities, we need to take stock of these developments, set new goals and develop strategies that reflect the harsh reality that we are now in a struggle for survival.

While many Canadians have felt the pinch of inflation, northern Canada’s grocery prices have always been extreme. The exorbitant cost of food on the North is thought to be a naturally occurring phenomenon blamed on free-market forces, but authors Kristin Burnett and Travis Hay argue that it is the direct result of government policies and corporate monopolies.

Public hearings on housing systematically underrepresent the interests of renters and those who have been priced out of communities. This problem is increasingly recognized and studied in cities across North America. Public engagement should take a more representative and deeply democratic form, and one that is consistent with rapid action to address the housing crisis.

Wages do not cause inflation but they do eat into profits. And profit, the unpaid labour of the working class, is the lifeblood upon which all the parasitic layers of society depend—from bosses to central bankers. The wage-price spiral is not a serious model; it’s a tale told to frighten workers out of threatening profit.

A new study by TD Economics confirms the obvious: working class living standards are declining in Canada. For years, GDP and productivity growth have stagnated and, as the report observes, Canada’s bosses have sought to make up for it, in part, by extending our working hours. As Mitchell Thompson explains, the boom times are over: this is the era of capitalism’s decline.

Katsuhiro Otomo’s legendary anime film Akira (1988) celebrated its 35th anniversary on July 15, 2023. As CD film critic Kalden Dhatsenpa writes, we should remember the movie as a towering achievement of cinema, a cultural landmark depicting the turbulent economic and social history of Japan at the peak of “the biggest asset bubble in history.”

I sincerely hope that campaigners are able to make these wildfires into the “critical juncture” we’re all waiting for. But doing so will require taking an approach that makes one thing clear: human social structures exist within complex ecological systems. We can’t solve systemic problems in silos, or with a reductive focus on individual facets of the much bigger, more fearsome, beast.

Social democracy aims to achieve a fairer society through balanced power relations between classes, but no matter how many rights tenants hold under capitalism, landlords still exploit them. Organizers must resist the incorporation of working class struggles into the state, otherwise they ensure the ongoing reproduction of capitalist social relations.