The U.S. has the most dysfunctional healthcare system in the industrial world, has about twice the per capita costs, and some of the worst outcomes. It's also the only privatized system.

We're now in a situation in which Capital is highly mobile and Labour is basically immobile.

Modifying the core institutions of the society is no small challenge.

In a really business-run society like the United States, the business elites are deeply committed to class struggle and are engaged in it all the time. They're instinctive Marxists.

You also have to get beyond that to dismantle the system of production for profit rather than production for use. That means dismantling at least large parts of market systems.

This would be a very good moment to institute a call for imposing the Chemical Weapons Convention on the Middle East. The actual Chemical Weapons Convention. Not the version that [Barack] Obama presented in his address to the nation and that media commentators repeat. What he said is that the convention bars the use of chemical weapons. He knows better. And so do the commentators. The Chemical Weapons Convention calls for banning the production, storage and use of chemical weapons, not just the use. So why omit production and storage?

It’s not going to be easy to proceed. There are going to be barriers, difficulties, hardships, failures - it’s inevitable. But unless the spirit of the last year, here and elsewhere in the country and around the globe, unless that continues to grow and becomes a major force in the social and political world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.