Politics Theory Other

Teemu Ruskola joins PTO to talk about his new book, 'The Unmaking of the Chinese Working Class: How Communism Built a Capitalist Superpower'.

We talked about how China's remarkable economic rise was facilitated by the state's socialist inheritance and about the central role played by Chinese migrant workers. We went on to discuss the creation of a conventional capitalist labour market in China, as the so-called iron rice bowl of the State Owned Enterprises and the cradle-to-grave welfare system for urban workers was broken up. We went on to talk about the so-called New Enclosure Movement in the Chinese countryside that is finally expropriating the rural population of their control over land. Finally, we touched on the truly global implications of the unmaking and remaking of the Chinese working class.

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Between 2015 and 2022, a Saudi-led coalition of Arab states waged a devastating military campaign in Yemen, which - David Wearing argues in today's episode - was so severe that it resembles Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza.

A key role in the Yemen conflict was played by British-built planes that were used to indiscriminately bomb the country, and contributed to what was described by the United Nations at the time as the world's worst humanitarian disaster.

In a new report for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade and the Transition Security Project, David and his co-authors argue the case for the British government and UK arms companies to pay reparations to the people of Yemen.

In the episode we talked about the report and Britain's role in the Yemen conflict, including in the current phase as hostilities between Ansar Allah and Saudi Arabia escalate once more. And finally, we touched on the UAE and the Manchester City scandal and what it tells us about the phenomenon of the gulf monarchies' involvement in sportswashing.

Notes:

Britain’s Role in Yemen’s Brutal War Must End – And Reparations Should Follow:

https://zeteo.uk/p/britains-role-in-yemens-brutal-war

Reparations for Yemen: A proposal for a windfall tax on British arms companies that enabled Saudi war crimes

https://caat.org.uk/app/uploads/2026/09/CAATTSP-Yemen-Reperations-WEB.pdf

Séamus Malekafzali returns to PTO to talk about the possibility of further escalation in the US war on Iran and about the prospects for a diplomatic settlement. We chatted about the position of the Gulf states, and recent comments from officials in Qatar and the UAE that called for a reset of relations with Iran. We went on to talk about the price of oil and the global and regional economic impact of the conflict, and about the state of US forces in the region, following US acknowledgement of severe damage to the US naval base in Bahrain. Finally, we talked about the recent offensive by Ansar Allah in Yemen which has given the group control of Yemen's Red Sea coast.

In the popular imagination WWII is still often seen in both the United States and Britain as a moment of great national consensus, where political differences and class struggle were set aside in the cause of defeating European Fascism and Japanese imperialism.

But in his new book, 'Troop Movements', Tejasvi Nagaraja shows how the reality is much more complex, with military mobilisation and the wartime transformation of the US economy producing both new opportunities, and new dangers for Black Americans and all those engaged in anti-fascist and anti-racist struggle.

In the interview we talked about war-time wildcat strikes that aimed at creating better conditions for workers and that contested racism in the workplace.

We went on to discuss the consequences of the export of Jim Crow - with the deployment of racially segregated American units overseas and how that process affected local people and the management of subject populations in the British Empire. And finally, we talked about the post-war upsurge of strikes and protest within the US military - as soldiers deployed overseas demanded to return home, and as they sought to oppose nascent US imperialism and the reimposition of European colonialism in territories that had fallen under the control of Imperial Japan.