Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Boeing strike erupts at the heart of the US war machine
More than 3,200 Boeing workers in Missouri and Illinois walked out Monday morning in a powerful strike against the weapons manufacturer and decades of union-backed concessions. The strike has shut down production at three factories in the St. Louis area that build critical components for American imperialism’s global war machine, including F-15 warplanes and the next-generation F-47 stealth fighter.
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The strike has immediate implications for US militarism. The St. Louis-area plants are being retooled for the production of the F-47, which President Donald Trump has designated as the Air Force’s “next-generation air superiority fighter.” The Air Force already has 98 F-15EX fighters on order, and Boeing is accelerating output for Trump’s expanding war against China, Russia and other countries.
These factories also produce weapons for Israel, which is carrying out a genocidal assault on the population of Gaza and escalating war preparations against Iran. In November 2024, Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced a $20 billion deal for 25 new F-15s and upgrade kits for its existing fleet by Boeing.
The Trump administration and its media allies have already begun signaling intervention, framing the strike as a threat to “national defense priorities.” Fox News warned that a prolonged strike could disrupt production timelines for weapons “critical to future air combat capabilities.”
But Boeing workers must reject with contempt any appeal to national unity, security, or “defense.” These are lies used to justify war profiteering and suppress resistance from the working class.
In reality, Boeing executives are salivating over the financial prospects of global war. On a recent earnings call, CEO Kelly Orford bragged that a newly passed reconciliation bill would add $150 billion to defense spending through 2029. He also pointed to multi-billion-dollar contracts for Boeing “nuclear command and control” satellites and the planned “Golden Dome” anti-missile system as lucrative future revenue streams. “Our portfolio is well positioned to meet the priorities of our customers and the current global threat environment,” Orford told investors.
Who are these customers? They are the Pentagon, the Israel Defense Forces, and other regimes buying Boeing’s weapons with public money.
To bankroll this war machine, the Trump administration—backed by the Democrats—has launched a historic campaign of social counterrevolution. Trillions are to be slashed from Medicaid, food stamps, public education, and ultimately Social Security.
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The Boeing strike is part of a growing wave of resistance across the American and international working class. Thousands of GE Aerospace workers face expiring contracts later this month. Postal workers face privatization and job cuts. Teachers from Philadelphia to Los Angeles face school closures and layoffs. Autoworkers face mass firings and unsafe conditions.
Workers in every industry are being told to sacrifice for Wall Street profits and military escalation. The answer must be a coordinated industrial and political counteroffensive, uniting workers across sectors and borders to defend jobs, living standards, and democratic rights.
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Mass demonstrations against the genocide and expanding wars are absolutely necessary but they cannot stop the warmongers on their own. The Boeing strike reveals what social force is capable of shutting down the war machine and preventing a nuclear holocaust: the international working class. This includes the 300,000 workers involved directly in the production of arms and other military equipment in the US.
Instead of squandering society’s resources on destruction, the working class must fight to convert the military-industrial complex into a socially useful industry, producing housing, public transit, medical equipment, and renewable energy infrastructure.
This requires taking Boeing and all major defense contractors into public ownership under workers’ control, as part of the socialist reorganization of society on an international scale.
2. Israel’s annexation of the West Bank is almost complete
After nearly two years of war, Gaza lies in ruins, its people are starving, and Israel is preparing for invasion and annexation. Less well reported is that annexation of the West Bank, illegally occupied along with East Jerusalem, Gaza and Syria’s Golan Heights since the 1967 Arab Israeli war, is almost complete.
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[Benjamin] Netanyahu, prime minister for almost all of the period since 2009, did everything he could to sabotage any possibility of a Palestinian statelet, including exacerbating tensions between President Mahmoud Abbas’s PA based in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza. He told Israeli journalist Dan Margalit in 2012 that it was important to keep Hamas strong, as it served as a counterweight to the PA.
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Since returning to power in December 2022 with the help of the ultra-nationalist Religious Zionist Party and theocratic Jewish Power, after an 18-month period in opposition, Netanyahu has all but completed the process of annexing the West Bank.
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The government seized the opportunity presented by the Palestinians’ October 7, 2023 attack, the result of multiple provocations by Israel, to wage all-out war on the Palestinians in the name of Israel’s “existential” crisis and “national security”.
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[Israeli Finance Minister ] Smotrich [given wide-ranging administrative powers by Prime Minister Netanyahu] has initiated a raft of new regulations and submitted legislation for the Knesset to approve. These include: the reclassification of any unregistered land in the West Bank as belonging to the Israeli state, enabling Israel to claim vast tracts of Palestinian land while voiding Palestinian registration; the application of Israeli civil law to the West Bank, effectively dissolving Israel’s internationally recognized borders; direct purchase of land by settlers from Palestinians without military approval; expansion of the city of Jerusalem’s boundary to include the surrounding settlements within Israel; and the official designation of the West Bank as Judea and Samaria.
In practice, the West Bank is under full Israeli control. It has been annexed in all but name.
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None of this could have gone ahead without the complicity of Abbas and the [Palestinian Authority (PA)], which has the largest per capita police force in the world. Instead of using it to support the Palestinians against violent settlers and Israeli military incursions, the PA has suppressed any expression of opposition to Israel.
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In January, when the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas was announced, Abbas declared that the PA was ready to assume “full responsibility” in post-war Gaza. Under Egypt’s $58 billion scheme, Gaza’s reconstruction would be carried out with the Palestinians remaining in the ruined enclave, in contrast to US President Donald Trump’s “Riviera of the Middle East” based on the expulsion of the Palestinians, and under the “technocratic” management of the Palestinian Authority.
Abbas lambasted Hamas as “sons of dogs” in an angry speech in which he demanded the group release the remaining hostages, disarm, and hand over control of Gaza in order to end the war with Israel.
It is these conditions that brought thousands of Palestinians onto the streets for the first time last week in coordinated action across the West Bank against the war in Gaza and in support of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, with one of the largest marches in Ramallah.
3. Trump threatens FBI “may have to” seize fugitive Texas Democratic state legislators
The fight over Republican efforts to redraw congressional maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections has escalated sharply. On Tuesday, Texas Senator John Cornyn publicly urged the FBI to intervene and arrest the Democratic state legislators, who fled the state to deny the legislature a quorum.
On Sunday night, just over 50 Democrats in the Texas House left the state to delay attempts by Texas Republicans to gerrymander five seats primarily located in and around the larger urban centers. Last month, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, at the behest of President Donald Trump, called a special session to force through the new maps before the 2026 midterm elections.
In a letter sent to FBI Director Kash Patel on Tuesday, Cornyn asked Patel to “locate or arrest potential lawbreakers who have fled the state.” Cornyn concluded that these “legislators have committed potential criminal acts in their rush to avoid their constitutional responsibilities and must be fully investigated and held accountable.”
As a matter of fact, the Texas Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that legislators are permitted to leave the state to prevent a quorum. It is not a state or federal crime, and the FBI has no lawful role in such a dispute.
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The confrontation in Texas over redistricting is not an isolated dispute but part of a nationwide assault on democratic rights following the Supreme Court’s effective dismantling of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That legislation, won through mass struggles of the working class and oppressed minorities, was designed to prevent precisely the type of targeted disenfranchisement now openly embraced by both parties.
An ominous feature of the current conflict is the trend towards regional conflict, with the Texas Democrats fleeing to states with Democratic governors, like Illinois, New York, Massachusetts and California, because Republican governors would honor the arrest warrants issued by Texas.
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Never before has one party’s leadership threatened to use federal law enforcement to arrest sitting legislators for engaging in lawful parliamentary tactics—in this case, fleeing the state to deny a quorum and block the passage of an especially provocative law.
Trump’s declaration that the FBI “may have to” seize Democratic lawmakers, echoed by Texas Senator John Cornyn’s call for arrests, is not bluster. It is the language of dictatorship.
American history offers warnings. In the years before the Civil War, repeated breakdowns of the legislative process—nearly always involving conflict over the expansion of slavery into new territories—were accompanied by violence in the halls of Congress, armed confrontations in the states, and the use of federal power to enforce the will of the slaveholding elite.
4. Hamburg dockworker demands union action against genocide in Gaza
The shocking reports of the scale of Israel’s genocide in the Gaza Strip—from the bombing of civilian facilities and the shooting of people seeking aid, to the systematic starvation of small children—have sparked a renewed wave of global protest involving hundreds of thousands.
In Hamburg, a dockworker, Palestinian Mohammed Alattar, has spoken out. He had approached the public service union Verdi, which claims to represent “the interests of employees.” Verdi traditionally negotiates wages and working conditions for millions of workers in ports, airports, railways, public transport and other public services.
In all these sectors, workers are prepared to take action against the genocide and boycott German arms shipments to Israel, but the union refuses to lift a finger.
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Mohammed Alattar, who has lost 80 family members in the Gaza massacre, writes in a petition addressed to Verdi that he approached the union leadership with his story and asked what the union was doing in answer. He described the response with anger: “Nothing came back, no chance. Only complete ignorance and silence.”
This disregard for the suffering and catastrophe in Gaza, Alattar writes, “reflects the same disregard and isolation that Jewish people in Germany experienced 80 years ago.”
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Mohammed Alattar told the World Socialist Web Site, “Since this experience with Verdi, I have decided to go public myself and to gather allies, union organizations and groups, to carry out this fight—this campaign—also against Verdi.”
The Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) is fighting to build independent rank-and-file action committees in the ports, at the airports, on the railways, and in the arms industry, in order to coordinate resistance. These will link up with workers around the world to stop war and genocide. An international boycott will develop as part of the social revolution that will finally overcome capitalism itself, the root cause of war, fascism, and genocide.
5. Souleymane’s Story: “I don’t know why I came to France”
Souleymane’s Story (written and directed by Boris Lojkine) is an excellent and moving work from France, one of the best films of the year.
It opened August 1 in New York City and will show up on screens in other cities across North America in the coming weeks, including Los Angeles, Boston and Cleveland in the US, and Halifax, Toronto and Hamilton in Canada.
Lojkine’s work has won prizes at the Cannes film festival, César awards (top French film awards), European film awards and collected other honors internationally, including the audience award at the San Francisco film festival. These are well-deserved.
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Souleymane’s Story is very strong, sympathetic. It cuts through a lot of rubbish and sets out the nightmarish, exhausting, debilitating circumstances undergone by the undocumented, friendless, isolated immigrant.
6. Fascist mobilisations in Britain: For a socialist defense of asylum seekers and refugees!
Workers and youth in Britain must come to the defense of migrants and refugees. Far-right forces have been mobilizing in their hundreds outside hotels and hostels housing asylum seekers over the last weeks, demanding their closure and mass deportations of immigrants.
The mobilizations are a repeat of those held last summer after a fascist-organized riot in Southport, England, following the tragic stabbing deaths of three children by a mentally disturbed 17-year-old British citizen, Axel Rudakubana. A series of pogrom-type attacks were carried out nationwide, mostly targeting asylum seeker accommodation, with an attempt made to set one building on fire.
This year’s events began July 13, when protesters gathered at The Bell Hotel in Epping, Essex to demand an end to its use as accommodation for asylum seekers. Among them were many members of fascist parties. Local Conservative MPs used the event as a platform to demand the hotel be closed to asylum seekers.
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This follows a general election campaign a year ago in which Labour made a pledge to “Stop the Boats”, referring to asylum seekers crossing the Channel, a flagship policy. It comes just one month after Cooper’s “summer blitz” of police raids on immigrants, and two months after Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s pledge to end the use of asylum hotels by 2029 to save £1 billion a year.
In March, Starmer delivered an anti-immigration speech behind a lectern reading “Securing Our Borders” as he boasted of “Just focusing our efforts and resources on the nuts and bolts of removing people.”
Labour’s stance is reflected in its friendly press. Over the weekend, the Guardian provided sympathetic coverage to some of those jailed for their role in the attack on and setting fire to a hotel in Rotherham, South Yorkshire last year. The building housed 200 asylum seekers.
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In its 2024 Congress resolution, the Socialist Equality Party argued that the far-right danger does not flow primarily from the social dust that makes up the various fascist outfits, but from a lurch to the right of the entire capitalist political system as it seeks to impose a deepening social catastrophe and expanding agenda of war on the working class.
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Without a political offensive against the Labour Party to put a stop to its continual impoverishment of workers and scapegoating of migrants, aided by the trade unions and the state, the far-right cannot be defeated.
7. Netanyahu meets with military leaders on details of Israeli conquest and annexation of Gaza
As murderous military assaults as well as death from starvation intensify, details of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan for the total conquest and annexation of Gaza are coming to light.
On Tuesday, one day after Netanyahu’s official announcement, a high-level strategy meeting was convened in Tel Aviv to finalize Israel’s military operations. According to a detailed report in the Washington Post, the meeting brought together Netanyahu, Defense Minister Israel Katz, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. General Eyal Zamir, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Major General Itzik Cohen, head of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Operations Directorate.
The central topic discussed was the practical implementation of the directive to occupy the remaining parts of Gaza not currently under Israeli control. Several military options were laid on the table, including the full encirclement of major refugee camps, followed by enhanced air strikes, drone operations and special forces raids to “liquidate remaining Hamas elements.”
Unnamed Washington Post sources present in the meeting emphasized that the Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, still home to hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians, would now be considered combat zones.
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While elements within the Israeli government and military remain deeply divided on this course of action, the fascist Netanyahu government has made clear it will force compliance from the IDF leadership or remove those who resist.
As one senior official told Israel’s Channel 12: “The army must fall into line. This is a matter of survival for the State of Israel.” After 22 months of Israeli genocide in Gaza, the Zionist regime is now stating openly what it has refused to admit publicly all along.
The objective is a total restructuring of the Strip under Israeli rule. It is an open-ended occupation with no exit strategy, no plan for Palestinian self-rule and a prerequisite for ethnic cleansing of Gaza.
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International law forbids collective punishment, starvation and forced displacement, but what Netanyahu defines as a “complete military victory” is, in practice, the coordinated destruction of an entire society through war, deprivation and occupation. With US backing, the Israeli government is not only permitted to commit these acts, but being encouraged.
Washington has vetoed multiple Security Council resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire. European powers have confined themselves to statements of “deep concern” while arms continue to be exported to Israel. Arab governments have shifted policy quietly since early 2025, choosing to privately engage with Israel on border control and refugee management.
Protests have reemerged in Tel Aviv, led this week by the families of hostages still held by Hamas. Images of emaciated hostages released over the weekend by Hamas have ignited a wave of public anger. Thousands took to the streets demanding action by Netanyahu to end the assault on Gaza.
8. Oppose the far-right takeover of George Mason University!
A statement from the The International Youth and Students for Social Equality at George Mason University in Fairfax County, Virginia:
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality at George Mason University (GMU) denounces the Trump administration’s fraudulent investigations into alleged racial discrimination in hiring, admissions, and the university’s response to antisemitism as fraudulent attempts to silence dissent and undermine democratic rights. These attacks serve the aim of paving the way for a presidential dictatorship, trampling academic freedom and student activism.
The White House has launched a series of federal investigations into GMU, focusing on accusations of discriminatory practices tied to its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. These probes examine GMU’s admissions, scholarship policies, and employment practices under civil rights laws such as Title VI and Title VII, specifically targeting alleged race and sex-based discrimination in hiring, promotions, student benefits and false claims of “antisemitism.”
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The IYSSE at GMU opposes the Trump administration’s hostile takeover of George Mason University and other schools around the country. In targeting DEI as a supposed “Marxist” concept, Trump reveals his real aim is to stamp out all left wing thought.
But we also reject the claim that DEI and other forms of race or gender-based criteria in academia are in any way a “left-wing” or “Marxist” response to the crass right-wing politics of the Trump administration.
These racialist fixations reject the central concept of social class, an essential component of Marxism in determining a policy’s “progressive” character. Instead, such policies promote the careerism of the middle class within academia and professional life, while also attempting to divide and misdirect workers and youth away from challenging capitalist relations in society.
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The capitalist class responded to the 2020 mass protests against George Floyd’s killing through a dual strategy of violent repression and political co-optation. The Democratic Party, while feigning outrage against Trump’s authoritarianism, joined Republicans in imposing curfews, deploying the National Guard, and denouncing protesters as “outside agitators.” Simultaneously, Democrats promoted racial identity politics to divert and fragment the movement along non-class lines.
This reached its peak with the attack on monuments to the American founding fathers; figures emblematic of the United States’ democratic foundations. At GMU, this takes on special relevance as George Mason, a close ally of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, was a major influence on the U.S. Declaration of Independence and helped to enshrine the Fifth Amendment—in particular, its guarantee of the right of due process—in the Constitution.
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As the GMU IYSSE wrote last year, “Students and youth need a perspective to guide a struggle against the attacks on democratic rights. In doing this, they must draw the political lessons of 14 months of protests against the US-backed genocide in Gaza.”
This included rejecting the politics of putting pressure on the Democratic Party as the focus of the protests and to recognize “The root cause” lay “not in the choice of individual governments or politicians, but in the objective crisis of world capitalism and the emergence of an imperialist redivision of the world.”
9. Tuberculosis threatens immigrants at Tacoma ICE detention center
The Washington State Department of Health confirmed July 31 that there were seven suspected cases of tuberculosis (TB) at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, prompting urgent questions about health conditions and medical care at the federal immigrant detention facility. This has been a systemic problem, as underscored by a recent Human Rights Watch report that detailed the inhumane conditions faced by the tens of thousands being held in ICE custody.
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Tuberculosis is a dangerous and potentially deadly airborne disease that mainly affects the lungs, but can also spread to other parts of the body. It spreads through the air when someone with TB coughs, sneezes, or even simply talks, and it can be contagious even before it causes symptoms to appear. While some people carry the bacteria without feeling sick (known as latent TB), the disease can become active later—especially in those with weakened immune systems—causing symptoms like coughing, fever, weight loss and night sweats. Without treatment, active TB can be fatal and highly infectious.
This makes early detection and treatment critical, especially in high-risk settings like ICE detention centers, where crowded conditions and limited access to healthcare can lead to rapid outbreaks. These facilities are known “hotspots” for TB, and unchecked spread inside them can easily reach the broader community. Fear of stigma or deportation can prevent people from seeking care, allowing the disease to worsen and increasing the risk of developing drug-resistant TB, which is even harder to treat. Addressing TB in these settings isn’t just a medical issue—it’s a public health priority that demands urgent attention.
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The Trump administration is undertaking this unprecedented expansion of immigration detention in support of a sweeping mass deportation strategy. Backed by a $45 billion allocation from Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” ICE is moving to nearly double its detention capacity to 61,000 beds nationwide. At the center of this expansion is the construction of new state-run detention facilities, such as “Alligator Alcatraz” in the Florida Everglades—a remote complex built in just over a week with tents and trailers. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has framed such harsh, isolated environments as part of a deterrence policy meant to signal dire consequences for undocumented immigrants.
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The administration has also revived and expanded controversial enforcement mechanisms, including the use of agreements with local law enforcement, arrests at formerly protected locations like schools and clinics, and the termination of Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole. Arrest quotas for ICE officers have doubled, and facilities are being planned near airports in multiple states to enable rapid processing and deportation.
ICE’s average daily population has reached a record 56,400, up 42 percent since Trump’s second inauguration, and the highest in US history. While deportation figures under Obama were also historically high, the current administration’s open embrace of punitive conditions, mass arrests, and the targeting of vulnerable immigrants represents a further escalation. Statements from top officials confirm that deterrence through suffering is not accidental but rather a central feature of their strategy.
10. Chinese woman arrested in Australia on charge of “foreign interference”
The Albanese Labor government quickly exploited, and claimed credit for, the arrest of a Chinese citizen in Canberra last Saturday, charged with one count of “reckless foreign interference.”
Despite years of allegations of malign Chinese interference in Australia, she was only the third person to be charged under the far-reaching foreign interference legislation pushed through parliament by the Liberal-National Coalition government, backed by Labor, in 2018.
The woman, an Australian permanent resident who cannot be named because of a court suppression order to protect her from reprisals, appeared in the Australian Capital Territory Magistrates Court on Monday, accused of secretly collecting information about a Buddhist association.
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In a statement that prejudicially assumed her guilt, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the government’s message to people who would attempt to threaten or interfere with Australian communities was simple: “Our law enforcement and intelligence agencies will find you.”
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As the World Socialist Web Site has explained, the foreign interference laws violate basic democratic rights. They contain sweeping offenses, ranging from treason to breaching official secrecy and cooperating with a foreign or international organization.
As well as creating seven new “foreign interference” offenses, the legislation expands existing offenses, including sabotage and advocating mutiny, to broaden their potential use to criminalize anti-war advocacy and activity, including the exposure of war crimes.
These provisions, which carry penalties of up to life imprisonment, go beyond accusations of assisting another country. They could be used to outlaw any political dissent that has international links, such as the campaign opposing the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza or the escalating US-led war drive against China.
The charge of “reckless” foreign interference illustrates how far the legislation can stretch. It does not require a deliberate attempt to act on behalf of a foreign power. Instead, it is enough that an individual acted “covertly” and was “aware of” a “substantial” and “unjustifiable” risk that their conduct would “influence” a political or government process in Australia, or “influence” the exercise of an Australian democratic or political right or duty, or “support” foreign intelligence activities, or “prejudice Australia’s national security.”
All these words are vague.
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US media coverage of the latest arrest pointedly commented that it came just after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese visited China and met President Xi Jinping for the fourth time since taking office in 2022.
Whether this arrest was coordinated with US agencies is not clear. Previously, both the Trump and Biden administrations actively backed the adoption and use of the foreign interference laws.
The latest arrest is another warning of a wartime-like atmosphere being drummed up by the political establishment and the corporate media to intimidate opponents of the intensifying offensive against China.
11. Quebec’s ruling elite salivates over huge increase in Canada’s military budge
The avowedly right-wing “Quebec First” Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government has proclaimed rapid expansion of the province’s military-industrial base as central to its economic and political agenda.
With enthusiastic support from Quebec’s business and political elite, both federalist and pro-Quebec independence, the CAQ government is working hand in glove with the province’s arms manufacturers to win contracts and secure bumper profits from the vast military spending increases that have been announced by Canada’s federal Liberal government and Europe’s NATO powers.
Quebec is home to more than a hundred major military-security companies, including CAE, Bombardier Defense, Pratt & Whitney Canada and Thales Canada. It also produces much of the aluminum used in US armaments, and the CAQ government has ambitions for the province to become a major global supplier of “dual-use” critical minerals.
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While the Quebec ruling class is certainly eager to cash in on the opportunity to make guaranteed bumper profits from war contracts, that is not the only factor motivating its enthusiastic support for massive military spending increases and state support in expanding Quebec’s military-industrial base. It is eager to dramatically augment the striking power of Canada’s military and its capacity to pump out weapons and weapons systems, because it fully supports Canadian imperialism’s role as a protagonist in the imperialist drive to repartition the world through what is a developing global war.
For decades, the pseudo-left and other Quebec nationalists promoted the lie that the Quebec bourgeoisie is “oppressed” and Québécois capitalist society is progressive, even pacifist. While it is undoubtedly true that the vast majority of workers and youth in Quebec oppose war, the Quebec ruling class and its political servants have, on the contrary, a long tradition of supporting Canadian imperialism and its depredations.
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The CAQ government’s plan to develop Quebec’s armaments industries will be implemented at the expanse of the working class in the form of billions of dollars in subsidies and non-repayable loans, tax breaks and cheap hydroelectricity for the weapons merchants.
Under conditions where the government is committed to balancing the budget without tax increases and under pressure from the credit rating agencies that speak for domestic and international finance capital to do so expeditiously, this will all add up to an even more intense state assault on public services and worker protections.
12. Australian “affordable” housing forces workers into financial straits
The skyrocketing price of housing is a major financial burden for growing numbers of Australian workers. So-called “affordable” housing schemes promoted by (primarily Labor) governments at state and federal levels as the solution to this crisis are woefully inadequate, both in terms of availability and affordability.
A June article in the Guardian highlighted the reality that many supposedly “affordable” homes, attracting subsidies and financial incentives for developers and landlords, are far from affordable for low- and middle-income workers.
The properties are subject to punitive means-testing and variable-pricing rules, effectively ensuring that anyone eligible to live there will struggle to pay the rent. As a result, in every conceivable scenario, all of these “affordable” homes exceed the generally accepted benchmark of “rental stress”—that 30 percent or more of household income goes on rent.
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The working class has only one way out of the disaster, a fight for a socialist program, against all other political tendencies and organisations. A workers’ government can place the building industry, as well as the banks, property developers and other major corporations, under democratic workers’ control and ownership. Then the massive wealth in society, currently controlled by the wealthy few and increasingly squandered on growing military spending, can instead be put towards real social needs, like high quality public housing, including a mass works program to construct hundreds of thousands of new homes.
13. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
Bogdan Syrotiuk
