One hears often of the "ruling class", the "working class", the bourgeois, the lumpenproletariat, etc. What classes does the modern Marxist need to understand, and can these classes be ranked in any way? By "modern Marxist", I mean the Marxist of the 21st Century: the Trotskyist, a revolutionary internationalist.
On entend fréquemment des termes tels que « classe dirigeante », « classe ouvrière », « bourgeoisie » et « lumpenprolétariat ». Quelles sont les classes que les marxistes modernes doivent comprendre ? Existe-t-il une hiérarchie entre ces classes ? Le « marxiste moderne » dont il est question ici est un marxiste du XXIe siècle — plus précisément, un trotskyste, un internationaliste révolutionnaire.
The modern Marxist must understand the class structure not as a static taxonomy but as a dynamic, conflict-ridden set of relationships rooted in the mode of production. The classes are defined by their relationship to the means of production — ownership, control, exploitation, or exclusion. And yes, they can be ranked, not in the sense of a simple ladder of status, but in terms of their objective position within the capitalist system and their corresponding political trajectory. The fundamental ranking is this: which class has the historical capacity to lead society forward, and which classes are obstacles, allies, or cannon fodder.
The Fundamental Classes
The Bourgeoisie — the ruling class. Today, this is not the diffuse class of competing industrialists Marx described in 1848. It is a financial oligarchy. As Lenin demonstrated in Imperialism, the concentration and centralization of capital fuses bank capital with industrial capital into finance capital — a "financial oligarchy" that dominates not only the economy but the state itself. Nick Beams, in his 2017 article on the domination of finance capital, cites research showing that just 30 financial institutions control more than half the shares in the world's 299 largest corporations. The distinction between industrial and finance capital has collapsed: "In the end, all capital is finance capital."
David North's November 2025 lecture, Where is America Going?, takes this analysis further. The American oligarchy — Trump's cabinet alone holds a collective net worth exceeding $60 billion — represents a class whose wealth has become untethered from production. The total market capitalization of US-listed companies now exceeds 220% of GDP, compared to 80% in 1971. This is fictitious capital, claims on future wealth that may never be realized. Politically, the oligarchy can no longer rule through democratic forms. It is constructing what North calls "a Versailles on the Potomac."
North also applies one of Marx's most devastating formulations from The Class Struggles in France to the present: the finance aristocracy is nothing but "the rebirth of the lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society." The oligarchy's wealth is derived not from production but from speculation, manipulation of debt, and the plundering of social resources. Its mode of life — the Epstein connections, the Mar-a-Lago brothel culture, the fusion of money, depravity, and violence — reproduces the criminality of the underworld at the summit of society.
The Proletariat — the revolutionary class. The working class is defined by a single criterion: the compulsion to sell labor power to survive, because one owns no means of production. This includes factory workers, but it also includes teachers, editors, computer programmers, nurses, and every other wage-earner who depends on a paycheck. As Fred Mazelis explained in a 1998 WSWS reply to a reader, the relative privileges of white-collar layers have largely evaporated. Job insecurity, the need for multiple wage-earners per household, and the assault on living standards have made the objective condition of the white-collar worker indistinguishable from that of the traditional blue-collar proletarian.
The working class has not shrunk — it has exploded. From 1980 to 2020, as Eric London reported to the Seventh Congress of the Socialist Equality Party, the global working class grew by 2 billion people. A majority of the world's population now lives in cities for the first time in history. Ninety percent of world trade flows through a few dozen megacities where the working class is concentrated in positions of immense potential power. This is the class that Marx identified as the only consistently revolutionary force in modern society — not because it is morally superior, but because it has "nothing to lose but its chains" and can only emancipate itself by abolishing class society altogether.
The Intermediate Classes
The Petty Bourgeoisie — the vacillating class. Trotsky's analysis in "Bourgeoisie, Petty Bourgeoisie, and Proletariat" (1932) remains the essential text. The petty bourgeoisie — small business owners, self-employed professionals, the peasantry — is an exploited and disenfranchised class that regards the bourgeoisie with envy and often hatred, yet is incapable of an independent policy. It must choose between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Trotsky identified three historical stages in this relationship. In the period of capitalism's rise, the petty bourgeoisie produced Jacobinism — a "plebian method" of settling accounts with feudalism that served the bourgeoisie despite sharp clashes with it. In the period of capitalist maturity, it was subordinated through reformist democracy and the labor aristocracy. In the period of capitalist decline, the bourgeoisie mobilizes the petty bourgeoisie through fascism — "a caricature of Jacobinism" — directing its despair and hatred against the proletariat rather than against capital.
The political trajectory of the petty bourgeoisie is therefore not fixed. In conditions of capitalist disintegration, it can link its fate to the proletariat, provided the revolutionary party demonstrates the strength, firmness, and capacity to lead. If the party vacillates and fails, the petty bourgeoisie turns toward fascism. The stakes could not be higher.
The Labor Aristocracy — the conservative layer within the working class. This is a stratum of workers — trade union officials, privileged skilled layers, certain professional-managerial strata — who are bought off with a share of imperialist superprofits. Historically, this was the basis of social democracy's betrayal in 1914 and the trade union bureaucracy's role as a transmission belt for bourgeois politics within the working class. The labor aristocracy is not a separate class but a politically decisive conservative layer whose material interests are tied to the preservation of capitalism. It is the social base of the pseudo-left — the DSA, the union apparatus, the NGO sector — which channels working-class opposition back into the Democratic Party and the capitalist state.
The Declassed Layers
The Lumpenproletariat — the "dangerous class." Marx defined this in the Eighteenth Brumaire as the "refuse of all classes" — swindlers, criminals, beggars, the chronically unemployed, the demoralized and degraded. Politically, the lumpenproletariat has historically been a tool of reaction. Louis Bonaparte's Society of December 10 was recruited from this layer. Fascist street armies drew heavily from it. Because it has no stable relationship to production, it has no independent class interest and can be purchased by the highest bidder.
But the concept has a second, more dialectical application. Marx's description of the finance aristocracy as the lumpenproletariat reborn "on the heights of bourgeois society" reveals that the boundary between the criminal underworld and the ruling class is not as clean as bourgeois morality pretends. The oligarchy's parasitism, its detachment from production, its predatory appetites — these reproduce the lumpenproletarian condition at the summit. The difference is that the oligarch has a private jet.
The Dynamic: Polarization
The classes should not be understood as a fixed hierarchy but as a process of polarization. The Communist Manifesto described capitalism's historical tendency to simplify class antagonisms: society splits into "two great hostile camps" — bourgeoisie and proletariat. The intermediate layers are ground down. The petty bourgeoisie is proletarianized. The middle class shrinks — as the WSWS documented in 2015, Germany's middle class fell from 56% to 48% of the population between 1992 and 2013. This process has accelerated dramatically.
The political ranking follows from the economic analysis. The bourgeoisie is the enemy — a parasitic oligarchy driving society toward dictatorship and war. The proletariat is the revolutionary subject — the only class capable of leading the struggle for socialism, because its exploitation is inseparable from the existence of capitalism itself. The petty bourgeoisie is the battleground: it will follow either the bourgeoisie into fascism or the proletariat into revolution. The labor aristocracy is an obstacle within the working class that must be politically defeated. The lumpenproletariat is politically unreliable and generally reactionary, though individuals from declassed backgrounds can be won to the revolutionary movement.
The task of the modern Marxist — the Trotskyist, the revolutionary internationalist — is to build the political party of the working class, independent of all bourgeois and petty-bourgeois tendencies, armed with the program of world socialist revolution. Everything else is commentary.
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Le marxiste moderne doit comprendre la structure de classe non comme une taxonomie statique, mais comme un ensemble dynamique de relations, traversé de conflits, enraciné dans le mode de production. Les classes se définissent par leur rapport aux moyens de production — propriété, contrôle, exploitation ou exclusion. Et oui, on peut les hiérarchiser, non pas au sens d'une simple échelle de statut, mais en fonction de leur position objective au sein du système capitaliste et de leur trajectoire politique correspondante. Le classement fondamental est le suivant : quelle classe a la capacité historique de faire avancer la société, et quelles classes sont des obstacles, des alliés ou de la chair à canon.
Les classes fondamentales
La bourgeoisie — la classe dirigeante. Aujourd'hui, il ne s'agit plus de la classe diffuse d'industriels concurrents que Marx décrivait en 1848. C'est une oligarchie financière. Comme Lénine l'a démontré dans L'Impérialisme, la concentration et la centralisation du capital fusionnent le capital bancaire avec le capital industriel pour former le capital financier — une « oligarchie financière » qui domine non seulement l'économie, mais l'État lui-même. Nick Beams, dans son article de 2017 sur la domination du capital financier, cite des recherches montrant que trente institutions financières seulement contrôlent plus de la moitié des actions des 299 plus grandes entreprises mondiales. La distinction entre capital industriel et capital financier s'est effondrée : « En fin de compte, tout capital est du capital financier. »
La conférence de David North de novembre 2025, Où va l'Amérique ?, pousse cette analyse plus loin. L'oligarchie américaine — le seul cabinet Trump détient une fortune nette collective supérieure à 60 milliards de dollars — représente une classe dont la richesse s'est détachée de la production. La capitalisation boursière totale des entreprises cotées aux États-Unis dépasse désormais 220 % du PIB, contre 80 % en 1971. Il s'agit de capital fictif, de créances sur une richesse future qui pourrait ne jamais se réaliser. Politiquement, l'oligarchie ne peut plus gouverner par les formes démocratiques. Elle construit ce que North appelle « un Versailles sur le Potomac ».
North applique également l'une des formulations les plus dévastatrices de Marx, tirée des Luttes de classes en France, à la période actuelle : l'aristocratie financière n'est rien d'autre que « la renaissance du lumpenprolétariat sur les sommets de la société bourgeoise ». La richesse de l'oligarchie ne provient pas de la production, mais de la spéculation, de la manipulation de la dette et du pillage des ressources sociales. Son mode de vie — les liens avec Epstein, la culture de maison close de Mar-a-Lago, la fusion de l'argent, de la dépravation et de la violence — reproduit la criminalité de la pègre au sommet de la société.
Le prolétariat — la classe révolutionnaire. La classe ouvrière se définit par un seul critère : la contrainte de vendre sa force de travail pour survivre, parce qu'on ne possède aucun moyen de production. Cela inclut les ouvriers d'usine, mais aussi les enseignants, les rédacteurs, les informaticiens, les infirmières et tous les autres salariés qui dépendent d'un chèque de paie. Comme l'expliquait Fred Mazelis en 1998 dans une réponse du WSWS à un lecteur, les privilèges relatifs des couches de cols blancs se sont largement évaporés. L'insécurité de l'emploi, la nécessité de plusieurs salariés par foyer et l'assaut contre le niveau de vie ont rendu la condition objective du col blanc indiscernable de celle du prolétaire ouvrier traditionnel.
La classe ouvrière n'a pas rétréci — elle a explosé. De 1980 à 2020, comme l'a rapporté Eric London au Septième Congrès du Parti de l'égalité socialiste, la classe ouvrière mondiale a augmenté de 2 milliards de personnes. Une majorité de la population mondiale vit désormais dans des villes pour la première fois de l'histoire. Quatre-vingt-dix pour cent du commerce mondial transite par quelques dizaines de mégapoles où la classe ouvrière est concentrée dans des positions d'un potentiel de pouvoir immense. C'est la classe que Marx a identifiée comme la seule force constamment révolutionnaire dans la société moderne — non parce qu'elle est moralement supérieure, mais parce qu'elle n'a « rien à perdre que ses chaînes » et ne peut s'émanciper qu'en abolissant la société de classes elle-même.
Les classes intermédiaires
La petite-bourgeoisie — la classe vacillante. L'analyse de Trotsky dans « Bourgeoisie, petite-bourgeoisie et prolétariat » (1932) reste le texte essentiel. La petite-bourgeoisie — petits commerçants, professionnels indépendants, paysannerie — est une classe exploitée et privée de droits qui regarde la bourgeoisie avec envie et souvent avec haine, mais qui est incapable d'une politique indépendante. Elle doit choisir entre la bourgeoisie et le prolétariat.
Trotsky a identifié trois étapes historiques dans ce rapport. Dans la période d'essor du capitalisme, la petite-bourgeoisie a produit le jacobinisme — une « méthode plébéienne » de régler les comptes avec la féodalité qui servait la bourgeoisie malgré de vifs affrontements avec elle. Dans la période de maturité capitaliste, elle a été subordonnée par la démocratie réformiste et l'aristocratie ouvrière. Dans la période de déclin capitaliste, la bourgeoisie mobilise la petite-bourgeoisie par le fascisme — « une caricature du jacobinisme » — en dirigeant son désespoir et sa haine contre le prolétariat plutôt que contre le capital.
La trajectoire politique de la petite-bourgeoisie n'est donc pas fixe. Dans des conditions de désintégration capitaliste, elle peut lier son sort au prolétariat, à condition que le parti révolutionnaire fasse preuve de la force, de la fermeté et de la capacité de diriger. Si le parti vacille et échoue, la petite-bourgeoisie se tourne vers le fascisme. Les enjeux ne sauraient être plus élevés.
L'aristocratie ouvrière — la couche conservatrice au sein de la classe ouvrière. Il s'agit d'une strate de travailleurs — dirigeants syndicaux, couches qualifiées privilégiées, certaines strates professionnelles-managériales — qui sont achetés par une part des superprofits impérialistes. Historiquement, c'est la base de la trahison de la social-démocratie en 1914 et du rôle de la bureaucratie syndicale comme courroie de transmission de la politique bourgeoise au sein de la classe ouvrière. L'aristocratie ouvrière n'est pas une classe distincte, mais une couche conservatrice politiquement décisive dont les intérêts matériels sont liés à la préservation du capitalisme. C'est la base sociale de la pseudo-gauche — les DSA, l'appareil syndical, le secteur des ONG — qui canalise l'opposition ouvrière vers le Parti démocrate et l'État capitaliste.
Les couches déclassées
Le lumpenprolétariat — la « classe dangereuse ». Marx l'a défini dans le 18 Brumaire comme le « rebut de toutes les classes » — escrocs, criminels, mendiants, chômeurs chroniques, les démoralisés et les dégradés. Politiquement, le lumpenprolétariat a historiquement été un instrument de la réaction. La Société du 10 décembre de Louis Bonaparte était recrutée dans cette couche. Les armées de rue fascistes y ont largement puisé. Parce qu'il n'a aucun rapport stable à la production, il n'a aucun intérêt de classe indépendant et peut être acheté par le plus offrant.
Mais le concept a une seconde application, plus dialectique. La description par Marx de l'aristocratie financière comme le lumpenprolétariat renaissant « sur les sommets de la société bourgeoise » révèle que la frontière entre la pègre et la classe dirigeante n'est pas aussi nette que la morale bourgeoise le prétend. Le parasitisme de l'oligarchie, son détachement de la production, ses appétits prédateurs — tout cela reproduit la condition lumpenprolétarienne au sommet. La différence, c'est que l'oligarque a un jet privé.
La dynamique : la polarisation
Les classes ne doivent pas être comprises comme une hiérarchie figée, mais comme un processus de polarisation. Le Manifeste communiste décrivait la tendance historique du capitalisme à simplifier les antagonismes de classe : la société se scinde en « deux grands camps hostiles » — bourgeoisie et prolétariat. Les couches intermédiaires sont broyées. La petite-bourgeoisie est prolétarisée. La classe moyenne rétrécit — comme le WSWS l'a documenté en 2015, la classe moyenne allemande est passée de 56 % à 48 % de la population entre 1992 et 2013. Ce processus s'est dramatiquement accéléré.
Le classement politique découle de l'analyse économique. La bourgeoisie est l'ennemi — une oligarchie parasitaire qui pousse la société vers la dictature et la guerre. Le prolétariat est le sujet révolutionnaire — la seule classe capable de diriger la lutte pour le socialisme, parce que son exploitation est inséparable de l'existence même du capitalisme. La petite-bourgeoisie est le champ de bataille : elle suivra soit la bourgeoisie dans le fascisme, soit le prolétariat dans la révolution. L'aristocratie ouvrière est un obstacle au sein de la classe ouvrière qui doit être politiquement vaincu. Le lumpenprolétariat est politiquement peu fiable et généralement réactionnaire, bien que des individus issus de milieux déclassés puissent être gagnés au mouvement révolutionnaire.
La tâche du marxiste moderne — le trotskyste, le révolutionnaire internationaliste — est de construire le parti politique de la classe ouvrière, indépendant de toutes les tendances bourgeoises et petites-bourgeoises, armé du programme de la révolution socialiste mondiale. Tout le reste n'est que commentaire.
Joseph Kishore, the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (US)
reports to the party's Ninth Congress to introduce its second
resolution: the fight against the drive to dictatorship must be waged not by
relying on Trump's factional opponents within the ruling class or the
Democratic Party, but through the independent political mobilization of
the working class, organized in rank-and-file committees and armed with a
revolutionary socialist program, to conquer political power.
With assistance from Socialism AI, here is a summary of his report:
Introduction
The report introduced the second resolution, "The
drive to dictatorship and the political radicalization in the United
States," which was unanimously adopted
David
North's opening report established the framework: the Congress convenes
at "a critical turning point in the political history of the United
States and the world—the point of intersection of war, economic crisis,
and rapidly growing social radicalization"
The resolution takes up the political and social consequences of that intersection within the United States
The analysis is the product of sustained historical work, not an impressionistic response to recent events
The
ruling class placed Trump in power believing "the interests of the
oligarchy would be well cared for by a sociopathic gangster"
Part I: Oligarchy and the Record of the Party's Analysis of Trump
Two false interpretations of Trump
Interpretation 1: Trump as "a
monster risen from the depths, an inexplicable eruption into an
otherwise healthy democracy" → task becomes restoration and electing
Democrats
Interpretation 2:
Trump as "a satanic genius, imposing his will upon a helpless nation" →
working class reduced to spectator, opposition limited to moral protest
and appeals to the institutions that produced him
Five themes characterizing the SEP's analysis across the Trump period
Class analysis of Trump's rise
As early as March 3, 2016, David North wrote that
Trump's candidacy could "no longer be dismissed" and was "of a
distinctly fascistic character"
Rejected
the Democratic Party/media explanation that Trump's rise was simply the
product of racism and the supposed racism of white workers
Identified
a sociopolitical process: Trump pitched his message to "the intense
anger and frustration of tens of millions of Americans who feel—quite
justifiably—neglected and scorned by a political system that is
indifferent to the problems with which they are confronted every day"
Why
did the right benefit rather than the left? The Democratic Party is
"the political instrument of Wall Street and substantial sections of
military and intelligence strategists," and the pseudo-left milieu is
characterized by "complacency, self-absorption and, above all, contempt
for the working class"
Prognosis from
2016: "Even if Trump were to disappear tomorrow, it would not be long
before another fascistic demagogue would emerge to take his place"
Warning
of "discontented military and police-intelligence operatives, with
substantial combat experience and access to serious fighting forces, who
are preparing to enter the political arena" — written five years before
January 6
Repudiation of racialist interpretation: Niles Niemuth answered a New York Times
op-ed claiming white men supported Trump to recover lost advantages;
Eric London refuted the "inherent racism of the white working class"
narrative with a detailed analysis of election returns
This fight anticipated the party's response to the 1619 Project three years later
The
SEP statement on Trump's first inauguration: "History has caught up
with American capitalism… Donald Trump personifies the corruption,
ruthlessness, parasitism and essentially fascistic mindset of the
capitalist oligarchs who control the United States"
Class anatomy of ruling-class opposition to Trump
The June 13, 2017 Political Committee statement,
"Palace Coup or Class Struggle," delineated three forms of opposition to
Trump, corresponding to three classes:
First:
Opposition of a powerful faction within the capitalist class —
"fundamentally antidemocratic, involving behind-the-scenes plotting with
elements within the military-intelligence establishment and
corporate-financial elite" — the methods of a palace coup. Its quarrel
was over the anti-Russia campaign, not democratic rights or anti-working
class policies
Second:
Opposition of "affluent sections of the middle class" — the DSA, ISO,
Socialist Alternative, Greens — whose function is "to maintain the
domination of the ruling class over the working class"
Third: Opposition "between the ruling class and the working class, the broad mass of the population"
Strategic
conclusion: The working class must fight for Trump's removal, but "this
task must not be entrusted to Trump's factional opponents in the ruling
class… It must develop its struggle against Trump under its own banner
and with its own program"
Consistent warning of the fascist danger
October 2019: "No to American Fascism! Build a Mass Movement to Force Trump Out!" — declared "The old refrain, 'It
can't happen here'… is hopelessly out of date." The source: "The massive
concentration of wealth within the richest one percent of the
population and the unprecedented level of social inequality are
incompatible with traditional democratic forms of rule"
June
2, 2020: Following Trump's law-and-order broadcast and military assault
on peaceful protests outside the White House — "will live in infamy as
the beginning of a coup d'état by a criminal administration" (seven
months before January 6)
November 11,
2020: The Political Committee set out the mechanism of the conspiracy in
advance — Republican legislatures repudiating the popular vote, legal
challenges before a packed Supreme Court, the precedent of Bush v. Gore — while Biden dismissed Trump's actions as "an embarrassment"
January
7, 2021: David North wrote: "Not only can a fascist coup happen here.
It has happened here… even if the initial effort has fallen short of its
goal, it will happen again"
Contrast with Bhaskar Sunkara of Jacobin, who tweeted he had "seen the stability of US republican institutions in the face of a right-wing mob"
Historical and international framework
David North's lecture 11 days after the coup:
"The main cause of the eruption of January 6 is to be found in the
global crisis of the capitalist system, rather than in specifically
American conditions"
The coup situated in the arc of American history since Kennedy's inauguration (60 years to the day before Biden's):
Kennedy's reformism was a strategy against socialism, resting on economic dominance that was beginning to shift
Nixon's ending of dollar-gold convertibility (August 15, 1971) was the turning point
"The
abandonment of social reform required a turn toward increasing social
repression. The trajectory of American democracy followed the trajectory
of American capitalism—that is, downward"
Milestones:
Watergate, Carter's Taft-Hartley against striking miners, Reagan's
destruction of PATCO, Iran-Contra and Rex 84, theft of the 2000
election, Patriot Act and Guantanamo, Obama's targeted assassination of
US citizens without due process
Growth of financial parasitism from the 1990s through the pandemic bailouts
"January 6 marks a new stage in a protracted process of democratic breakdown"
Basic
alternatives: "Where is America going? Will it go toward fascism, or
will it go toward socialism? … If democracy is to survive … power must
pass into the hands of the working class"
Continuity — through Biden to Trump's return and the present drive to dictatorship
The Biden years as "an interregnum within a single process," not a rupture
Biden two days after the coup: "We need a Republican Party. We need an opposition that is principled and strong"
The
Democrats' investigation concluded the central cause of January 6 was
one man — "to whitewash the role of pillars of the US government that
were deeply involved in the coup"
The Justice Department prosecuted foot soldiers and left the network of officials, operatives, and financiers untouched
The Democratic Party "feared the population more than it feared the coup"
Biden
policy: initiation and escalation of the US-NATO proxy war against
Russia; arming, financing, and shielding the Israeli genocide in Gaza;
shoring up ruling-class consensus behind American imperialism
Trump's
return: no mass surge of support — he gained three million votes;
Harris fell 6.3 million below Biden and improved only among voters
earning above $200,000/year
Among the 29% of voters describing themselves as angry, Trump won 71 to 27
Trump's
return represents "the violent realignment of the American political
superstructure to correspond with the real social relations that exist
in the United States"
Record of the second
Trump administration: Nazi-inspired "state of exception," ICE as
paramilitary force, ICE murder, deployment of federal troops into
American cities, invasion of Venezuela, war against Iran, systematic
erection of political dictatorship
September
2025: "Trump's Fascist Conspiracy and How to Fight It" — the drive to
dictatorship will continue even if Trump is removed; starting point is a
break with the Democratic Party; fight must be based on industrial
mobilization through rank-and-file committees
David
North's November 2025 lecture, "Where Is America Going? Oligarchy,
Dictatorship, and the Revolutionary Crisis of Capitalism":
Central thesis: the political structure is being brought into alignment with the class structure
Trump's
cabinet and top appointees command a collective net worth above $60
billion — "This is not symbolic representation. It is direct rule by the
oligarchy"
Historical law: "It is a
characteristic of every ruling class that as it heads for extinction, it
becomes increasingly aggressive"
Political
conclusion: America is going to socialism — not as inevitability but as
objective tendency, raising the imperative of political leadership
"The
most politically conservative working class, supposedly immune to the
appeal of socialism, is now being politically radicalized"
At this lecture, David North announced the initiation of Socialism AI
Part II: The Political Role and History of the DSA
The developing radicalization
Trump's first inauguration statement: the
administration "is, in the final analysis, the product of the desperate
crisis that afflicts American capitalism. Its reckless policies will set
into motion forces both within the United States and internationally
that it cannot control." Those forces are now in motion
Under
the blows of impossible living costs, endless war, ICE murder, open
dictatorship, and extreme social inequality, millions are being
propelled into political life and moving to the left
Polling:
nearly 40% of registered voters would consider a socialist presidential
candidate (46% among voters under 30); roughly one-third of Democrats
identify as "democratic socialists" and are more likely to earn under
$100,000/year
This has found initial expression in growth of the DSA and votes for DSA-endorsed candidates
The
millions voting for such candidates are "not voting for the Democratic
Party's record but against capitalism, for candidates they understand to
be socialists"
"The objective
significance of this growth must be acknowledged: it registers a
leftward movement of masses of workers and young people and the collapse
of the decades-long anti-socialist taboo. But acknowledgment is not
adaptation"
The DSA is not a socialist party
It is "a faction of the Democratic Party, and its
principal role is to block the development of an independent political
movement of the working class, to capture the movement toward socialism
and bind it back to the capitalist two-party system"
It
is a 44-year-old organization resting on a political lineage of nearly
90 years, every stage defined by a break from Marxism and from the
working class
Historical roots
Shachtmanite origins: The roots
lie in Max Shachtman's 1940 break from Trotsky and the SWP over the
class nature of the Soviet Union. Trotsky's essays in In Defense of Marxism
established that what was at issue was method and class orientation —
the abandonment of dialectical materialism for petty-bourgeois
pragmatism. Trotsky insisted the theoretical capitulation would be
followed by a political one; he was proved correct within a decade
Shachtman's
trajectory: refused to defend the USSR → by 1950, defending US
imperialism in Korea → supported Bay of Pigs and the Vietnam War →
integrated followers into the anti-communist apparatus of the AFL-CIO
under George Meany
Michael Harrington:
Shachtman's protégé, shared his pro-imperialist politics. At Port Huron
(1962), attacked the SDS draft statement as insufficiently
anti-communist
DSOC (1972):
Founded on the program of "realignment" — socialists working within the
Democratic Party, functioning as "the left wing of the possible," the
possible being defined by what the Democratic Party and ruling class
would permit. "This was a founding programmatic renunciation of the
political independence of the working class, and it remains the program
of the DSA today"
Harrington's break with
Shachtman reflected ruling-class shifts — the McGovern campaign and the
Democratic Party's turn toward middle-class politics (environmentalism,
feminism, identity politics). Shachtman's acolytes ended up in the
Republican Party and the neoconservative movement
DSA formed 1982:
merger of Harrington's DSOC with the New American Movement (NAM). The
name itself is revealing: not a party but a "movement"; not socialist or
communist but "American"; above all, "new" — in relation to Marxism,
the Russian Revolution, and the entire strategic experience of the
international working class, all to be left behind
NAM:
founded 1971 out of the wreckage of the SDS, gathered the residue of
the New Left — Gramscian vocabulary, former Stalinists and CP family
members bringing Popular Front sensibilities
The
DSA is "the organizational fusion of these two repudiations of Marxism:
the Shachtmanite renunciation of the defense of the workers state and
its adaptation to imperialism, and the New Left renunciation of the
working class itself"
The DSA's present program and character
The DSA's 2026 convention program, "Workers
Deserve More": "a compendium of reform proposals entirely oriented to
working within the state, and particularly the Democratic Party"
Its
complaint against the Democratic Party is that it is "asleep at the
wheel" — a party of Wall Street and the Pentagon described as a
negligent institution
No call for a
workers party, no break with the two-party system, no analysis of
imperialism, nothing on the war against Russia, nothing on Iran
Convention
programming: "Governing as Socialists: The DSA Difference," promising
"co-governance with Socialists in Office" — a formulation assuming the
permanence of the capitalist state
DSA New York co-chair on Fox News: "building allies with, like, perhaps Governor Newsom in California"
Internal crisis of the DSA
The elevation of the DSA into the apparatus of the capitalist state is producing a crisis within the organization
Factional conflict crystallized around a possible AOC presidential campaign in 2028
The National Political Committee voted 15–8 to eliminate the all-membership poll for deciding endorsement
Red Star faction: opposes AOC endorsement because she "endorsed Biden in the midst of his genocide of Palestinians"
Reform and Revolution:
fuller indictment — AOC voted to ban the railroad strike (2022),
endorsed Biden and Harris (2024), voted to fund the Ukraine war, called
Israel's Iron Dome "a positive good," takes no "consistent, oppositional
stance towards the two parties of Wall Street" — "devastating
indictments of the DSA and of Ocasio-Cortez, largely drawn from the World Socialist Web Site"
Marxist Unity Group:
"if we pool our resources and launch a serious campaign in 2027, we
have a decent shot at electing AOC President, thus completely destroying
our own movement almost overnight"
None of the factions has principled differences with the DSA's politics — their conclusions are organizational adjustments, not a break with the Democratic Party
Cosmonaut
magazine published expelled ISA members who declared: "The correctness
of our positions should be judged on the strength of our analysis, not
fidelity to any 'tradition'" — specifically the Trotskyist tradition
What
is rejected across the entire milieu: "any appeal to principled
politics, to history, to the strategic experience of the international
workers' movement… 'Tradition' is placed in quotation marks and set
aside as an encumbrance"
The DSA in power
Bhaskar Sunkara in a New York Times
interview: defended Zohran Mamdani — "Zohran Mamdani right now is
administrating a police department with over 30,000 armed men and women,
and he's administrating it by all accounts very well"
"I think in practice, the experience of governance, of competing in elections, is a moderating force on a lot of these issues"
Mamdani's
record: implementation of austerity, betrayal of the nurses' strike,
conflict with teachers, two meetings with Trump in the White House —
including two days before the Iran war
Sunkara
on the economy: "Any form of social democracy is grow, give. There
needs to be profitability in order to have something to redistribute."
Socialism would emerge "centuries from now." In the short term, "we need
firms that are profitable"
On immigration: abolish ICE, but "Obviously, we still need some sort of border enforcement and customs"
On Biden: "his failures were fundamentally the failure to communicate"
The
governing formula: "American socialists are way more liberal than they
themselves think" — meaning DSA politics is the politics of the
Democratic Party
Class character of the DSA
Not a working-class organization — arose from two
petty-bourgeois tendencies, rests on affluent layers of the
professional middle class
Its function is not to represent workers but to manage them on behalf of the Democratic Party
It is pro-imperialist
It
brings the worst traditions of two currents: the accommodation to
imperialism of social democracy, and the subordination of the working
class to bourgeois parties (the cardinal service of Stalinism to
American capitalism)
Stalinism in the DSA: Sunkara's Socialist Manifesto
upholds the CP's Popular Front policies of the 1930s as a model. In
2021, DSA officials posted memes celebrating the assassination of
Trotsky — never repudiated by the national secretary
Neither
the DSA nor any pseudo-left group has said anything about the death
threat against Will Lehman by Raymond Jensen, a high-ranking UAW
official who supports Shawn Fain
The DSA
is "the American representative of an international phenomenon: the
pseudo-left, the political tendency of affluent layers of the middle
class that employs socialist phrases in defense of capitalism."
Parallels: Syriza, Podemos, Germany's Left Party, the Corbyn movement —
wherever in power, "it has administered the capitalist state against the
working class"
Conclusion: The Socialist Alternative
The program of the SEP
Counterposed to pseudo-left politics: not better reforms, but a revolutionary and internationalist program
Socialism
is "the abolition of the private ownership of the means of production
and the conquest of political power by the working class. It means the
expropriation of the financial-corporate oligarchy and the
transformation of the banks and major corporations into public property
under democratic control. It means social equality… And it must be
international. The program of the SEP is the program of world socialist
revolution"
Objective conditions and party building
The same crisis producing global war and placing a
fascist gangster in the White House is driving the working class into
struggle
The 2010 prognosis — "the change in objective conditions will lead American workers to change their minds" — is being confirmed
Conditions for significant growth of the party exist
"Above all, the building of the party in the working class"
Practical tasks
Will Lehman's UAW presidential campaign: a spearhead for intervention into the industrial working class and the working class as a whole
Rank-and-file committees: must be built in every factory, workplace, and neighborhood where the party is active, in all industries and sectors
IYSSE branches: must be built on campuses throughout the country
Socialism AI: must be brought into daily political activity for educating and training a new generation
The Oligarchy book: must be distributed and studied on the widest possible scale
The decisive point: history and theory
"The growth of the party is not a merely
quantitative process. Recruitment must be accompanied by—and is, in
fact, inseparable from—the systematic education of the cadre… Marxist
theory is not an ornament of the party's practice but its foundation"
The
task: transform political radicalization into a conscious revolutionary
movement, arm workers and youth with knowledge of the history of the
Marxist movement, train them as cadre of the Fourth International
What
stands between workers and youth moving toward socialism and the fight
they seek is "a body of political experience that has not yet been
assimilated, embodied in the history of the International Committee of
the Fourth International"
Warning of the
Socialist Labour League against the drift of the OCI: "There is always a
danger… that a revolutionary party responds to the situation in the
working class not in a revolutionary way, but by adaptation to the level
of struggle to which the workers are restricted by their own experience
under the old leaderships"
The safeguard
is historical education — orientation cannot be improvised from the
events of the week; it is "derived from the strategic experiences of the
international workers movement"
The five
phases in the history of the Trotskyist movement are "the accumulated
strategic capital of the world socialist revolution"
The
politicization of workers and youth "poses, above all, the questions of
program, perspective, and leadership" — with a definite historical
answer: "Trotskyism is the Marxism of the 21st century"
"On
the outcome of this fight—more than on anything that Trump does, that
the ruling class does—depends the answer to the question: socialism or
barbarism?"
On August 6, Brooklyn Defender Services and the civil rights law firm
Beldock Levine & Hoffman LLP sued New York City, the New York Police
Department and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch on behalf of tenant
associations at the Langston Hughes Houses and Samuel Tilden Houses,
challenging the city’s covert integration of public housing security
cameras into the NYPD’s Domain Awareness System (DAS).
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a member of the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA), has not commented on the suit, much less
call a halt to the program. Mamdani’s silence is the third major attack
by his administration in a single month on the working class,
particularly its poorest and most vulnerable sections.
*****
Roughly 330,000 of the poorest New Yorkers live in NYCHA public
housing, where rents remain far below the average asking price of more
than $4,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. Without public housing,
many would face vastly higher housing costs or homelessness. This
layer of the working class is being directly squeezed by the Trump
Administration: an estimated tens of thousands of NYCHA residents are
directly affected by the federal SNAP cuts and expanded work rules.
Decades
of chronic disinvestment have left the aging housing stock with an
estimated $78 billion capital repair backlog. Residents endure dangerous
conditions: toxic mold from deteriorated plumbing, winter heat and hot
water outages, persistent elevator breakdowns, lead paint hazards and
deteriorating facades. Mamdani’s Block-by-Block housing program
allocates only $5.6 billion to NYCHA over five years, less than
one-thirteenth of the authority’s estimated $78 billion capital repair
backlog.
The class character of the NYCHA surveillance program
was highlighted this week when Mamdani backed proposed legislation
forbidding “places of public accommodation” from using biometric
recognition to identify customers. The bill, sponsored by DSA council
member Shahana Hanif, targets facial recognition used by Trump ally
James Dolan, the billionaire owner of the Knicks and Madison Square
Garden, to track and expel attorneys from firms involved in litigation
against MSG.
Significantly, the proposed legislation would leave
the NYPD’s own use of facial recognition untouched. It expressly exempts
the collection, storage, sharing and use of biometric information by
government agencies. Police could therefore apply facial recognition to
footage obtained from MSG or other private camera systems, even though
the businesses themselves would be prohibited from doing so.
While
MSG’s use of facial recognition at its venues is reactionary and must
be opposed, Mamdani’s defense of MSG shareholders over working people in
NYCHA—who could scarcely afford a Knicks ticket—is telling. It
demonstrates that the class orientation of the DSA is to the NYPD, the
Trump administration, and a capitalist oligarchy which is increasingly
terrified of any eruption of mass dissent.
*****
Mamdani’s silence on the NYCHA spying is part of a rapid escalation
in his war against the working class. On August 7, after the Supreme
Court upheld the revocation of Temporary Protected Status for some
350,000 Haitians, Mamdani announced Haitian city employees would be
terminated—directly enforcing the fascistic anti-immigrant machinery of
an administration whose leader has called Haiti a “shithole country” and
accused Haitian immigrants of eating pets. He made no call for
protests, strikes or legal challenges, instead directing appeals to
Trump himself, with whom he has met twice in the White House and boasted
of a “partnership.”
This came days after he reversed his pledge
to support a $10,000 bonus for paraprofessional school aides—among the
city’s most exploited workers, starting at $33,222—invoking the
anti-labor Taylor Law to block the measure, in capitulation to Wall
Street and the corporate media.
In the case of the Haitian
workers, as with NYCHA surveillance, Mamdani acts as a direct instrument
of the capitalist state’s repressive apparatus, stripping workers of
their livelihoods and legal right to remain, delivering them to a
deportation regime that may send them back to gang violence and possible
death in Haiti.
These actions are not aberrations but the logical
culmination of Mamdani’s record since taking office: he has slashed
school and homeless programs, deferred city pension contributions,
reneged on free bus service, and created a commission to prepare
permanent austerity.
This is the DSA in power. Mamdani and the DSA
are not “socialists” who have compromised, but a faction of the
Democratic Party whose function is to channel working-class opposition
back into the capitalist state, block an independent political movement
of the working class, and directly implement state repression against
it. Social tensions are growing in America’s largest and most unequal
city every day and must invariably find an outlet. The mass surveillance
of NYCHA residents is a critical part of the state’s preparations to
contain the inevitable eruption of social opposition.
UPS is now handling 68.5 percent of its US package volume through
automated facilities, up from 64 percent a year ago, an increase
equivalent to 337 million additional packages handled through
automation, according to the company’s quarterly earnings call on July
28. The company is combining this automation drive with the largest
consolidation of its network in its history. UPS Chief Financial Officer
Brian Dykes said in the company’s second-quarter earnings call, “We
will have eliminated 50 million hours through the course of last year
and this year, nearly 78,000 operational positions that were associated
with that volume, and we’ll close nearly 150 buildings.”
These
developments further expose the Teamsters’ so-called “historic” 2023
contract as an historic sellout. The contract dropped the demands of
part-time workers, while wage increases for some workers were to be more
than compensated for by massive attacks on jobs through automation. The
jobs assault began almost immediately, with UPS eliminating entire
shifts in late 2023 and announcing plans to cut 12,000 primarily
management positions in early 2024, a precursor to the large-scale
reductions in drivers and operational staff that have mounted since.
Since
the beginning of this jobs onslaught, the Teamsters bureaucracy has
organized no struggle against the elimination of tens of thousands of
jobs. General President Sean O’Brien has occasionally claimed the union
would “fight” if UPS violates the existing contract, but the bureaucracy
has been almost entirely silent on the deepest layoffs in the history
of UPS. Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which backed O’Brien’s
election, acknowledged last year that automation would cause permanent
job losses but declared, “we can’t stop it altogether,” directing
workers instead toward grievances, seniority rules and other provisions
of the contract.
The bureaucracy’s claims that the 2023 agreement
secured thousands of full-time jobs and protected workers from layoffs
have been exposed as a sham. The contract requires UPS to fill 22,500
permanent full-time positions with existing part-time workers and create
7,500 additional full-time jobs in its final three years, but it does
not bar the company from eliminating far larger numbers of jobs
elsewhere through automation, closures and attrition.
*****
The scale of the attack is clear from UPS’ own figures. The company
reported 370,000 US employees at the end of 2025, down from 414,000 at
the end of 2023; about 295,000 US workers were covered by the national
Teamsters agreement at the end of 2025. UPS says it reduced its
operational workforce by 48,000 positions in 2025, including 15,000
fewer seasonal positions. Its second-quarter 2026 figure of nearly
78,000 operational positions eliminated across last year and this year
shows that the assault is still accelerating.
The technology being
introduced goes far beyond faster conveyor belts. UPS is deploying
robotic systems to unload trailers, pick and sort small packages, and
autonomous guided vehicles to move packages and heavy or irregular
shipments through facilities. These systems directly automate work
traditionally performed by package handlers inside the hubs.
UPS
is also automating the identification and routing of packages. Its Smart
Package Smart Facility system uses RFID sensors to register packages as
they move through buildings and vehicles, reducing the need for
repeated manual scans. Network-planning software and a digital twin of
UPS’ facilities, air and ground networks and package flows are used to
model volume and reroute work across the system.
These
technologies function together as part of UPS’ “Network of the Future.”
Automation allows the company to consolidate sorts into fewer buildings,
shift volume to highly automated hubs and reduce the number of workers
needed for a given package volume. UPS itself says the program combines
automation with operational sort consolidation and has already led to
reductions in facilities, vehicles, aircraft and workforce.
Essential
to this process has been UPS’ deliberate reduction of its Amazon
business. By the end of the second quarter, UPS had completed a
reduction of more than 50 percent in Amazon volume from 2024 levels,
shedding roughly two million lower-margin packages per day. The company
is replacing this volume with higher-margin business, particularly
healthcare, business-to-business and international shipping, while
concentrating the remaining work in a smaller and more automated
network.
*****
UPS is part of a much broader drive to use automation to reduce labor
costs. Internal Amazon planning documents reported last year projected
that robotics could allow the company to avoid hiring more than 600,000
US workers by 2033.
The enormous increase in productivity raises
the decisive issue of which class will control the technology and for
what purpose. UPS has demonstrated that new machinery and software can
move packages with far less human labor. Under corporate ownership,
however, every hour of labor saved becomes a target for elimination from
the payroll, so that the greater the advance in productivity, the
greater the threat to workers’ livelihoods.
The working class has
the opposite interest. If technology allows the same work to be done in
fewer hours, it should mean a shorter workweek with no loss in pay,
lighter workloads and safer conditions, not unemployment and intensified
exploitation for those who remain. Realizing that potential requires
taking control over production and the deployment of technology out of
the hands of UPS management and Wall Street and placing it under the
democratic control of the workers themselves.
The fight against
layoffs at UPS therefore requires the building of rank-and-file
committees in every workplace, independent of the Teamsters bureaucracy,
to organize action against closures and job cuts rather than bargain
over their effects after management has decided them. These committees
must unite workers across the logistics industry and internationally in a
struggle for workers’ control and the socialist transformation of
society, so that the vast productive gains from automation are used to
shorten the workweek, raise living standards and improve safety instead
of destroying jobs and enriching corporate executives and Wall Street
investors.
Sahra
Wagenknecht’s rapprochement with the AfD has been apparent for years.
Now, she is not only moving closer to the far-right party in terms of
policy, but is helping it attain power.
More than a month after a high-ranking official of the United Auto
Workers (UAW), Raymond Jensen, posted a death threat against Will
Lehman, the Mack Trucks worker and socialist candidate for UAW
president, that official remains an employee of the UAW International,
drawing a salary of $202,000 a year from the dues of the membership.
Lehman reported on X that,
late last week, a lawyer for the court-appointed Monitor overseeing the
UAW informed his legal team that “the Union is presently considering
next steps with respect to Mr. Jensen’s employment.” Lehman’s team was
told to contact the UAW Legal Department “if you have any further
questions about their process.”
That is, the Monitor, vested by a
federal court with sweeping disciplinary powers, has handed the fate of a
self-confessed author of a death threat to the apparatus headed by UAW
President Shawn Fain—the man whose re-election campaign badge Raymond
Jensen Jr. still has on his Facebook page, and on whose behalf the
threat was made.
*****
The Monitor claimed that it had determined a penalty “to reflect the
seriousness of his conduct and to deter similar misconduct by others.”
It stipulated, and Jensen agreed to, a two-year suspension from UAW
membership, a permanent ban on him running for any elected union
position, a prohibition on campaigning for any candidate in this
election cycle, and making a formal apology to Lehman.
Workers
welcomed the sanctions and drew the obvious conclusion that Jensen would
not be allowed to continue his position as a UAW “organizer.” This is
clearly what “suspension from the UAW” implied, and any worker who
issued a death threat would be immediately terminated from their
position.
According to the UAW, however, Jensen can be
“suspended” as a UAW member while remaining employed by the UAW. Indeed,
the only practical consequence is that Jensen no longer has to pay
union dues. In other words, an official who violated federal election
rules and likely federal criminal law will not only continue to be fully
paid, but also receive a bonus!
The Monitor cannot claim it lacks
the power to do more. The 2021 consent decree gives it “the authority
and duty to bring disciplinary charges against individuals,” including
the power to fine them, strip their benefits or “otherwise discipline”
them. When it found last December that Fain’s chief of staff, Chris
Brooks, had conspired with Fain to strip Secretary-Treasurer Margaret
Mock of her duties and then lied to its investigators, Brooks was
removed from his position within two weeks. Lying to the Monitor is
evidently a firing offense. Threatening to shoot the opposition
candidate is a personnel matter, under review.
*****
Certain truths emerge from this episode and the response to it.
First,
the character of the apparatus. As Lehman has insisted from the
beginning, the threat was never about just himself. It was the answer of
the apparatus to rank-and-file opposition—an organization of 560
functionaries taking home more than $100,000 a year, which has presided
over decades of concessions, plant closures and the deaths of workers,
and which cannot answer opposition with arguments.
Jensen's image
only put into a picture what workers confront every day from an
apparatus that functions as an arm of corporate management: the 'toxic
climate of retribution' the Monitor itself found Fain to have presided
over, and the contempt for every worker who votes down a contract,
raises a question at a meeting or dares to run against it.
Second,
the role of the Monitor. Acting on behalf of the capitalist state, it
functions not to democratize the UAW but to protect the
apparatus—certifying an election in which Fain was installed with the
votes of 6 percent of the membership, and now leaving Jensen's paycheck
in Fain's hands.
Third, the bureaucracy cannot be reformed,
whether from within or by federal oversight. It must be abolished, and
settling accounts with it is the task of rank-and-file workers
themselves. That is the significance of Lehman's campaign: not to occupy
an office at Solidarity House, but to develop a movement of the rank
and file—committees in every plant, controlled by workers themselves,
linked across industries and borders, with power transferred to the shop
floor.
While
forklifts can be equipped with cameras, proximity detectors and
collision-warning systems, workers appear to remain dependent largely
upon horns, painted lines, mirrors and the ability of a forklift driver
to twist around and look backward.
Behind
the constitutional theater in the Philippine Senate, the impeachment of
Vice President Sara Duterte is being staged to eliminate the last
significant political obstacle to Washington’s transformation of the
archipelago into a forward base for war with China.
The UK’s supply of Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine in May 2023 and
formal authorization of their use against targets inside Russia a year
later prompted Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova to state
that Russia might hit British targets “on Ukraine’s territory and beyond
its borders.”
What no one in the imperialist governments or media
will say is that the world is teetering on the brink of one of these
threats being acted upon, leading to direct conflict between
nuclear-armed powers.
*****
The danger of escalation beyond the borders of Russia and Ukraine
reflects the savage intensity of the war within them. Aerial strikes are
claiming a rising toll of civilian lives. According to the New York Times,
327 Russian civilians were killed in the first seven months of the
year, up from 145 in the same period last year. Another 2,366 were
wounded—double last year’s total.
Ukraine suffered its worst month
of civilian casualties since 2022 this July, according to the UN: 437
killed and 2,610 injured—a 30 percent increase compared to June and a 70
percent increase compared to July 2025.
Across the first seven
months of the year, 1,830 civilians were killed—taking the war’s total
to over 16,000—and 10,638 injured. The overall figure is a 44 percent
increase over the same period in 2025 and more than double the same
period in 2024.
Workers and their families are being killed as
part of a campaign of strikes against industrial facilities, transport,
energy and export infrastructure. In Ukraine, multiple ports have been
hit—primarily Odessa and Izmail, major terminals for agricultural
exports—as have cargo ships like the Golden Leo and Venturo.
Energy
infrastructure has been a constant target, especially in the lead-up to
and during the winter months, with large numbers of strikes on
electricity generation, transmission and distribution facilities, plus
heat and power plants, repeatedly taking chunks of power generation
capacity offline. Hundreds of strikes, escalating in 2026, have been
launched against rail infrastructure.
In Russia, at least two
dozen large oil refineries have been hit, leading to a 33 percent
month-on-month fall in Russian seaborne oil exports in July 2026. Seven
major ports have been damaged, mostly involved in the export of oil, but
including the grain-exporting Novorossiysk. Ten Wildberries warehouses,
Russia’s Amazon equivalent, have been struck, with Ukraine claiming
seven were disabled, affecting up to 20 percent of warehouse space.
Mounting
drone and missile “deep strikes” are a response to the fact that the
frontline has been fought to a bloody standstill—in a meatgrinder of
trenches, artillery and drones. According to the Institute for the Study
of War, Russian forces gained just 7.87 percent as much territory in
the first half of 2026 as they did in the first half of 2025.
Each
side throws tens of thousands of bodies into the maw every month.
According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS),
an imperialist think tank which has every reason to downplay these
figures, roughly 125,000-150,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed and
up to 475,000 left wounded or missing since the war began.
The
CSIS claims 400,000-450,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, out of a
total 1.4 million casualties. Russian exile oppositionist news site Mediazona,
working with the BBC’s Russian service, has identified 239,000 dead
Russian soldiers through relatives’ social media posts, local media
reports, and statements from regional officials. They estimate a real
figure of 352,000 based on excess male mortality, using data from the
national Probate Registry.
No figures can be entirely trusted, but
it is clear the overall toll is horrific. In this brutal war of
attrition, the intention is to put enough pressure on the other side’s
society to force a collapse. Ukraine, a client state of NATO, is
pursuing regime change in Russia to the advantage of the imperialist
powers. Russia is trying to break the back of Ukraine to prevent this
outcome.
*****
With NATO foreclosing a peace deal with terms that would finish the
Putin government and prepare a NATO-backed assault against Crimea, the
pressure is on the Russian government to escalate its way out of the
situation. Meanwhile, Ukraine continues to develop its ability to strike
at Russia.
However, the intensification of the war and its costs
mean strengthening opposition in the working class. Klepach warned, “No
one expected the February Revolution, let me remind you. Lenin wrote in
December 1916 that ‘we won’t live to see it,’ but he did just a few
months later.”
This is the deathly fear of the Russian and Ukrainian oligarchies both, driving their repression of anti-war sentiment.
The
most significant political prisoner of the war, because he represents
what the ruling class most fears, is Bogdan Syrotiuk. Sentenced to 15
years by a Ukrainian court for six articles written for the World Socialist Web Site, he is a fighter for the united socialist struggle of Russian, Ukrainian and European workers against the war.
Only
by taking up the revolutionary internationalist perspective fought for
by Bogdan and the International Committee of the Fourth International
can the working class fight its way out of the bloodbath in
Russia-Ukraine and the catastrophe looming over Europe.
Incensed
by South Korea’s refusal to join the US war of aggression against Iran,
Trump has unilaterally reduced major joint war games that began Monday
and announced plans for talks with North Korea.
Speakers
exposed the disastrous consequences of the evisceration of the NDIS and
its impact on the disabled and their families, and the jobs and
conditions of health, education and welfare workers.
The fascistic Ukrainian regime under President Volodymyr Zelensky has
repatriated the remains of the founder of the fascist Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Yehven Konovalets, from the Crooswijk
cemetery in Rotterdam, where his body has lain since his assassination
by Soviet agent Pavel Sudoplatov in 1938.
Konovalets’ OUN was
subsequently led by the Nazi collaborator Andriy Melnkyk, from whom
Konovalets was inseparable. The OUN went on to collaborate in the
Holocaust of European Jewry and the Nazi war of extermination against
the Soviet Union, in which at least 27 million people were murdered.
Konovalets was himself a remorseless fascist and a collaborator with
German imperialism in Ukraine since the Civil War that followed the 1917
October Revolution, in which he fought against and was defeated by the
Bolsheviks.
Zelensky personally participated
in the ceremony and delivered a speech glorifying Konovalets as a
national hero. “We are returning home an outstanding son of the
Ukrainian people,” he declared. “This is an exemplary warrior and a
significant statesman of Ukraine, Colonel Yevhen Konovalets. Together
with him, Ukraine has returned a part of itself, of its memory, of
Ukrainian experience, of our national history, of all those who lived
and fought for Ukraine, our independence, and an independent state at
various times. Colonel Yevhen Konovalets is exactly such a figure.”
Zelensky’s
personal role gives the lie to all claims that the glorification of
Ukrainian fascism is a marginal phenomenon or merely the activity of
isolated far-right forces. The head of the Ukrainian state has openly
placed himself at the center of the rehabilitation of the OUN and its
leaders as “national heroes.”
The wave of opposition to this political frame-up has continued to broaden.
Ukrainian Holocaust historian Marta Havryshko,
who has extensively documented the role of the Organization of
Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and
other far-right and pro-Nazi forces in horrific atrocities during WWII
and in contemporary Ukrainian politics, signed the petition on Monday.
“Bogdan is a victim of political repression in Ukraine under Zelensky,” she wrote. “We must protect him.”
Volodymyr Ishchenko,
a Ukrainian political sociologist at the Osteuropa-Institut of the Free
University of Berlin, commented Tuesday that the prosecution “looks
like a typical case of fabricated evidence and framing against
Syrotiuk.”
Ishchenko noted that one of the sensational claims
originally circulated by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU)—concerning
a Russian military uniform and epaulettes allegedly found during the
search of Bogdan’s home—“did not even make it into the main part of the
verdict. Even the prosecutor did not use it.”
His comments
underscore the fraudulent character of the prosecution. When Bogdan was
arrested in April 2024, the SBU publicly portrayed him as an agent of
Russia. More than two years later, the court convicted him without
establishing any act of espionage or concrete collaboration with the
Russian state. A 65-page expert report by leading Ukrainian
criminologist Yuri Irkhin found no propaganda in Bogdan’s writings
supporting the Russian invasion. Even a subsequent state-commissioned
examination found no calls for overthrowing the government, seizing
power, committing subversive acts or altering Ukraine’s borders.
Pascal Lottaz,
associate professor for Neutrality Studies at Kyoto University’s
Faculty of Law and Hakubi Center, shared Havryshko’s comments on the
case. Referring to Bogdan’s criticism of “the glorification of the OUN
and UPA, the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, and the use of Nazi and
far-right imagery in the military, including Azov and other units,”
Lottaz wrote:
“15 years of prison for criticizing” these forces. “I’m certain this news won’t make it to mainstream.”
Irish journalist Chay Bowes,
who has more than 289,000 followers on X, circulated the WSWS petition
appeal, writing: “15 years for daring to tell the truth. 15 years for
challenging the Dictatorship. Ukraine is a basket case Dictatorship.
Zelensky is a criminal.”
French investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker Paul Moreira,
of Premières Lignes, shared the WSWS statement on Bogdan’s sentencing,
commenting in French: “15 years in prison for this Trotskyist journalist
critical of” the Ukrainian government.
French journalist Alexis Poulin also took up Bogdan’s case on his program Le revue de presse avec Alexis Poulin, calling on his audience of more than 320,000 followers to sign the petition demanding Bogdan’s freedom.
The Italian international-reportage outlet InsideOver published
an extensive report on Bogdan’s sentencing Tuesday. The article drew
attention both to Havryshko’s research on the neo-Nazi networks embedded
in the Ukrainian military and to the denial of necessary medical care
to Bogdan during his more than two years in detention.
*****
Italian artist Costantino Ciervo, whose exhibition COMUNE—The Paradox of Similarity in the Middle East Conflict has itself faced attempted censorship on false allegations of antisemitism, declared his support for Bogdan.
Ciervo
stated that if Bogdan was being prosecuted for exposing “Ukraine’s
historical culpability in abetting the Nazi advance during the Second
World War,” this was “not a crime, but a plain historical truth.”
“To
be incarcerated for articulating what every pre-eminent historian has
repeatedly affirmed in public is nothing short of criminal and
scandalous,” he wrote.
Berlin author, publicist and songwriter Wolfgang Herzberg sent
a protest letter to the Pervomaisk City District Court, with a copy to
the WSWS. He called on the court to “immediately overturn the harsh
sentence against Mr. Bogdan Syrotiuk.”
“He merely exercised his
right to freedom of expression, which is constitutionally protected in
Western democracies, including Germany,” Herzberg wrote. “Ukraine wants
to become a member of the EU. It therefore cannot issue such a
miscarriage of justice when there is apparently no evidence of concrete,
conspiratorial—that is, military—collaboration with Russia.”
Herzberg
wrote that he, too, is a staunch opponent of war and stressed that
opposition to the war “against both sides” was entirely legitimate and
covered by the democratic right to freedom of expression.
The Partisan Defence Committee (Britain),
which had already protested Bogdan’s arrest, signed the petition
Monday. “The Partisan Defence Committee (Britain) protested Bogdan’s
arrest and will strongly add our voice to the growing chorus of protest
at this outrageous sentence,” it stated. The organization subsequently
issued an appeal on social media: “Free Bogdan Syrotiuk! … sign and
circulate it today.”
The Communist Party of Sweden has now also covered the case in its newspaper Riktpunkt.
While explicitly noting its political differences with Trotskyism, the
article insists on the fundamental democratic principle
involved. “Political texts, criticism of the government or demands for
international workers’ unity cannot in themselves be equated with high
treason,” it states.
*****
Sheldon Richard from Canada wrote: “Bogdan correctly
stated that pressure from both sides of the border was the true way to
end the war, and for that he was jailed. I assumed that constitutionally
protected free speech was a hallmark of the democratic nation of
Ukraine.”
Loren Parker in the United States
commented: “The Ukrainian regime can’t pretend to be a besieged citadel
of democracy when it persecutes dissidents for speech—especially speech
which says nothing untrue.”
From New Zealand, Alexia George wrote:
“He is a young man who does not support war and has chosen to write
about peace between Ukrainians and Russians, not from a pro Russian or
Ukrainian position but from a position that values life and peace. That
is not treason.”
Jonathan Hall in Britain pointed
directly to the internationalist content of Bogdan’s politics: “The
spurious charge of ‘treason,’ for which he is condemned, is an
instrument of the nationalism which pits the Ukrainian and Russian
working classes against each other.”
Brian Dick,
from the United States, wrote: “The Zelensky regime has jailed a
27-year-old socialist for 15 years—not for spying, not for sabotage, but
for ideas. His books and leaflets were ordered destroyed.”
*****
German supporter Gustav Kemper noted that August 19
marks the 90th anniversary of the beginning of the First Moscow Trial,
in which the Stalinist bureaucracy began the public show trials that
provided the judicial framework for the extermination of the leaders of
the October Revolution and socialist opposition.
“The verdict
against Bogdan,” Kemper wrote, “is an attempt by the ‘Western
democracies’ to revive the politics of the Moscow Trials because they
fear the growing influence of the Fourth International.”
*****
The International Committee of the Fourth International and WSWS will intensify the campaign for Bogdan’s freedom.
We
call on workers and young people, critical intellectuals and academics,
artists and journalists, trade unions, civil liberties organizations
and anti-war groups throughout the world: Take up Bogdan’s
defense. Sign and circulate the petition. Pass resolutions demanding his
freedom. Send protest letters to the Ukrainian courts. Break the media
silence surrounding his case.
The
defense of Bogdan is inseparably connected to the fight against war,
dictatorship and fascism. His freedom must be won through the
mobilization of the international working class and all principled
defenders of democratic rights.
The
fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an
essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide,
dictatorship and fascism.
