Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. “Progressive” Democrats seek collaboration with fascist critics of Iran war
On X/Twitter Tuesday night, Democratic California Representative Ro
Khanna posted a statement thanking far-right politicians and political
commentators after Trump announced a two-week ceasefire in the war
against Iran.
In a 45-second video, Khanna noted that Congress had done nothing to
prevent Trump from waging an illegal war against Iran. After stating
that he was “relieved” Trump had accepted the “ceasefire,” Khanna said,
“Let’s be clear, this did not happen because of Congress, which barely
made a whimper.”
Khanna did not mention that Congress’s silence
was bipartisan. That is because many Democrats support the illegal war
against Iran, just as many supported the genocide in Gaza. Hakeem
Jeffries, the top Democrat in the House, deliberately delayed a war
powers resolution Khanna filed jointly with Republican representative
Thomas Massie last month.
Khanna claimed the “ceasefire” happened
“because of the force of the American people, not just progressives and
liberals, but conservatives like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene
and even Ann Coulter spoke out against the horror of threatening
genocide against another people.”
That some of Trump’s biggest
backers, including Carlson and Coulter, who still publicly support him,
and Greene, a supporter of Trump’s January 6 coup and his 2024
presidential campaign, voiced opposition to the illegal war against Iran
is not a sign they have become anti-war.
*****
Many on the far-right seek to channel popular opposition to the Iran
war along antisemitic lines, claiming that the Trump administration has
been hoodwinked into fighting “Israel’s war” by Netanyahu and the
“Jewish lobby.” They argue that if Jewish influence were excised from
Congress and the military, a genuinely American foreign policy would
emerge.
While American and Israeli interests are closely linked,
and the Zionist state plays a deeply reactionary role in the Middle East
and beyond, it is false to claim that Israel dominates in the
formulation of American imperialist foreign policy, including the war
against Iran. Such claims amount to an alibi for US imperialism, which
has been oppressing Iran for more than a century.
*****
The phony opposition of Carlson, Greene and Coulter to Trump’s
threats to destroy Iran is aimed at corralling the mass opposition in
the United States to the war back into capitalist politics and the
Republican Party.
That Khanna promotes these figures’ opposition
as genuine exposes his “progressive” pretenses and defines him as an
enemy of the working class.
Khanna’s statement included overtures to the fascist right with a call for a “broad populist social movement.” He said:
This
tells me one thing. The only thing that will save this country, the
only thing that will save our democracy, is a broad, populist social
movement, anti-Epstein class, anti-war and pro-working class.
Khanna’s
appeal for unity with the far right is aimed at blocking an independent
socialist movement in the working class against both capitalist
parties. What he is proposing has a definite historical and political
character. It is a form of what has long been known as a “red-brown”
alignment: a convergence in which forces speaking in the name of the
“left” seek common cause with the nationalist right and even openly
fascistic elements.
Such alliances do not express the interests of the working class.
They arise from the politics of privileged middle-class layers, sections
of the labor bureaucracy and other petty-bourgeois forces whose
essential aim is the preservation of their own social position amid
deepening crisis. Terrified by the growth of mass opposition to
capitalism from below, they look for ways to channel popular anger into
forms compatible with bourgeois rule, even if that means adapting to the
language and personnel of extreme reaction.
The classic and most
disastrous example was provided in Germany during the final crisis of
the Weimar Republic. Following the Stalinist line, the Communist Party
of Germany rejected Trotsky’s call for a united front of the workers’
parties against Hitler and instead treated the Social Democratic Party
(SPD) as the main enemy. This policy led not only to the division and
paralysis of the working class, but at key moments to direct political
convergence with the Nazis against the SPD, most notoriously in the 1931
Prussian referendum. After Hitler’s victory, Stalinism swung to the
opposite extreme, promoting the anti-fascist “Popular Front,” which
subordinated workers to alliances with liberal democratic sections of
the bourgeoisie.
Leon Trotsky opposed this as another mechanism
for disarming the proletariat. In France and Spain, the Popular Front
subordinated revolutionary struggles to capitalist governments in the
name of defending democracy, strangling the independent movement of
workers and opening the way for fascist reaction.
The essential lesson is that the working class cannot fight fascism, war
or dictatorship through alliances either with the far right or with
liberal sections of the bourgeoisie. Every form of class collaboration
serves, in the end, to weaken the workers and strengthen the class
enemy.
*****
Under conditions in which, less than two weeks ago, some 8 million
people marched in opposition to the immigration Gestapo, Trump’s budding
dictatorship and the illegal war against Iran, the “progressive”
Democrats are doing everything they can to keep this movement trapped
within the Democratic Party and subordinated to capitalist politics,
rather than developing into a revolutionary class struggle. This
includes making alliances with fascists who played an instrumental role
in Trump’s political ascension.
2. Fuel shock sends inflation soaring while the oligarchy grows richer
While gasoline prices have been higher in absolute terms before, they
have never risen this quickly over the course of a single month. In
California, where workers already face some of the highest fuel costs in
the country, the statewide American Automobile Association (AAA)
average stood at $5.92 a gallon on April 10, with county averages
reaching nearly $6.91. Across the United States, the sharp rise in fuel
prices is falling directly on the backs of the working class.
This
burden is especially severe because driving is not optional for
millions of workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 26.6
percent of civilian workers are in jobs that require driving. This
includes delivery drivers, truckers, ride-share and app-based workers,
home healthcare workers, contractors, electricians, plumbers and
countless others whose jobs depend on access to a vehicle. These workers
are being forced to absorb soaring operating costs without any
corresponding increase in wages.
*****
Despite the “ceasefire” announced earlier this week, the energy shock
triggered by the war in Iran and the closing of the Strait of Hormuz has
not abated. The continuing disruption of fuel supplies is already
provoking social unrest internationally. As The Guardian
reported Friday, protests over fuel prices and shortages have spread
from Ireland to Norway, with truck drivers, farmers and logistics
workers entering into open conflict with governments imposing emergency
measures.
*****
While millions of workers struggle to survive on poverty wages, the
financial oligarchy has never had it better. A March analysis of the
boom in billionaire wealth by the New York Times found that the
richest Americans saw their net worth soar by 120 percent from 2017 to
2025, under the first Trump and the Biden administrations. This growth
in wealth far outstripped the 45 percent increase recorded over the
previous comparable period. As a result, the number of billionaires in
the United States jumped by 50 percent, to more than 900 by some
estimates.
This immense transfer of wealth to the top is rooted
above all in the rise of the stock market and the concentration of
financial ownership. Federal Reserve distributional data show that the
top 1 percent held about 50.2 percent of all corporate equities and
mutual fund shares in the third quarter of 2025. Put differently, a tiny
layer of the population controls roughly half of one of the main
sources of wealth accumulation in the United States.
The
enrichment of the oligarchy is not separate from the impoverishment of
the working class, but its other side. Corporations and financiers used
the pandemic to drive up prices and keep them elevated long after supply
bottlenecks eased as workers were forced to return to disease-ridden
job sites. Now, under conditions of an illegal imperialist war, the same
class is profiting again while workers are made to pay more for
gasoline, food, rent and every other necessity.
Inflation is not an accidental malfunction of the economy, but a social
expression of capitalist class rule. Monopoly power, war, speculation
and the dictatorship of profit over production ensure that every crisis
is paid for by the working class. The fight against inflation is
therefore inseparable from the fight against the capitalist system
itself.
3. Trump says the US is “loading up the ships” with weapons during ceasefire talks
On Friday, during a phone interview with the New York Post,
President Trump said US warships were being reloaded with weapons to be
used against Iran in anticipation of a failure of the ceasefire talks
taking place in Pakistan.
When asked if he thought the
negotiations would be successful, he said, “We’re going to find out in
about 24 hours. We’re going to know soon.” Trump’s remarks are an
unmistakable indication that the two-week pause in the US air assault on
Iran he announced on Tuesday has resolved nothing and is being used to
prepare the next stage of the war.
*****
There are major conflicts within the US ruling establishment over
whether the talks will produce any results because of Israel’s continued
attacks on Lebanon. Iranian officials have warned that time is running
out, while US officials are trying to preserve the ceasefire before it
expires on April 22.
However, based on Trump’s comments to the New York Post, it
is likely the Israeli attacks on Lebanon are being used to deliberately
sabotage talks that function as a cover for preparations to restart the
war on a far higher level.
The truce discussions are taking place
in Islamabad, with Pakistan mediating and a large US delegation
involved, including Vice President JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, Jared
Kushner, Marco Rubio and Adm. Brad Cooper, alongside officials from the
National Security Council, State Department and Pentagon.
On the
Iranian side, reports say the delegation arrived in Islamabad and is
headed by Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, with Foreign
Minister Abbas Araghchi and other senior officials also included.
Reuters described the meeting as “make-or-break,” and other reports say
the two sides remain far apart on core issues.
The official line
is that the talks are meant to translate the ceasefire into a longer
standing arrangement, but there is no agreement over whether Lebanon is
covered. Pakistan and Iran have said that the ceasefire framework
includes Lebanon, while the White House and Israel have denied it.
*****
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who previously said there
is “no cease-fire in Lebanon,” agreed on Thursday to start direct
negotiations with Lebanon after Trump urged restraint by Israel, and the
European imperialist leaders warned that the attacks on Lebanon
threatened to collapse the ceasefire with Iran.
Recent reporting
says that more than 1.2 million people have been displaced since the
beginning of the conflict, with the UN citing evacuation orders covering
14 percent of the country. On Wednesday, Israeli strikes killed at
least 303 people and injured more than 1,000, the deadliest day so far
in the war that began on March 2.
The scale of destruction is also
being measured in infrastructure collapse. Reports cite strikes on
roads, bridges, hospitals and commercial districts, with aid delivery
badly disrupted and parts of the south rendered non-functional. Like the
Gaza genocide, this is not a limited border operation; It is a
systematic campaign to make areas of Lebanon uninhabitable.
The correspondence of interests between Washington and Tel Aviv were
expressed when Trump said on Wednesday that he had spoken with Netanyahu
and that Israel would “tone it down” in Lebanon. Knowing full well the
Iranian position on the Lebanon, Trump added, “I just think we need to
be a bit more low-key,” and claimed Netanyahu would “ease up” and be
“totally fine” on the Lebanon issue.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s latest
statements make clear that Israel’s objective is not a pause but a
political-military restructuring of Lebanon. He has said the talks with
Lebanon will focus on “disarming Hezbollah” and establishing “peaceful
relations” on Israeli terms, while also insisting that Israel will keep
striking until its security conditions are met.
These remarks
should be understood alongside the fact that the bombing of Lebanon
continues. Israel is using negotiations as a cover to press its military
campaign, not as a genuine path to de-escalation. Israeli strikes
continued Thursday killing dozens more, with between 17 and 24 killed in
specific strikes by Israel.
This is in fact the same modus
operandi of the Trump administration itself. The “talks” in Islamabad
are but a respite as the White House considers its next move to
militarily impose the requirements of US imperialism onto the Iranian
people.
The World Socialist Web Site has consistently maintained that this war is part
of the imperialist effort by Washington to subordinate the region to
American interests. The US is pursuing “the obliteration of Iran as a
state and a campaign of terror against the population,” and that the
assault on Iran is tied to control over energy resources and preparation
for wider a conflict, including against China and Russia.
As an
anonymous senior defense official told Politico in March, “Iran is not
the end. It’s the first test of a broader geopolitical reorientation.
We’re rebuilding the capacity to project power simultaneously in
multiple theaters—Eurasia, the Pacific, and the Middle East.”
This
analysis identifies the present war as a warning of what is coming
next. The aim of US imperialism is the domination of Iran as a major
opening act in a broader global escalation. The Middle East war is the
sharpest expression of the world crisis of capitalism.
4. USPS moves to suspend pension payments amid deepening financial crisis
The United States Postal Service (USPS) has suspended payments to its
employees’ pension program, amid a mounting liquidity crisis.
Postmaster
General David Steiner told the House Oversight Committee in March: “At
our current rate we will be out of cash in less than 12 months,” Steiner
warned. “So in about a year from now the Postal Service will be unable
to deliver the mail if we continue the status quo.”
In response,
USPS leadership has initiated an emergency cash conservation plan.
Beginning April 10, the agency will temporarily suspend its biweekly
employer contributions to the Federal Employees Retirement System
(FERS), which covers approximately 99 percent of career postal workers.
These
payments, typically about $200 million every two weeks, amount to
roughly $400 million per month. By halting them, USPS expects to free up
approximately $2.5 billion through the end of the fiscal year,
providing a temporary buffer to sustain operations.
*****
What is being presented by officials as a sudden fiscal emergency is,
in reality, the culmination of decades of policy decisions that have
systematically weakened the public postal system. In 1971, following a massive national wildcat strike
against the Nixon administration, the post office was demoted from a
cabinet-level department of the federal government to a self-funding
independent agency, USPS.
This has been used to justify repeated rounds of cuts, including the most recent “Delivering for America”
restructuring program. This aims to adopt an Amazon-style logistics
model prioritized for package delivery while expanding a 'non-career'
workforce characterized by low pay and precarious job security.
The
program has been a disaster for workers. New and renovated facilities,
designed to exploit workers to the limit, are unsafe and have led to a
series of workplace fatalities. This includes the deaths of Nick Acker in Michigan and Russell Scruggs in Georgia last November. The USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee responded to their deaths by launching an independent investigation into workplace conditions at the post office.
At
the heart of the funding crisis is a fundamental shift in USPS’s
revenue model. The agency is legally required to provide universal
service to 168 million addresses, six days a week, regardless of
profitability. Yet its most core revenue stream, First-Class Mail, has
declined dramatically.
Since 2007, First-Class Mail volume has fallen by more than 50
percent, driven by the rapid digitization of communication. This
collapse has not been offset by growth in package delivery, which, while
expanding, operates on thinner margins and faces intense competition
from private carriers.
The financial consequences are that USPS
reported a $9 billion net loss for fiscal year 2025, continuing a
pattern of persistent deficits that management now cites to justify
sweeping operational and workforce changes.
To address the
impending cash exhaustion, projected for as early as February 2027, the
USPS management is considering other schemes, such as a 4-cent increase
for First-Class Mail Forever stamps to 82 cents. It is also courting
large corporations for delivery contracts, undermining the agency’s
universal service mandate.
*****
While paying lip service to the threat of privatization, the APWU
apparatus promotes the very fiscal framework used to justify the assault
on the workforce. Even as it claims to urge workers to 'get ready for
the fight to come,' the union bureaucracy offers no concrete strategy to
oppose mass layoffs, the suppression of wages, or the relentless
expansion of a precarious, 'non-career' workforce.
For
rank-and-file workers, “getting ready for the fight to come” means
organizing independently of the union bureaucracy through a network of
rank-and-file committees to prepare action from below. Such committees
will provide the framework to unite postal workers across facilities,
job classifications and appeal to workers across the country for
support.
A key objective must also be to link up with postal
workers worldwide, where similar cuts are taking place. Workers at
Canada Post are preparing to vote on sellout contracts that would pave the way for thousands of job cuts.
The
USPS Workers Rank-and-File Committee, in line with postal committees in
other countries in the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File
Committees, has been founded to advocate and encourage this strategy
among postal workers.
5. Teamsters and UPS reach settlement over driver buyouts, while company continues plans to slash 30,000 more jobs
By
claiming a victory over the buyouts, the Teamsters apparatus is
signaling to UPS that, as long as the bureaucracy is included, the
destruction of UPS workers' livelihoods can proceed.
6. Artemis II mission concludes after astronauts travel to the Moon and safely return to Earth
By the parameters set for it, the mission has been a success. Initial
medical reports indicate the astronauts are healthy and will soon be
back on land. The various scientific experiments conducted, largely
focused on the impacts of radiation on humans beyond low Earth orbit,
were completed and will be more carefully studied in the coming months
to inform future missions. An international team of thousands of
engineers, scientists and other workers across NASA and its contractors,
from designing, building and testing the spacecraft to operating it and
communicating with it during the past 10 days all contributed to this
massive effort.
Yet the Artemis II mission has been conducted largely in the
background of US capitalism in terminal crisis. The Trump
administration's war against Iran, now in its fifth week, has killed
thousands, destroyed historical sites, driven up fuel and commodity
prices, and brought the world to the edge of a broader conflict. On
April 8, with Orion on its return trajectory, Vice President JD Vance
threatened that the US possessed tools in its “tool kit” it had “so far”
not chosen to use, strongly implying the possible use of nuclear
weapons. The following day, Trump issued the genocidal threat that “a
whole civilization will die tonight.” The current two-week “ceasefire”
was almost immediately broken by Israel, which launched a murderous
bombardment on Lebanon that has so far cost 303 lives.
Even the bourgeois press has been forced to note this context. Philip Kennicott, writing in the Washington Post
during the mission, observed that Artemis II was proceeding “without
any of that larger framing, or soaring rhetoric” that characterized the
Apollo era, as the world watched the US president use “the language of
genocide and apocalypse to threaten a country that posed no imminent
danger to the United States.” He concluded that Artemis II felt like “an
echo of a world that has passed” as Trump promises “to return an entire
people to the Stone Age.”
From the outset, the mission has been framed in terms of geopolitical
competition, above all with China. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman,
the billionaire entrepreneur appointed by Trump, was present in person
at the naval retrieval of the astronauts. He said afterwards that the US
is “back in the business of sending astronauts to the Moon.” And
despite the explicit exclusion of China and Russia in future US
missions, Isaacman cynically claimed the mission was designed to send
“ambassadors from humanity to the stars.”
As for Trump himself, he
claimed in an earlier conversation with the astronauts that, in part
because of Artemis II, “America is the hottest country in the world
right now.” He continued that, “America will be second to none in
space.”
*****
The logic of the modern space race makes clear that the fight for a
progressive expansion by humanity into space is bound up with the fight
against war and against capitalism as a whole. There can be no genuine
scientific exploration of the Moon and beyond while space travel is
subordinated to corporate profiteering and military conflicts. Such
efforts will only flourish when the international working class has
swept away the current outmoded social order and established society on
socialist foundations.
6. Australia: UWU boss posturing as “rank-and-file” candidate in union election
The phony “rank-and-file” Members First campaign points to mounting
discontent among United Workers Union members over previous sellouts and
growing opposition to the Labor Party, of which the UWU is an integral
part.
7. Oppose the draft! Build a working class movement against imperialist war!
The
Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students for
Social Equality warn workers and young people throughout the United
States: the American ruling class is laying the foundations for the
reimposition of the draft. The oligarchy wants cannon fodder for its
illegal and expanding wars of aggression.
8. Indiana University postdoctoral fellow Youhuang Xiang sentenced to time served and ordered deported
After
over four months of detention, Xiang was coerced into pleading guilty
to trumped-up federal charges of smuggling innocuous E. coli plasmid DNA into the United States.
9. Gore Verbinski’s Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die–The solution to the world’s problems? Infect everyone with anti-technology allergy
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is useful in that it brings together a number of the reactionary responses to the development of technologies such as AI.
Dark, grim, gloomy, foreboding, static, the film speaks to the
thoughts and feelings of sections of the American petty bourgeoisie,
overwhelmed by present-day developments, informed intellectually by a
healthy leftover dose of “New Left”-—whether the filmmakers
are aware of it or not. The problem is squarely the rotten,
materialistic, lazy population: “It’s all your fault … everyone from
your time. You’re all equally complicit.”
There’s not a hint here
that the problem isn’t technology in the abstract, but the current
economic organization of society. There’s not a hint here that AI and
other extraordinary developments could improve life if not under the
control of profit-driven conglomerates.
*****
Yes, of course, it’s a comedy, and Verbinski-Robinson are pulling our
collective leg. Up to a point. However, the portrayal of a population
benumbed by their phones, “lost forever in a world of entertainment and
distraction,” isn’t simply an exaggeration, a heightened version of what
actually exists, a pointed if painful warning. It misrepresents reality
in a malicious fashion—in fact, it turns things largely upside down.
Far from being unthinking robots, thousands of high school students have
walked out against ICE, in the face of concerted repression. Tens of
millions in the US and worldwide have shown their outrage over genocide,
war and dictatorship. Much of this, incidentally, has been organized
through social media.
There’s not a hint in Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die of dialectics either or any kind of nuanced thinking, for that matter.
What’s
missing: technology is a conquest of humanity. Although it serves as an
instrument of oppression, it is the basic requirement for the
liberation of humanity.
Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a rather stupid and backward film, all in all.
10. The International Bolshevik Tendency: Pseudo-left apologists for the union bureaucracy and Stalinism
New Zealand’s trade unions have refused to call a single strike or
industrial action against the genocide in Gaza, the attack on Venezuela
and the expanding war against Iran. These are pro-war organizations. The
country’s largest union openly supports increased military spending to
“build a modern, combat-ready defense force,” preparing NZ to join a
US-led war against China.
The IBT is well aware of these facts but
keeps quiet about them. Its most recent statement on the Gaza
genocide—published on October 17, 2025—called for “coordinated joint
action within the trade unions and across Mediterranean ports” to stop
weapons getting to Israel. It failed to mention that union leaders
internationally have been the central force blocking precisely such
actions.
This cover-up stems from the IBT’s class orientation. Far
from being Marxist or socialist, it is one of several pseudo-left
formations that reflect the interests of definite layers of the middle
class, including the union bureaucracy, whose aim is not to overthrow
capitalism, but to secure a more comfortable position for themselves
within the capitalist system.
*****
The middle class nationalist politics of the IBT are deeply rooted in
its history. The organization originated in a series of splits in the
early 1980s from the Spartacist League, itself founded in the 1960s in
opposition to the ICFI. The current IBT leaders in New Zealand, Bill
Logan and Adaire Hannah, previously held leading positions in the
Spartacist League in both Australia and Britain until the late 1970s.
The
IBT defends the positions advanced by the Spartacists in the 1960s and
1970s, claiming that they “upheld the banner of revolutionary
Trotskyism.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Spartacist tendency was an adaptation to Pabloism, a revisionist
current that emerged in the Fourth International following World War II,
led by Michel Pablo and Ernest Mandel. Pablo repudiated Trotsky’s
conclusion that the Stalinist bureaucracy had become a
counter-revolutionary force in the Soviet Union and internationally,
which had to be overthrown by the working class in a political
revolution in order to preserve and extend the gains of the Russian
Revolution. Trotsky had founded the Fourth International in 1938 as the
world party of socialist revolution, to lead the working class in an
uncompromising struggle against Stalinism, social democracy and
bourgeois nationalism.
Drawing deeply pessimistic conclusions from
the temporary stabilisation of capitalism after World War II, Pablo
claimed it was not possible to build independent Trotskyist parties and
that Stalinist regimes, under mass pressure, could carry out
revolutionary tasks. He instructed Trotskyists to enter “the mass
movement as it exists,” including Stalinist, social democratic and
bourgeois nationalist organizations.
In 1953, the International
Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) was founded to defend
orthodox Trotskyism against Pabloism’s liquidationist program, which
directed national sections to dissolve into Stalinist, reformist and
bourgeois nationalist movements on the false premise that such forces
could be pushed leftward.
The American Socialist Workers Party
(SWP) initially led the international struggle against Pabloism. A
decade later, however, the ICFI waged an intense battle against the
SWP’s opportunist decision to reunite with the Pabloites in the United
Secretariat.
Two oppositional groupings arose within the SWP: the
American Committee for the Fourth International (ACFI), aligned with the
ICFI in defense of orthodox Trotskyism, and the Spartacist League, led
by James Robertson, which concentrated on US tactical questions rather
than the international struggle against revisionism.
*****
The International Bolshevik Tendency originated in the “External
Tendency,” formed in 1982 by members in the US, Canada and Germany who
had been expelled or who split from the Spartacists during a series of
factional crises in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The US-based
External Tendency, which had renamed itself the Bolshevik Tendency,
fused with the New Zealand Permanent Revolution Group—led by former
Spartacists Logan and Hannah—to form the IBT in 1991.
The IBT
still glorifies the Spartacist League of the 1960s and 1970s but claims
that during the 1980s it degenerated in a “Stalinophilic direction” and
Robertson’s leadership took on “hyper-centralist, paranoid and
personalist characteristics.”
The
IBT’s differences with the SL, however, were limited and tactical,
rather than principled. It retained the same pro-Stalinist orientation.
The IBT distanced itself from some of the Spartacists’ crudest
apologetics, such as the slogan “Hail Red Army!” which glorified the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan at the end of 1979. While saying that the
slogan was too uncritical of the Soviet bureaucracy, the IBT still
called for “military support to the Stalinists,” backing the
invasion—which was a reactionary response to the US funding of the mujahadeen rebels against the Moscow-aligned regime.
The
IBT portrayed the invasion as progressive, based on the Pabloite and
Spartacist argument that the Red Army was defending “socialized property
forms” and opposing imperialism. In fact, the war—paid for by the
Soviet working class through brutal attacks on living conditions and
thousands of deaths—accelerated the economic crisis that culminated in
the bureaucracy’s decision to dissolve the Soviet Union.
Similarly,
the IBT gave its “unconditional military support” to the Stalinists to
crush the mass strike movement of Polish workers in 1981, which it
smeared as “counter-revolutionary.” It merely criticized the
Spartacists’ pledge to “take responsibility in advance for whatever
idiocies and atrocities” the Soviet troops committed.
As
the Soviet bureaucracy under Mikhail Gorbachev was preparing the
imminent dissolution of the USSR and restoration of capitalism, the IBT
insisted that it was the “duty” of socialists to back rival Stalinist
factions who attempted a military coup in August 1991.
The coup plotters agreed that capitalism should be restored, but feared
that the rapidity of the transformation would spark an uncontrollable
movement in the working class.
In
the case of China, the IBT continues to deny the obvious fact that
capitalism has been restored. It refers to China as a “deformed workers
state” and on this basis defends its repression of workers and portrays
its military as a progressive force.
*****
The claim that workers in Cuba, or any oppressed country, can defend
themselves by siding with China in a military confrontation with US
imperialism is both dangerous and delusional. Insofar as this
perspective is taken seriously, it can only undermine the essential task
of unifying the international working class—including workers in the
United States and China—in a socialist, anti‑war movement.
In
reality, Beijing is responding to Washington’s far-advanced war
preparations against China by desperately seeking an accommodation with
the imperialist powers. At the same time, in response to provocations by
the US and its allies in Taiwan and the South China Sea, China is
staging its own military exercises, playing into the hands of the US and
heightening the danger of a catastrophic nuclear war.
The
overriding fear of the Chinese ruling elite is that the worsening global
economic crisis and approaching war could trigger a movement in the
working class against its capitalist police-state regime. The IBT has
indicated where it will align in such a confrontation: when millions of
people protested in Hong Kong in 2019 to demand democratic rights and an
end to police brutality, the IBT smeared the demonstrations as
“pro-imperialist” and called for “the suppression of the leadership of
the movement and its most intransigent adherents.”
*****
The restoration of capitalism by the Stalinist regimes was only the most
dramatic response to the unprecedented globalization of production
during the 1980s, which fatally undermined the basis for all
national-reformist political programs. It was part of a global rightward
shift by all the parties—whether Stalinist or social democratic—that
workers had previously looked to to defend their interests.
*****
The IBT continues to heavily promote racial and gender identity
politics, which serves both to divide workers and to subordinate them to
sections of the upper middle class and the capitalist political
establishment. In New Zealand, the IBT supports “the movement for Māori
autonomy” based on the Treaty of Waitangi, a colonial document which has
been used by successive governments as a mechanism to hand out
multi-million dollar settlements to the Māori bourgeoisie.
It
also uses the issue of transgender rights in order to boost the unions,
the Green Party and other middle class groups, based on the claim that
elements of “the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie or reformist workers’ parties
can at times be convinced” to support access to healthcare for
transgender people and anti-discrimination measures, even if “these
reforms are reversible under capitalism.”
*****
The IBT’s promotion of Stalinism and “left” capitalist parties, and
its defense of the union bureaucracy, are two sides of the same
nationalist perspective, rooted in the rejection of the fight to mobilize the international working class under the leadership of the
Trotskyist movement.
In a March 2025 article, the IBT was forced
to admit that “the unions have failed to fight, even in limited ways,
when workers needed it,” but attributed this to mistaken policies that
can be corrected through pressure. It called on “communists” to
“struggle for a militant pole, for open discussion of strategic
differences, and to challenge the leadership.”
A February 28 article calling for workers to strike against the
US-Israeli war on Iran similarly stated: “The current leadership of the
organized labor movement is too beholden to their respective ruling
classes to launch such actions, but there is hope that the rank-and-file
may push for sanity.”
This position—that the union leadership can
be “pushed” to fight—echoes that of the Spartacist League, which
attributed the wave of working class defeats in the 1980s to the union
leaders’ failure to “play hardball to win.”
As the ICFI noted,
this explained nothing. The corrupt and reactionary character of the
union leaders could only be understood as “the subjective expression of
more fundamental objective processes.” Globalization had “undermined the
viability of trade unions as nationally-based defensive organizations
of the working class. This process is expressed in the decay of these
organizations and their transformation into appendages of the employers
and the state.”
As organizations which “arose historically on the soil of the national
economy and the growing power of the national state,” the unions had no
progressive response to globalization. For more than 40 years their role
has been to sabotage strikes, enforce mass redundancies and assist in
lowering workers’ living standards to defend the “international
competitiveness” of the national bourgeoisie.
*****
Today, subordinating workers to the unions means aiding these organizations in the defense of the bourgeois state and imperialism—most
starkly exposed in the unions’ refusal to call strikes against the Gaza
genocide and the war against Iran.
The explosive struggles in the US in January 2026 also demonstrate that any serious mass movement against fascism must develop in opposition
to the union apparatus. The demand for a general strike to stop the
reign of terror by ICE and Donald Trump’s drive to dictatorship gained
popularity in the working class independently of the unions, which are
deeply hostile to such a strike.
*****
Sharp political lessons must be drawn from the record of the IBT and
the Spartacists. All the theories they advanced about the “progressive”
role of Stalinism, and the possibilities of “transforming” the unions
and “broad left” capitalist parties into “revolutionary” organizations,
have been shattered by events.
*****
The urgent task facing socialist-minded workers and young people is
to build the revolutionary leadership required for the coming mass
struggles of the working class. This in turn requires a political fight
to differentiate Trotskyism—the program of world socialist
revolution—from every variety of pseudo-left politics, which seeks to
corral workers and young people behind illusions in bourgeois parties
and regimes and the unions. As the crisis of the capitalist system
continues to deepen, the pseudo-lefts will be brought forward as the
last line of defense for bourgeois rule.
The ICFI alone provides
the necessary strategic perspective for this fight, due to its
principled struggle to defend the Trotskyist program against Stalinism,
Pabloite liquidationism, and all forms of nationalist politics.
11. IYSSE (Sri Lanka) meeting discusses socialist strategy to stop the war against Iran
On April 7, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality
(IYSSE) and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) held the second in a
series of anti-war public meetings titled “Stop the US-Israel illegal
war against Iran” at the Orient Education Institute in Hindagala, near
the University of Peradeniya. Students, workers, university academics
and party supporters attended the meeting. The SEP also livestreamed the
event on its Facebook page, where, at the time of writing, viewers had
shared it more than 325 times and watched it over 4,800 times.
*****
Most participants in these discussions expressed anger and opposition
to the war and sought clarity on how it could be stopped. This
demonstrated a strong interest in understanding the root causes of the
imperialist war drive and its implications in the context of the
deepening global crisis of the capitalist system. More than one hundred
copies of the booklet Stop the Criminal US-Israeli War on Iran, containing Sinhala and Tamil translations, were sold during the campaign.
The
SEP and IYSSE also held a lunchtime picket prior to the meeting,
calling for an end to the war against Iran through the building of a
conscious and active international anti-war movement of the working
class. The protest was witnessed by thousands of commuters using public
transport, and several news websites reported on it favorably.
Sakuntha Hirimutugoda, a leading member of the IYSSE in Sri Lanka,
chaired the meeting, while SEP General Secretary Deepal Jayasekera
delivered the main report. In his introductory remarks, Hirimutugoda
said that the period following the first US-Israeli attack on Iran had
demonstrated the homicidal, brutal and violent character of the war.
Every other imperialist power, he noted, was backing the onslaught.
Hirimutugoda
referred to the threats by Donald Trump to send Iran “back to the Stone
Age,” declaring that “the whole of Iran will be destroyed overnight,”
and targeting Tehran’s energy system. He warned:
If he
attacks the energy system, there will be dangerous consequences.
Immense destruction has already been caused. Already, 2,000 people in
Iran have died. Trump is threatening to destroy a country with a
population of 90 million. Such threats can be equated with the actions
of the Nazi regime in Germany in the 1930s. However, when they spoke of
the Holocaust, it was done secretly, behind the backs of the people.
Trump is making such threats in broad daylight, on social media and in
press conferences. This exposes the total bankruptcy and advanced stage
of collapse of the capitalist system.
12. Australia: Key issues buried at Brisbane rally against arrest of anti-genocide protester
There
was no mention of Labor’s own “hate crime” laws and wave of arrests at a
protest over the prosecution of a Palestine solidarity activist for
using the prohibited anti-genocide slogan “from the river to the sea.”
13. Protests and strikes erupt in Brazil in turbulent run-up to presidential election
Since
the beginning of this year, a series of protests and strikes have
erupted in Brazil against the privatization and austerity policies of
the Workers Party (PT) administration of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio
Lula da Silva.
14. Pseudo-leftist union leadership undermines Argentine tire plant occupation with appeals to nationalism
The
SUTNA union, led by the Partido Obrero, is chaining the Fate tire
workers’ plant occupation to nationalist appeals to Peronist factions
and other bourgeois politicians.
15. Turkish independent union leader Başaran Aksu arrested
Başaran Aksu, Organizing Coordinator of the independent rank-and-file
union Umut-Sen (Hope Union), was arrested Thursday by a court because of
a public statement he had made. Aksu, who also serves as an organizing
specialist for Bağımsız Maden İş (Independent Mine Workers’ Union) and
is based in Soma, had his family home in Hopa, Artvin raided by police
on Monday.
He has played a leading role in workers’ struggles and wildcat
strikes emerging in opposition to the union bureaucracy in Türkiye, most
recently being detained during the Polyak miners’ strike in İzmir. He has long been in the crosshairs of the corporations and the state.
Ulaş
Sevinç, chairman of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü
Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International),
condemned this political arrest in a statement on X, calling on workers
to defend Aksu:
Başaran Aksu, like BİRTEK-SEN Chairman
Mehmet Türkmen, was arrested in line with the ruling class’s conscious
offensive against the working class.
These workers’ leaders,
unlike the dominant union bureaucracy, do not act as an extension of the
state and corporations. They are seen as a major threat precisely
because they have been at the forefront of the initial steps of a
re-emerging labor movement—because they have given expression to the
revolutionary potential of the working class.
The working class
must recognize that Başaran Aksu, Mehmet Türkmen and Esra Işık are class
war prisoners, defend them, and mobilize for their immediate release.
Aksu had publicly protested on social media against the arrest of
Esra Işık. Işık, a leader of the villagers’ resistance against the
“emergency expropriation” decree issued for Akbelen Forest in Milas,
Muğla—a case still before the courts—and against the Limak Holding of
Nihat Özdemir, was arrested on Tuesday, March 31, after protesting an
inspection team.
The prosecution questioned Aksu over a statement,
in which he said, “Having Esra Işık arrested on Nihat Özdemir’s orders
represents the highest level our independent judiciary can reach. Arrest
all the Akbelen villagers, you shameless people! May those who show
even the slightest sign of submission to you be disgraced.”
In his
defense, Aksu stood by this statement, saying: “I believe Nihat Özdemir
is an influential figure in the Muğla region and that he played a role
in what happened in Akbelen. The detention of Esra Işık, the daughter of
the Akbelen village headwoman, without any evidence, is the most
concrete proof of this.” Özdemir, the head of Limak—one of Turkey’s
largest holding companies—is one of the country’s wealthiest businessmen.
Aksu was arrested on charges of “spreading misleading information” and
“inciting the public to hatred and enmity.” The political character and
arbitrariness of the arrest is underscored by the claim that Aksu’s
union activities, which meant he was not permanently residing at his
registered address, gave rise to his “escape risk.”
*****
As Aksu was being taken into custody pending the remand hearing, he
declared: “In Türkiye today, it is impossible to state the truth without
committing the crime of ‘spreading misleading information,’ and
impossible to expose the bloody exploitation regime in Türkiye without
committing the crime of ‘inciting hatred and enmity.’ This regime rests
on holding companies and yellow unions. The judiciary and the police are
part of this process. They are very powerful; they are running a vast
operation of robbery, plunder and extortion.”
As he was being
taken to prison, Aksu defiantly challenged this unlawful ruling,
stating: “This is the state of the judiciary in Türkiye—they do whatever
the holding companies tell them to. We will continue to make life
difficult for the holding companies.”
While Aksu’s arrest was
widely protested, the trade union confederations—including the
ostensibly oppositional DİSK (Confederation of Progressive Trade
Unions)—completely ignored the arrest, doing nothing to mobilize workers
in his defense.
The Istanbul Bar Association issued a statement stressing that the
arrest order was in violation of the jurisprudence of the Constitutional
Court and the European Court of Human Rights. The bar noted that
arresting someone solely on the basis of critical public statements
“without concrete and sufficient evidence” amounted to “courts becoming
instruments for the suppression of trade union organizing activities,”
adding that “this situation produces a chilling effect on the legitimate
actors in the struggle for trade union rights.”
*****
The real reason behind the arrests of Aksu, Türkmen and Işık is that
they have exposed the savage exploitation of the working class and
natural resources, the obscene wealth extracted through that
exploitation and the structure of class rule designed to protect and
perpetuate these capitalist relations of exploitation—and the role they
have played in the growing independent workers’ movement rising against
this order.
It is no accident that the Erdoğan government’s
offensive has intensified in recent months. During this period, the
United States, Türkiye’s NATO ally, together with Israel, launched its
imperialist war of aggression against Iran. At the same time, there has
been a significant upsurge in class struggles, including wildcat strikes
amid a mounting inflation and economic hardship. While the overwhelming
majority of the population—over 90 percent according to polls—opposed
this unjust war against Iran, the Erdoğan government adopted a stance
completely contrary to the will of the people and even condemned Iran’s
right to defend itself against the aggression.
*****
Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker who ran for the presidency of the
United Auto Workers (UAW) under the slogan “transfer of power to the
rank-and-file” and a leading member of the International Workers
Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), pointed out in his
solidarity statement with Türkmen to the connection between escalating
authoritarianism, imperialist war and the growing workers’ movement. He explained:
Türkmen’s arrest is part of a broader offensive against a growing movement of workers in Turkey...
The
response of the Erdoğan government, as with Trump in the US, is
repression. As Turkey is increasingly drawn into the expanding war in
the Middle East, the government is determined to give no quarter to any
form of social or political opposition—above all from the working class.
A government preparing for war cannot tolerate workers who organize
independently, strike for their wages, and refuse to be silenced. The
assault on democratic rights and the assault on workers’ living
standards are two sides of the same process, and both are intensified by
the drive toward militarism and war.
The World Socialist Web Site
calls on its readers to defend the class war prisoners in
Türkiye—Başaran Aksu, Mehmet Türkmen and the other detainees—and to
demand their immediate release.
16. Starmer visits Gulf states amid fracturing “special relationship” with US
The
US/Israeli war on Iran has provoked an escalating crisis for all the
European powers, none more so than the Starmer government in Britain.
Foreign
policy precepts that have determined the actions of UK governments for
decades are being torn apart—centered on the worsening breakdown of the
“special relationship” with the United States.
Starmer in opposition promised a “reset” with the major European
powers, after Britain’s fractious and economically catastrophic exit
from the European Union—as demanded not just by dominant sections of
British capital but also by the Biden administration, which wanted a
restoration of the UK’s role as a reliable voice for Washington within
the bloc.
But by the time Labour came to office, Donald Trump
occupied the White House, forcing Starmer to try to agree a vital
pro-Brexit trade deal with a US government that was openly hostile to
the EU.
A trade deal was eventually reached, but entirely on
Trump’s terms—with Britain hit a little less hard by tariffs than other
European powers.
The second major bone of contention was military
spending, with Starmer posturing, ever more unsuccessfully, as the
European power most receptive to Trump’s demands for 5 percent of GDP
spending by NATO powers.
The Iran war has brought US-UK and
US-European tensions to fever pitch, with Trump repeatedly berating
Starmer and other European leaders for placing face-saving restrictions
on US flights and for not sending ships to the Strait of Hormuz. Starmer
was “no Winston Churchill”, Trump declared, and the Royal Navy’s
warships were “toys”, fronted by “two old broken-down aircraft
carriers”.
Within hours of Trump announcing a ceasefire in the US
war against Iran, Starmer announced a visit to the Middle East “to meet
leaders of countries who have been in the front line and will set out
his full support for the newly agreed ceasefire”. Talks would center “on
ensuring the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz remains permanent, with
the United Kingdom continuing to lead international efforts.”
Once again, however, Starmer’s diplomatic visit unravelled spectacularly.
*****
When asked about Trump’s threat to pull the US out of NATO, Starmer
made an appeal for a continued alliance: “It is in America’s interests.
It’s in European interests” that “the single most effective military
alliance the world has ever known” is preserved, he said, adding that he
had been making the case for Europeans to do more, as Trump has
demanded, “for the best part of two years”.
The Starmer
government’s dilemma is that of British imperialism as a whole: whether
to continue efforts to restore the relations with US imperialism on
which it has relied for decades, placating Trump to keep NATO alive, or
whether to shift more decisively towards the creation of an at least
semi-independent economic and military block with Germany, France and
others to counter the “America First” anti-European agenda now
dominating Washington.
Both demand a massive escalation in
military spending, austerity cuts of unprecedented savagery, and an
ever-deeper turn to authoritarian rule. Amid the continued drive by all
the imperialist powers to redivide the world between them, both routes
lead to bloody wars internationally and class war at home.
17. Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific
Australia:
Tasmania: Grange Resources mine workers strike for improved pay offer
Workers from eight Melbourne metropolitan councils begin joint industrial action
Workers at Brownes Foods in Western Australia strike
MSS security guards at Casey Hospital in Victoria campaign for wage rise
Ambulance Tasmania paramedics and communications workers strike
Royal Hobart Hospital operating theater workers strike for improved conditions
Vinidex factory workers in Victoria hold second strike for pay increase
Bangladesh:
Sugar mill workers demand permanent jobs
India:
National Thermal Power Corporation workers at Korba, Chhattisgarh protest
Tamil Nadu police intimidate protesting SS Hyderabadi Restaurant workers in Chennai
Karnataka State Road Transport workers protest outstanding wages
Rajasthan: Jaipur Municipal Corporation sanitation workers protest outstanding wages
Philippines:
Newtech Pulp mill workers in Northern Mindanao on strike
20. Please defend and help free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk! Please add your name to our petition!
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.
