Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:

1. AI, the crisis of capitalism and the tasks of the SEP

 

For enhanced study, following are detailed notes (made with the assistance of Socialism AI) of the report to the Ninth Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US) given by Evan Blake.

为了深化学习，以下是埃文·布莱克（Evan Blake）向美国社会主义平等党第九次代表大会所作报告的详细笔记（由 Socialism AI 协助整理）。 

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Introduction

• Published as the report to the Ninth Congress of the SEP (US), held August 2–7, 2026; introduced the fifth resolution, "AI and the fight for socialism," adopted unanimously
• Comrade North's opening report assessed the first six years of the decade of socialist revolution, including the explosive contradiction between technological development and the profit system
• That contradiction finds its sharpest expression in AI — the subject of Resolution 5
• Never before has the movement devoted an entire congress resolution to a single technology
• Reasons: in no other technology are the contradictions of capitalism so concentrated; the struggle over AI has become a central battlefield of world politics and the class struggle
• The report elaborates: the social character of the technology, the scientific revolution behind it, capitalism's uses of it, the significance of Socialism AI, the speculative mania and profit crisis, the pseudo-left's false solutions, and the party's position

An instrument of exploitation, surveillance and war

• Resolution: under capitalism, AI is introduced not to lighten labor's burden but to cut it as a cost — realizing the corporations' dream of drastically reducing the workforce
• Scale: nearly 400,000 job cuts announced in the first five months of 2026 alone, AI the leading reason; studies project displacement of hundreds of millions worldwide by 2030
• Corporate announcements: Amazon eliminated 30,000 corporate positions (Oct 2025–Jan 2026, ~9% of corporate workforce); UPS wiped out 48,000 jobs via hub automation; Microsoft cut ~15,000 positions over 2025 (AI writing 30% of its code); Salesforce cut support staff from 9,000 to 5,000 ("less heads")
• Same process underway on every continent, still in earliest stages
• What distinguishes this wave: for the first time, automation strikes intellectual and professional labor (coding, clerical work, translation, design, financial analysis) — higher-paid layers long thought secure
• For three-quarters of a century, secure professional employment through education was a central mechanism of capitalist stability; it is now being dismantled
• A social order that proletarianizes its educated youth and denies them a future is manufacturing its own gravediggers — completing the Communist Manifesto's foresight of capital converting "the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science" into wage laborers
• The technology oligarchs have enriched themselves as never before — epitomized by fascist Elon Musk becoming the world's first trillionaire
• The liberal veneer of Silicon Valley has been discarded: Musk finances fascist movements and performs the Nazi salute; Google dropped "don't be evil"; "Dark Enlightenment" ideologists propose replacing the republic with a corporate monarchy
• AI forged into an instrument of mass repression: platforms collect data of billions and hand it to the state and employers; social media scoured to identify students and workers for deportation over political speech (especially opposition to the Gaza genocide)
• Trump's ICE fuses government databases, data-broker records, facial recognition, and license-plate/location tracking into a single apparatus of coercion built by Palantir
• What is being assembled is the technological infrastructure of a police state — targeting immigrants today, the whole working class tomorrow
• AI central to the new imperialist redivision of the world: the work of deciding who shall die is transferred to software generating kill lists at machine speed
• In the US-Israeli assault on Iran, Palantir's Maven Smart System (incorporating Anthropic's Claude) produced ~1,000 bombing targets in the first 24 hours, orchestrating the murder of thousands of civilians including children
• The same systems administer the Gaza genocide on the Project Nimbus cloud infrastructure built by Google and Amazon for the Israeli state
• The ruling class does not conceal this: July 2025 White House strategy "Winning the Race: America's AI Action Plan" opens with "The United States is in a race to achieve global dominance in artificial intelligence"
• The plan suspends environmental review for data centers, organizes export controls to strangle Chinese development, and ensures frontier US labs are major Pentagon contractors
• Resolution: none of these reactionary uses flow from the technology itself, but from the social relations within which it is developed — private ownership, the profit system, and the division of the world into rival nation-states

The Marxist position on technology

• Hostility to AI is widespread and growing (workers, artists, young people, environmentalists); this anger is understandable, and the socialist movement is not indifferent
• But anti-AI sentiment is not merely spontaneous — it is cultivated by every pseudo-left tendency, sections of the far right, and broad layers of the political establishment, all with an interest in turning anger against the technology rather than the class that owns it
• The conclusion that the technology itself is the enemy is a profound political error — a modern form of Luddism (named for the early-19th-century English textile workers)
• The Luddites were not fools — skilled workers defending their livelihoods with the only means available to a class lacking consciousness of its historical position
• To revive their standpoint two centuries later, after the entire experience of the international socialist movement, is not the inexperience of a young class but a conscious retreat
• The practical result of a categorical rejection of AI is not to disarm the corporations and state (which will wield it regardless) but to disarm the working class alone
• Luddism obliterates the distinction upon which the Marxist attitude rests: between a machine and the social order in which it functions
• Trotsky, Culture and Socialism (1927): "Technology is a basic conquest of mankind… the machine strangles the wage-slave. But the wage-slave can only be freed through the machine."
• Trotsky was addressing how a besieged, backward workers state could raise the cultural level of the masses — bound up with the struggle against the "proletarian culture" theoreticians
• Trotsky demolished that position: the proletariat must master the entire inheritance of the overthrown society — "We don't have to shatter technology… the revolution was carried out precisely in order to seize this 'heritage.'"
• What Trotsky grasped holds for every conquest of nature: nitrogen fixation feeds half of humanity and filled the shells of two world wars; nuclear physics incinerated two cities before it lit one
• Science does not decide between abundance and annihilation — the social order decides; until the working class takes power, every conquest is turned first to profit and war
• AI is the sharpest expression of this contradiction yet, because it operates not upon matter but upon knowledge itself — the accumulated thought and culture of the species
• Resolution: the working class must take hold of AI technologies, as it must take hold of the factories, mines, data centers and banks, and wrest them from the class that has monopolized them

The scientific revolution and the general intellect

• Every revolutionary transformation of society has been prepared by a revolution in thought — but the revolution in thought is never the ultimate cause; it is the product of changes in the material foundations of society
• The 17th-century scientific revolution arose from the growth of trade, navigation, mining and manufacture; Kepler, Galileo, Harvey, Descartes, and above all Newton's Principia (1687) broke the authority of scripture and scholastic dogma
• The 18th-century Enlightenment carried the same method into society (Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert, Holbach); Lavoisier placed chemistry on a quantitative foundation
• Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific: the great men who prepared minds for the coming revolution were themselves extreme revolutionists, subjecting everything to unsparing criticism before the judgment-seat of reason
• Engels explained this materialistically: final causes of social change are to be sought "not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch"
• The philosophers were the product of a rising bourgeoisie and the growth of productive forces beneath feudalism; the intellectual revolution was the medium through which that class reached consciousness of its historical task
• Diderot's Encyclopédie assembled the learning of the age; the bourgeois-democratic revolutions in America and France followed within a generation
• The modern scientific-technological revolution plays an analogous role today, on an incomparably higher level: it has assembled the material premises of world socialism and produced an instrument to place the accumulated experience of the working class before billions of workers, at once and in every language
• Achievements within a single human lifetime: DNA structure (1953), genetic code cracked (1966), human genome sequenced (2003), CRISPR (2012); cosmic microwave background (1965), gravitational waves (2015)
• Beneath it all, the revolution in computation and communication: transistor (1947), integrated circuit (1958), microprocessor (1971), World Wide Web (1991) — within a single generation, over half of humanity joined in instantaneous communication and the world working class bound into integrated chains of production
• "Artificial intelligence" coined at the Dartmouth workshop (1956), but the neural-network approach (Hinton, LeCun, Bengio) was scorned and starved of resources for decades, vindicated only when the internet's data and computing power made the 2012 deep-learning breakthroughs possible
• This entire development belongs to the epoch of imperialism — almost all of it since the founding of the Fourth International (1938), whose founding document characterized the period as the death agony of capitalism
• Throughout this epoch, science has been fused with militarism: the Manhattan Project produced the bombs dropped on two militarily insignificant Japanese cities and the instrument of US postwar hegemony; the missile programs produced the space race; the Pentagon network became the internet
• The distorting pressure of the imperialist epoch upon science is the medium in which AI is being developed
• The other pole: the October Revolution lifted a backward, largely illiterate country into the front rank of world science within a generation — in spite of the Stalinist bureaucracy, which annihilated a generation of scientific cadre in the Great Terror and imposed Lysenkoism (driving Nikolai Vavilov and others to death in prison)
• Even so: first satellite and first man in space; Kolmogorov's foundations of probability theory; at the Institute of Cybernetics in Kyiv, Ivakhnenko and Lapa published (1965) the first working learning algorithms for deep multilayer networks — anticipating today's deep learning by decades
• These were the achievements of nationalized property and economic planning, however distorted by the bureaucracy — indicating what the working class can accomplish
• Medicine and public health: antibiotics, modern vaccines, eradication of smallpox, polio at the threshold of extinction, rising life expectancy; genome sequencing opened molecular-level treatment
• COVID-19: for the first time in the history of any pandemic, humanity possessed the scientific means to eliminate the virus (proven in China, New Zealand, etc.) — but the vast majority of capitalist governments refused these measures and let the disease rip, because the flow of surplus value could not be interrupted
• Over 30 million killed by COVID, hundreds of millions debilitated by Long COVID; the subsequent official embrace of anti-scientific reaction (vaccine opponents elevated to public health, disease-control institutions dismantled) is the wholesale repudiation of the 20th-century scientific inheritance
• Climate change: continuous CO₂ measurement began 1958 — 68 years of watching the concentration climb; Sagan testified to the Senate (1985), Hansen (1988), the IPCC founded (1988)
• The sources of global warming have been known for the entire lifetime of most comrades at this Congress; every one could be eliminated with existing technology — what is lacking is not knowledge but a social order capable of acting on it
• Two conclusions: (1) the pace — the whole edifice of modern science erected within a single lifetime; (2) its social character — names attach to discoveries ever more thinly (the genome sequenced by hundreds of labs on four continents; gravitational waves reported over a thousand signatures)
• Science became a vast collective, organized, industrialized, international enterprise — becoming what Marx foresaw: a direct force of production, the general intellect of humanity materialized in social labor
• The resolution places AI as the culmination: the point at which the accumulated knowledge of the species is materialized in a machine — Marx, Grundrisse: "The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production…"
• In Marx's day this was glimpsed in the embodiment of science in machinery; in ours it has been consummated — systems trained on the recorded thought of humanity
• Capitalism began with the enclosure of the common lands; it approaches its end with the enclosure of the intellectual commons of the entire species

Socialism AI and the development of socialist consciousness

• The party's approach emphasizes a terminological clarification — not a quarrel over words
• Marx's analysis of commodity fetishism: under capitalism the products of human labor confront their producers as independent powers; social relations appear as relations between things
• "Artificial intelligence" is a modern form of this fetishism: "artificial" severs the intelligence from the human labor that produced it, presenting the collective intellectual inheritance as a mind arisen on its own
• Comrade North (Dec. 7, 2025): "AI" is better understood as augmented intelligence — an extension and amplification of human intellectual labor; "The intelligence is not artificial; the automation is."
• Five days later, the ICFI launched Socialism AI, conceived, built and maintained by our cadre — placing the heritage of Marxism (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, Plekhanov) and nearly three decades of WSWS archives at the disposal of workers and youth everywhere, at once, in any language, at any hour
• For the first time, a revolutionary organization placed in the hands of the working class a system able to answer serious questions of theory, history and organization from a Marxist standpoint, with citations
• Launch statement: its decisive significance is bridging the gap between the objective movement of the working class and the subjective level of socialist consciousness
• The central strategic problem of the epoch: the objective crisis matures at breakneck speed while working-class consciousness has been thrown back by a century of Stalinist and social-democratic betrayals
• The entire history of the Fourth International is the struggle to resolve the crisis of revolutionary leadership; the ICFI has grasped that the very technological revolution capitalism turns against the working class provides an unprecedented weapon
• Socialism AI is a weapon of revolutionary leadership, not a substitute for it — no technology builds a party or makes a revolution on its own, only the conscious activity of living revolutionists
• But the weapons a revolutionary movement wields shape what it can accomplish — lineage: Diderot's Encyclopédie → Lenin's Iskra → the World Socialist Web Site (1998) → Socialism AI
• Since release, used by thousands of workers and young people in more than 100 countries
• A powerful force multiplier for the party's educational work: a worker who has not yet read Marx can begin with his own experiences (betrayals in his plant, the war his government wages) and be led into the whole body of Marxist analysis
• Definite practices: demonstrate Socialism AI directly (campaign tables, party and IYSSE meetings, workplace discussions) rather than merely describing it; make it a working tool in rank-and-file committees (researching employers' finances and global operations, drafting statements)
• Use it in comrades' own writing and research — not to write in our place, but across successive drafts to gather and check material, sharpen outlines, test formulations, with political judgment at every step; use in tandem with other AI tools
• Use it systematically as a reading assistant in studying the foundational texts; tools under development to integrate the Marxist Library directly with Socialism AI (highlighting, bookmarking, interrogating passages)
• Every branch and member must promote it; a campaign in the weeks ahead aiming to win thousands of new users (social media, systematic contact work)
• The May Day version produced a rise in usage and account creation; integration into the WSWS front page and every article (last week) joins the system to the whole of our published material, to be extended to all language sites
• Masses of workers and young people calling themselves socialists today will be drawn to a revolutionary application of this technology

The AI bubble and the declining rate of profit

• The AI bubble is a speculative mania without precedent in the history of capitalism
• A small group of interlinked corporations bound together in "circular deals" inflating the appearance of demand — Nvidia investing in OpenAI, which spends the investment on Nvidia chips, while Oracle books hundreds of billions in cloud contracts for a customer with no immediate prospect of profit; such commitments now approach $1 trillion
• The flotation of SpaceX (June 12) — the largest public offering in history, raising ~$75 billion, valuing the company at nearly $1.8 trillion, making Musk the world's first trillionaire in a single afternoon
• Central to the prospectus: a constellation of a million satellites as orbital data centers — disputed by engineers and ridiculed by Musk's own competitors, but for the financial oligarchy it hardly matters; a scheme of sufficient grandeur is worth hundreds of billions whether or not it ever functions
• By Jason Furman's calculation, investment in information-processing equipment and software was responsible for 92% of US economic growth in the first half of 2025 — outside the AI bubble, the American economy is essentially stagnant
• The fragility has been demonstrated: in January 2025, DeepSeek's release of a model trained at a fraction of the advertised American cost erased nearly $600 billion from Nvidia's market value in a single session
• Chinese laboratories have gone on releasing capable, open-weight, far cheaper models — a question of ownership and access, not technological breakthrough, exposing as illusory any permanent American monopoly
• As with the railway mania and the dot-com bubble, a genuine revolution in the productive forces has become the occasion for a speculative frenzy that must collapse
• The deepest significance: the resolution states, "This mountain of speculation rests on the promise that AI will restore the profitability of a stagnating economy. It will do the opposite."
• Drawing on Comrade North's Berlin and London lectures: value is created by living human labor; profit derives from surplus value; as constant capital grows relative to variable capital, the rate of profit tends to fall
• By displacing living labor — the sole source of surplus value — on a vast scale, AI accelerates this decline; far from rescuing the profit system, it drives its fundamental law to a new extreme
• Why does the bubble continue to swell? Partly the ideology gripping Silicon Valley — accelerationism hardened into quasi-religious faith in "artificial general intelligence" (AGI) ushering in "abundance"
• But the claim that abundance would flow to all stands reality on its head — essentially warmed-over trickle-down economics; under existing property relations, every productivity gain is appropriated by the owners, materializing as staggering wealth at one pole and mounting poverty at the other
• The AI economy and its benefits will be captured by the top 10 percent — the ruling class and affluent upper-middle layers, deeply hostile to the working class, living literally inside the bubble (salaries, stock portfolios, retirement accounts, property values staked on the same speculative structure)
• AI has confirmed more nakedly than ever: those who own the technology corporations contribute nothing to the value they appropriate
• The systems are conceived, built, trained and maintained by workers — the engineers and researchers of Silicon Valley and counterparts worldwide; the low-paid data workers in Kenya, the Philippines, India and Venezuela; the miners of cobalt, lithium and rare earths in the Congo and other oppressed countries
• Society has no need for the oligarchs; their grip on economic life has become incompatible with social progress and the survival of civilization
• The decisive conclusion: the struggle over AI poses point-blank the question of who controls the productive forces, and demolishes the oldest argument against socialism — that a modern economy is too complex to be consciously planned
• This was always a self-serving lie; with AI and modern communications it has become an absurdity — workers in rank-and-file committees can obtain in moments the answer to any question about their industry, supply chains and the world economy, and coordinate instantly across every border
• The material premises for the socialist planning of the world economy are fully in hand

Augmented intelligence in the service of humanity

• The liberating potential of augmented intelligence is already visible, in distorted form, within the profit system: AI has predicted the structure of nearly every known protein (2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) and made contributions to open problems in pure mathematics
• These are not feats of an autonomous machine mind but of human beings wielding a powerful new tool — indicating what could be accomplished freed from the drive for profit
• The environmental objection must be answered concretely: the concern is legitimate — the data center buildout consumes electricity and water on a colossal scale, driving up bills, reviving coal plants, contributing to pollution
• But the waste is a property of the profit system, not the technology: a half-dozen corporations race to build duplicate models and duplicate data centers, each training its own system on much the same corpus
• Under a centralized, rational plan that duplication would disappear, along with a vast share of the energy consumed
• The same technology under social ownership would become the most powerful instrument yet devised for solving the climate crisis it is now made to deepen
• Data centers are sited today by tax breaks, cheap land and deregulated power; solar, wind and battery storage, deployed rationally, could power net-zero data centers and rebuild infrastructure on a carbon-free basis — capitalism has not done this and never will, because it subordinates every decision to private profit
• Under a democratically planned world economy, humanity could tackle the greatest planning problem ever confronted: the transition to a carbon-free economy — the coordinated reconstruction within a generation of the world's energy, transport, industrial and agricultural systems
• These are precisely the complex problems in which AI excels: balancing continental power grids on variable solar and wind, designing better batteries, modeling fusion plasmas, detecting methane leaks and deforestation from orbit
• The energy question posed on an entirely different basis: fission already generates vast carbon-free electricity (though erratically developed and saddled with profit's indifference to safety and waste); fusion promises clean, effectively limitless energy from seawater, with no long-lived radioactive waste or runaway reaction — no longer science fiction but an engineering problem on which real progress is being made
• In a rationally planned world economy, these forces together with solar, wind and storage could end energy scarcity as a limit on human development — the obstacle is neither knowledge nor technique but the social order

Against the false solutions of the pseudo-left

• Everything depends on the political program with which the working class enters this struggle — here the pseudo-left performs its assigned role
• As mass layoffs turn public opinion against the technology monopolies, the ruling class requires mechanisms to contain the anger; the DSA and its house organ Jacobin have rushed to supply them, promoting the neo-Luddite position
• It began with calls for moratoria on data-center construction, given legislative form by Sanders and AOC in March through the AI Data Center Moratorium Act
• Jacobin celebrated this in "Stop the AI Build-Out, Start the Fight," approvingly describing its "nonpartisan" coalition of suburban homeowners and "conservative farmers," declaring "the Left should be uniformly on its side"
• What is proposed is an alliance with property owners and the political right against data center construction — leaving ownership in the hands of the ruling class and doing nothing to halt use by the Pentagon or ICE; the DSA reports nearly half the data centers planned this year have been delayed or canceled
• The Pabloite tendencies have gone further: in May, International Viewpoint (organ of the Pabloite United Secretariat) published Daniel Tanuro's "Theses for an ecosocialist critique of artificial intelligence," declaring the answer is "the ecosocialist degrowth of global material production" and that planned abundance belongs to "magic"
• The problem is no longer the capitalist relations imprisoning the productive forces but the productive forces themselves; in a world where billions lack adequate housing, medicine and electricity, "degrowth" is a program of scarcity and rationing imposed on the working class
• The debate turned in June, when Sanders proposed an "AI sovereign wealth fund" — a 50 percent federal equity stake in the largest AI corporations, supposedly paying the population a dividend
• Advertised as a blow against the billionaires, it converges entirely with Trump's policy (who has moved to establish a US sovereign wealth fund) and with the wishes of the AI executives themselves (Sam Altman foremost), who have offered the government a stake with an eye to a bailout when the bubble bursts
• Sanders' proposal set off a public debate in Jacobin, which published at least eight articles in a fortnight; three positions emerged:
  1. Nationalization as patriotic claim — Dustin Guastella (Teamsters Local 623 official), "The Case for Nationalizing Artificial Intelligence": "we have a distinctly patriotic case" to nationalize because it is "in our national interest" — converting the collective labor of the world's workers into a claim on behalf of the American nation-state, in the very race driving Washington toward war with China
  2. Democratization via sortition — Michael A. McCarthy, "Don't Just Nationalize AI. Democratize It.": a state-owned AI industry would remain in the hands of the same state running deportations and wars; proposes handing decisions to a popular assembly chosen "via a random selection (or sortition)" — the working class appears not as a social force but as a pool of individuals from which names are drawn, leaving capitalist property wholly untouched
  3. The "most radical" Luddism — academics Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer, "The Socialist Case Against Nationalizing AI": AI is "a weapon of class war from above" that no change of ownership can redeem, calling for "building a socialist movement against AI" — the Luddite conclusion in its purest form, dressed as the most "radical" of the three
• Across all disagreements, these tendencies share a single premise: not one raises the expropriation of the technology monopolies by the working class, the conquest of political power, or the socialist reorganization of the world economy
• Every proposal ends in the capitalist state — as owner, regulator, chartering authority, or convener of assemblies; under all of them, "the corporations remain private and profit-driven, while the working class owns nothing, controls nothing and decides nothing"

The coming social conflict and the tasks of the party

• The tech industry's ideologists present the outcome as already settled — whether promising abundance or warning of catastrophe, they proceed from the premise that the technology will itself decide humanity's fate, with the working class only a casualty
• This is fatalism, abstracting the technology from the class struggle; between the present order and any reorganization of society stands the working class, which will not accept in silence the destruction of the livelihoods of hundreds of millions
• The struggle over AI will enter the strike movement now sweeping every continent; the working class must advance its own independent program — the expropriation of the monopolies and the conquest of political power
• The three demands of the resolution:
  • Expropriate the technology monopolies! — the great AI, cloud-computing, semiconductor and digital-platform corporations must be expropriated and transformed into public utilities under the democratic control of the working class
  • Not a single job lost to AI! For a shorter working week and workers' control over technology! — the immense productivity gains must be used to shorten the working week with no loss of pay, and the introduction of new technology placed under workers' control
  • Turn AI to human need and the planning of the world economy! — under social ownership and a democratically planned world economy, AI must be turned toward the needs of humanity: the advance of science, medicine and education, the abolition of poverty and drudgery, the solution of the ecological crisis
• Nothing in this is automatic; everything turns on the conscious struggle of the working class and the resolution of the crisis of revolutionary leadership — on the work of this party
• The resolution's closing perspective: the working class must take hold of AI, as it must take hold of all the productive forces its labor has created, expropriate the oligarchy that has usurped them, and reorganize the world economy on socialist foundations
• Comrade North's opening report situated the Congress within the fifth phase in the history of the Trotskyist movement (opened 2019, defined by the summer school of that year) — the further colossal development of globalization combined with new technologies that have internationalized the class struggle to a degree hardly imaginable a quarter-century earlier; AI's emergence at the center of world economy and politics in the seven years since is the sharpest confirmation
• But nothing permits objectivist complacency: the crisis produces no revolutionary conclusion of its own accord; the analysis is not a commentary upon events but a guide for the party's intervention in them
• The tasks through which the objective crisis is transformed into a conscious revolutionary movement: the expansion of Socialism AI, the building of the rank-and-file committees, the growth of the IYSSE, and above all the building of the Socialist Equality Party
• Closing: the purpose of the resolution is to arm the cadre for the period now opening — to enter the coming battles understanding this revolutionary technology more profoundly than the class that owns it, and to fight to place it, with all the productive forces, in the hands of the class whose labor created it; the Congress is urged to adopt the resolution

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以下是经 Socialism AI 翻译成中文的同一份笔记： 

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引言

• 作为社会主义平等党（美国）第九次代表大会（2026 年 8 月 2 日至 7 日召开）的报告发表；介绍了第五项决议《AI 与争取社会主义的斗争》，该决议获得一致通过
• 诺斯同志的开场报告评估了"社会主义革命十年"的头六年，包括技术发展与利润制度之间爆炸性的矛盾
• 这一矛盾在 AI 上得到最尖锐的体现——这是第五项决议的主题
• 运动历史上从未就某一项技术专门设立一项代表大会决议
• 原因：没有任何技术如此集中地体现资本主义的矛盾；围绕 AI 的斗争已成为世界政治和阶级斗争的中心战场
• 报告阐述：该技术的社会性质、其背后的科学革命、资本主义对它的利用、Socialism AI 的意义、投机狂潮与利润危机、伪左派的错误方案，以及党的立场

剥削、监视与战争的工具

• 决议指出：在资本主义制度下，引进 AI 不是为了减轻劳动的负担，而是为了把劳动作为一项成本加以削减——实现企业大幅裁减劳动力的梦想
• 规模：仅 2026 年前五个月就宣布裁员近 40 万，AI 是首要原因；研究预测到 2030 年全球将有数亿人被取代
• 企业公告：亚马逊裁撤 3 万个企业岗位（2025 年 10 月至 2026 年 1 月，约占企业员工 9%）；UPS 通过枢纽自动化裁掉 4.8 万个岗位；微软 2025 年裁员约 1.5 万（AI 编写了其 30% 的代码）；Salesforce 将客服人员从 9000 人减至 5000 人（"少用人力"）
• 同样的进程正在各大洲展开，且仍处于最初阶段
• 这一波浪潮的独特之处：自动化首次冲击脑力和专业劳动（编程、文书、翻译、设计、金融分析）——这些长期被认为安稳的高薪阶层
• 四分之三个世纪以来，通过教育获得安稳的专业就业一直是资本主义稳定的核心机制；如今这一机制正在被拆除
• 一个使其受过教育的青年无产阶级化、并剥夺其未来的社会秩序，正在制造它自己的掘墓人——印证了《共产党宣言》的预见，即资本把"医生、律师、牧师、诗人和学者"变成雇佣劳动者
• 科技寡头们空前地暴富——其缩影是法西斯分子马斯克成为世界首位万亿富翁
• 硅谷的自由主义面纱已被撕下：马斯克资助法西斯运动并行纳粹礼；谷歌放弃了"不作恶"；"黑暗启蒙"意识形态者主张以企业君主制取代共和国
• AI 被锻造成大规模镇压的工具：平台收集数十亿人的数据并交给国家和雇主；社交媒体被用来筛查学生和工人，因其政治言论（尤其是反对加沙种族灭绝）而将其驱逐出境
• 特朗普的 ICE 将政府数据库、数据经纪商记录、人脸识别以及车牌/位置追踪融合成一套由 Palantir 建造的强制机器
• 正在组装的是警察国家的技术基础设施——今天针对移民，明天针对整个工人阶级
• AI 是帝国主义重新瓜分世界的核心：决定谁该死的工作被移交给以机器速度生成"击杀名单"的软件
• 在美以对伊朗的进攻中，Palantir 的 Maven 智能系统（整合了 Anthropic 的 Claude）在最初 24 小时内生成了约 1000 个轰炸目标，策划了对包括儿童在内的数千平民的屠杀
• 同样的系统在谷歌和亚马逊为以色列国家建造的 Project Nimbus 云基础设施上管理着加沙的种族灭绝
• 统治阶级毫不掩饰这一点：2025 年 7 月白宫战略《赢得竞赛：美国 AI 行动计划》开篇即称"美国正在一场争夺人工智能全球主导地位的竞赛中"
• 该计划暂停对数据中心的环评，组织出口管制以扼杀中国的发展，并确保美国前沿实验室成为五角大楼的主要承包商
• 决议指出：这些反动的用途没有一个源自技术本身，而是源自技术得以发展的社会关系——私有制、利润制度以及世界分裂为敌对民族国家的格局

马克思主义关于技术的立场

• 对 AI 的敌意广泛且日益增长（工人、艺术家、青年、环保主义者）；这种愤怒是可以理解的，社会主义运动并非无动于衷
• 但反 AI 情绪并非仅仅是自发的——它受到每一个伪左派倾向、部分极右翼以及广泛政治建制派的培植，他们都乐于把愤怒引向技术本身，而非拥有技术的那个阶级
• 得出"技术本身是敌人"的结论是一个深刻的政治错误——是卢德主义（以 19 世纪初英国纺织工人命名）的现代形式
• 卢德派并非傻瓜——他们是捍卫自己生计的熟练工人，使用的是一个尚未意识到自身历史地位的阶级所能用的唯一手段
• 在国际社会主义运动经历了全部经验之后、两个世纪后的今天，重拾他们的立场，已不是年轻阶级的缺乏经验，而是一种自觉的倒退
• 断然拒绝 AI 的实际结果，不是解除企业和国家的武装（它们无论如何都会使用 AI），而是单单解除工人阶级的武装
• 卢德主义抹杀了马克思主义态度所赖以建立的那个区别：机器与机器在其中运转的社会秩序之间的区别
• 托洛茨基，《文化与社会主义》（1927 年）："技术是人类的基本成果……机器扼杀雇佣奴隶。但雇佣奴隶只有通过机器才能获得解放。"
• 托洛茨基论述的是：一个被围困、落后的工人国家如何提高群众的文化水平——这与反对"无产阶级文化"理论家的斗争密切相关
• 托洛茨基摧毁了那种立场：无产阶级必须掌握被推翻社会的全部遗产——"我们不必打碎技术……革命恰恰是为了夺取这份'遗产'才进行的。"
• 托洛茨基所把握的道理适用于人类对自然的每一次征服：固氮养活了人类的一半，也填装过两次世界大战的炮弹；核物理学先焚毁了两座城市，然后才点亮了一盏灯
• 科学不在丰裕与毁灭之间做抉择——是社会秩序在抉择；在工人阶级夺取政权之前，每一次征服都首先被用于利润和战争
• AI 是这一矛盾迄今最尖锐的表现，因为它作用的不是物质，而是知识本身——人类积累的思想与文化
• 决议指出：工人阶级必须掌握 AI 技术，正如它必须掌握工厂、矿山、数据中心和银行一样，把它们从垄断它们的那个阶级手中夺过来

科学革命与"一般智力"

• 每一次社会的革命性变革都由思想革命所准备——但思想革命从来不是终极原因；它是社会物质基础变化的产物
• 17 世纪的科学革命源于贸易、航海、采矿和制造业的发展；开普勒、伽利略、哈维、笛卡尔，尤其是牛顿的《原理》（1687 年）打破了经书和经院教条的权威
• 18 世纪的启蒙运动把同样的方法引入社会（伏尔泰、卢梭、狄德罗、达朗贝尔、霍尔巴赫）；拉瓦锡把化学置于定量基础之上
• 恩格斯，《社会主义从空想到科学的发展》：那些为即将到来的革命准备了人们头脑的伟人，本身就是极端的革命者，把一切都置于理性的审判台前加以无情的批判
• 恩格斯对此作了唯物主义的解释：社会变化的最终原因要到"每一特定时代的经济中，而不是哲学中"去寻找
• 哲学家们是上升的资产阶级以及封建制度下生产力发展的产物；思想革命是这个阶级借以意识到自身历史任务的媒介
• 狄德罗的《百科全书》汇集了那个时代的学问；美国的和法国的资产阶级民主革命在一代人内接踵而至
• 现代科技革命今天起着类似的作用，且处在无可比拟的更高水平上：它已汇集起世界社会主义的物质前提，并制造出一种工具，把工人阶级积累的经验同时、以每一种语言地呈现在数十亿工人面前
• 单个人一生之内取得的成就：DNA 结构（1953 年）、遗传密码破译（1966 年）、人类基因组测序（2003 年）、CRISPR（2012 年）；宇宙微波背景辐射（1965 年）、引力波（2015 年）
• 这一切之下是计算与通信的革命：晶体管（1947 年）、集成电路（1958 年）、微处理器（1971 年）、万维网（1991 年）——在一代人之内，人类一半以上加入了即时通信，世界工人阶级被联结进一体化的生产链条
• "人工智能"一词于 1956 年达特茅斯研讨会上提出，但神经网络方法（辛顿、勒昆、本吉奥）几十年来备受蔑视、资源匮乏，直到互联网的数据和算力使 2012 年的深度学习突破成为可能，才得到证明
• 这整个发展属于帝国主义时代——几乎全部发生在第四国际成立（1938 年）之后，而第四国际的成立文件把这一时期定性为资本主义的垂死挣扎
• 在整个这一时代，科学与军国主义融为一体：曼哈顿计划制造了投在军事上无足轻重的两座日本城市上的原子弹，以及美国战后霸权的工具；导弹计划催生了太空竞赛；五角大楼的网络变成了互联网
• 帝国主义时代对科学的扭曲压力，正是 AI 得以发展的媒介
• 另一极：十月革命在一代人之内把一个落后的、大半文盲的国家提升到世界科学的前列——尽管有斯大林主义官僚，后者在大清洗中消灭了一代科学干部，并强加李森科主义（把尼古拉·瓦维洛夫等人迫害致死）
• 即便如此：第一颗卫星和第一个太空人；柯尔莫哥洛夫的概率论基础；在基辅控制论研究所，伊瓦赫年科和拉帕发表了（1965 年）第一批可工作的深度多层网络学习算法——比今天的深度学习早了几十年
• 这些是国有财产和经济计划的成就，无论被官僚如何扭曲——表明了工人阶级能够成就什么
• 医学与公共卫生：抗生素、现代疫苗、天花的消灭、小儿麻痹症濒临灭绝、预期寿命的提高；基因组测序开启了分子层面的治疗
• 新冠疫情：在人类任何一场大流行的历史上，人类第一次拥有了消灭病毒的科学手段（在中国、新西兰等地得到证实）——但绝大多数资本主义政府拒绝这些措施，任由疾病肆虐，因为剩余价值的流动不能被打断
• 3000 多万人死于新冠，数亿人因"长新冠"而致残；随后官方对反科学反动势力的拥抱（疫苗反对者被提拔到公共卫生部门，疾控机构被拆解）是对 20 世纪科学遗产的全盘否定
• 气候变化：对二氧化碳的连续测量始于 1958 年——68 年来眼看着浓度不断攀升；萨根向参议院作证（1985 年）、汉森作证（1988 年）、IPCC 成立（1988 年）
• 全球变暖的根源在本届代表大会大多数同志的有生之年里一直是已知的；每一项都可以用现有技术消除——所缺的不是知识，而是一个能够据此行动的社会秩序
• 两个结论：(1) 速度——现代科学的整个大厦是在单个人一生之内建立起来的；(2) 其社会性质——名字附着于发现之上越来越淡薄（基因组由四大洲数百个实验室测序；引力波的报告有上千个署名）
• 科学已成为一种庞大的、集体性的、组织化的、工业化的、国际性的事业——成为马克思所预见的：直接的生产力，人类的一般智力物化在社会劳动之中
• 决议把 AI 置于这一进程的顶点：人类积累的知识被物化在一台机器之中的那个时点——马克思，《政治经济学批判大纲》："固定资本的发展表明，一般社会知识已经在多么大的程度上变成了直接的生产力……"
• 在马克思的时代，这只是在机器中体现出的科学；在我们这个时代，它已经完成——系统是在人类有记录的思想上训练出来的
• 资本主义始于圈占公有地；它正以圈占全人类的知识公地而走向终结

Socialism AI 与社会主义意识的发展

• 党的方针强调一个术语上的澄清——不是字词之争
• 马克思对商品拜物教的分析：在资本主义制度下，人类劳动的产物作为独立的力量与它们的生产者相对立；社会关系表现为物与物之间的关系
• "人工智能"是这种拜物教的现代形式："人工"一词把智能与生产它的劳动割裂开来，把集体的知识遗产呈现为自行产生的头脑
• 诺斯同志（2025 年 12 月 7 日）："AI"更确切地应理解为"增强智能"——人类智力劳动的延伸和放大；"智能不是人工的；自动化才是。"
• 五天后，ICFI 推出了 Socialism AI，由我们的干部构思、建造和维护——把马克思主义的遗产（马克思、恩格斯、列宁、托洛茨基、卢森堡、普列汉诺夫）和近三十年的 WSWS 档案置于工人和青年的手中——随时随地、以任何语言、在任何时刻
• 一个革命组织第一次把一个能够从马克思主义立场出发、附有引文来源地回答严肃的理论、历史和组织问题的系统，交到工人阶级手中
• 发布声明：其决定性意义在于弥合工人阶级客观运动与社会主义意识主观水平之间的鸿沟
• 时代的核心战略问题：客观危机以惊人的速度成熟，而工人阶级意识却被一个世纪的斯大林主义和社会民主主义背叛所击退
• 第四国际的全部历史就是解决革命领导危机而斗争的历史；ICFI 已经认识到，资本主义用来对付工人阶级的这场技术革命本身，提供了这场斗争中前所未有的武器
• Socialism AI 是革命领导的武器，而不是领导的替代品——没有任何技术能单独建党或发动革命，只有组织在 ICFI 中的活生生的革命家的自觉活动才能做到
• 但一个革命运动所掌握的武器塑造着它所能成就的事业——谱系：狄德罗的《百科全书》→ 列宁的《火星报》→《世界社会主义网站》（1998 年）→ Socialism AI
• 自发布以来，已被 100 多个国家的数千名工人和青年使用
• 它是党的教育工作的强大力量倍增器：一个尚未读过马克思的工人可以从自己的经历（工厂里的背叛、本国政府发动的战争）出发，被引入马克思主义分析的整体
• 明确的做法：直接演示 Socialism AI（宣传桌、党和 IYSSE 会议、工作场所讨论），而不仅仅是描述它；使其成为基层委员会的工作工具（研究雇主的财务状况和全球业务、起草声明）
• 在同志们自己的写作和研究中加以使用——不是替我们写作，而是在连续几稿中搜集和核对材料、打磨提纲、检验表述，每一步都贯穿着政治判断；与其他 AI 工具配合使用
• 在研究奠基性文本时系统地将其用作阅读助手；正在开发将马克思主义文库与 Socialism AI 直接整合的工具（高亮、书签、追问段落）
• 每个支部和成员都必须推广它；未来几周将开展一场旨在赢得数千名新用户的运动（社交媒体、系统的联系工作等）
• 五一版带来了使用量和账户创建量的显著上升；将其整合进 WSWS 首页和每一篇文章（上周完成）使该系统与我们全部出版物相连，并将推广到所有语言站点
• 今天自称社会主义者的大批工人和青年将被这项技术的革命性应用所吸引

AI 泡沫与利润率下降

• AI 泡沫是资本主义历史上前所未有的投机狂潮
• 一小群相互关联的企业通过"循环交易"捆绑在一起，虚增需求表象——英伟达投资 OpenAI，后者把投资花在英伟达芯片上，而甲骨文为一家毫无近期盈利前景的客户记下数千亿美元的云合同；此类承诺如今已接近 1 万亿美元
• SpaceX 的上市（6 月 12 日）——史上最大规模的公开募股，筹资约 750 亿美元，公司估值近 1.8 万亿美元，使马斯克在一个下午之内成为世界首位万亿富翁
• 招股书的核心：一个由百万颗卫星组成的星座作为轨道数据中心——遭到工程师的质疑、被马斯克自己的竞争对手嘲笑，但对金融寡头而言这几乎无关紧要；一个足够宏大的方案，无论它能否运转，都值数千亿美元
• 按杰森·弗曼的计算，2025 年上半年美国经济增长的 92% 来自信息处理设备和软件的投资——在 AI 泡沫之外，美国经济基本上停滞不前
• 其脆弱性已经得到证明：2025 年 1 月，DeepSeek 发布了一款训练成本仅为美国宣传成本零头的模型，单次交易就抹去了英伟达近 6000 亿美元的市值
• 中国实验室不断发布能力强、开放权重、便宜得多的模型——这是一个所有权和获取途径的问题，而非技术突破的问题，这暴露出任何永久性的美国垄断都是虚幻的
• 与铁路狂热和互联网泡沫一样，一场真正的生产力革命成了必然崩溃的投机狂热的由头
• 最深层的意义：决议指出，"这座投机的大山建立在 AI 将恢复停滞经济盈利能力的承诺之上。它将起到相反的作用。"
• 引述诺斯同志在柏林和伦敦的演讲：价值由活的人类劳动创造；利润来自剩余价值；随着不变资本相对于可变资本的增长，利润率趋于下降
• 通过大规模排挤活劳动——剩余价值的唯一来源——AI 加速了这一下降；它非但不能拯救利润制度，反而把它的基本规律推向新的极端
• 泡沫为何持续膨胀？部分原因在于笼罩硅谷的意识形态——加速主义硬化成对"通用人工智能"（AGI）带来"丰裕"的准宗教信仰
• 但丰裕将惠及所有人的说法把现实颠倒了过来——本质上是换汤不换药的涓滴经济学；在现有的财产关系下，每一项生产率收益都被所有者占有，表现为一极惊人的财富和一极日益加剧的贫困
• AI 经济及其收益将被最顶层的 10% 所攫取——统治阶级和富裕的上中层，他们深深敌视工人阶级，字面意义上就生活在这个泡沫之中（工资、股票组合、退休账户、房产价值都押在同一个投机结构上）
• AI 比以往任何时候都更赤裸裸地证实：那些拥有科技公司的人，对他们所占有的价值毫无贡献
• 这些系统是由工人构思、建造、训练和维护的——硅谷及世界各地的工程师和研究人员；肯尼亚、菲律宾、印度和委内瑞拉的低薪数据工人；刚果及其他被压迫国家开采钴、锂和稀土的矿工
• 社会并不需要寡头；他们对经济生活的把持已与社会进步和文明的存续不相容
• 决定性的结论：围绕 AI 的斗争尖锐地提出了谁掌控生产力的问题，并摧毁了反对社会主义的最古老的论据——即现代经济过于复杂，无法自觉地进行计划
• 这一直是个自私的谎言；有了 AI 和现代通信，它已成为荒谬——基层委员会中的工人可以在瞬间获得关于本行业、供应链和世界经济的任何问题的答案，并跨越一切国界即时协调
• 对世界经济进行社会主义计划的物质前提已经完全具备

服务于人类的增强智能

• 增强智能的解放潜力已经在利润制度内部、以扭曲的形式显现：AI 预测了几乎所有已知蛋白质的结构（2024 年诺贝尔化学奖），并对纯数学中的开放问题做出了贡献
• 这些并非自主机器头脑的壮举，而是人类运用一件强大的新工具所取得的成就——表明一旦摆脱利润的驱动，能够成就什么
• 环境方面的反对意见必须具体地予以回答：这一关切是正当的——数据中心的建设消耗着规模惊人的电力和水，推高了账单，复活了燃煤电厂，加剧了污染
• 但浪费是利润制度的属性，而非技术的属性：五六家企业竞相建造重复的模型和重复的数据中心，每一家都在大体相同的语料上训练自己的系统
• 在集中的、理性的计划之下，这种重复将不复存在，随之消失的还有所消耗能源的很大一部分
• 同样的技术在公有之下，将成为迄今所设计出的、解决它如今被用来加深的气候危机的最强大工具
• 今天数据中心的选址取决于税收优惠、廉价土地和放松管制的电力；太阳能、风能和电池储能若得到合理部署，可以为零碳数据中心供电，并在无碳基础上重建基础设施——资本主义没有这样做，也永远不会这样做，因为它把每一项决策都从属于私人利润
• 在民主计划的世界经济之下，人类能够应对前所未有的最大计划难题：向无碳经济的转型——在一代人之内协调重建世界的能源、交通、工业和农业体系
• 这些正是 AI 所擅长的复杂问题：在波动的太阳能和风能基础上平衡各大洲的电网、设计更好的电池、模拟聚变等离子体、从轨道上探测甲烷泄漏和森林砍伐
• 能源问题被置于一个完全不同的基础之上：裂变已经产生大量无碳电力（尽管发展得杂乱无章，并背负着利润对安全和废料的漠视）；聚变有望从海水中获得清洁的、实际上取之不尽的能源，没有长寿命放射性废料或失控反应——不再是科幻，而是一个正在取得实际进展的工程问题
• 在一个理性计划的世界经济中，这些力量连同太阳能、风能和储能，可以终结能源匮乏对人类发展的限制——障碍既不是知识也不是技术，而是社会秩序

反对伪左派的错误方案

• 一切都取决于工人阶级以何种政治纲领投入这场斗争——伪左派在这里履行着它被指派的角色
• 随着大规模裁员使舆论转而反对科技垄断企业，统治阶级需要遏制愤怒的机制；DSA 及其喉舌《雅各宾》急于提供这些机制，宣扬新卢德主义的立场
• 它始于呼吁暂停数据中心的建设，桑德斯和 AOC 于 3 月通过《AI 数据中心暂停法案》将其立法化
• 《雅各宾》在《停止 AI 建设，开始斗争》中对此大加赞颂，赞许地描述了其由郊区房主和"保守派农民"组成的"无党派"联盟，宣称"左派应当一致站在它一边"
• 所提出的是与有产者和政治右翼结盟、反对数据中心建设——把所有权留在统治阶级手中，对五角大楼或 ICE 的使用毫无触动；DSA 报告称今年计划的数据中心有近一半已被推迟或取消
• 巴勃罗派倾向走得更远：5 月，《国际观点》（巴勃罗派联合书记处的机关刊物）发表了丹尼尔·塔努罗的《关于人工智能生态社会主义批判的论纲》，宣称答案是"全球物质生产的生态社会主义去增长"，并称有计划的丰裕属于"魔法"
• 问题不再是束缚生产力的资本主义关系，而是生产力本身；在一个数十亿人缺乏足够住房、药品和电力的世界里，"去增长"是一个强加给工人阶级的匮乏与配给的计划
• 争论在 6 月发生转折，桑德斯提出"AI 主权财富基金"——联邦政府持有最大 AI 企业 50% 的股权，据称向民众支付红利
• 它被宣传为对亿万富翁的打击，却与特朗普的政策（后者已着手建立美国主权财富基金）以及 AI 高管们自己的愿望（以萨姆·奥尔特曼为首）完全合流——高管们向政府提供股权，意在泡沫破裂时获得救助
• 桑德斯的提议在《雅各宾》上引发了一场公开辩论，该刊在两周内至少发表了八篇文章；出现了三种立场：
  1. 作为爱国主张的国有化——达斯汀·瓜斯特拉（卡车司机工会 Local 623 干部），《国有化人工智能的理由》："我们有一个鲜明的爱国理由"去国有化，因为它"符合我们的国家利益"——把全世界工人的集体劳动转化为代表美利坚民族国家的主张，而这正是驱使华盛顿走向对华战争的那场竞赛
  2. 通过抽签实现民主化——迈克尔·A·麦卡锡，《不要只国有化 AI，要民主化它》：一个国有的 AI 产业仍将掌握在正在实施驱逐和战争的那个国家手中；他提议把决策交给一个"通过随机抽选（即抽签）"产生的人民大会——工人阶级不是作为社会力量出现，而是作为一个从中抽取名字的个体集合出现，资本主义财产丝毫未动
  3. "最激进"的卢德主义——学者哈根·布利克斯和英格博格·格利默，《反对国有化 AI 的社会主义理由》：AI 是"来自上方的阶级战争武器"，任何所有权的改变都无法救赎它，呼吁"建立一场反对 AI 的社会主义运动"——卢德主义的结论以最纯粹的形式出现，却装扮成三者中"最激进"的一个
• 尽管存在种种分歧，这些倾向共享同一个前提：没有一个提出由工人阶级没收科技垄断企业、夺取政治权力，或对世界经济进行社会主义重组
• 每一个方案都落脚于资本主义国家——作为所有者、监管者、特许机构或大会召集者；在所有这些方案之下，"企业仍然是私有的、以利润为驱动的，而工人阶级一无所有、一无所控、一无所决"

即将到来的社会冲突与党的任务

• 科技行业的意识形态家们把结局呈现为已经注定——无论是许诺丰裕还是警告灾难，他们都从这样一个前提出发：技术本身将决定人类的命运，工人阶级只是牺牲品
• 这是宿命论，把技术从阶级斗争中抽象出来；在现行秩序与任何社会重组之间，站着工人阶级，它不会对数百万人生活手段的毁灭保持沉默
• 围绕 AI 的斗争将进入如今席卷各大洲的罢工运动；工人阶级必须提出自己独立的纲领——没收垄断企业、夺取政治权力
• 决议的三项要求：
  • 没收科技垄断企业！——大型 AI、云计算、半导体和数字平台企业必须被没收，转变为工人阶级民主控制下的公用事业
  • 不让一个岗位因 AI 而流失！争取缩短工作周和工人对技术的控制！——巨大的生产率收益必须用于在不减薪的情况下缩短工作周，新技术的引进必须置于工人的控制之下
  • 让 AI 服务于人类需求和世界经济的计划！——在公有制和民主计划的世界经济之下，AI 必须转向人类的需要：推进科学、医学和教育，消灭贫困和苦役，解决生态危机
• 这一切都不是自动发生的；一切都取决于工人阶级的自觉斗争和革命领导危机的解决——取决于本党的工作
• 决议的收尾展望：工人阶级必须掌握 AI，正如它必须掌握其劳动所创造的一切生产力，没收篡夺了它们的寡头，并在社会主义基础上重组世界经济
• 诺斯同志的开场报告把本届代表大会置于托洛茨基主义运动历史的第五阶段（始于 2019 年，以那一年的暑期学校为标志）之中——全球化的进一步巨大发展，加上新的技术，使阶级斗争国际化的程度在四分之一世纪前几乎难以想象；AI 在此后七年间崛起于世界经济和政治的中心，是对此最有力的印证
• 但任何东西都不容许客观主义的自满：危机不会自行产生革命的结论；这一分析不是对事件的评论，而是党介入这些事件的指南
• 把客观危机转化为自觉革命运动的任务：扩大 Socialism AI，建设基层委员会，发展 IYSSE，而最重要的是建设社会主义平等党
• 结语：本决议的目的是为即将开启的时期武装干部——带着比拥有这项技术的那个阶级更深刻的理解去投入即将到来的战斗，并为其斗争——把它连同一切生产力，交到以劳动创造了它的那个阶级手中；代表大会被敦促通过这项决议

2. As capitalist crisis deepens, US House again votes to condemn socialism

For the third time in four years, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted to condemn socialism “in all its forms,” in a resolution which combines wild anti-communist slanders with rejection of even the most modest social-democratic reforms. 

The resolution, if anything, will only encourage more workers and young people to turn their attention to the fundamental question of socialism vs. capitalism. They will think, if Donald Trump and the fascist Republicans are against socialism, then socialism is worth looking into. And they will be right.

Unlike the February 2023 and November 2025 anti-socialist resolutions, the version passed on September 1, 2026 is specifically focused on the Democratic Socialists of America, referring to both the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City in November 2025, and to the subsequent influx of DSA-backed candidates “in over one hundred elections in at least half the states.”

The resolution declares that “the DSA’s ideology and socialism, in any form, are incompatible with American values and the United States Constitution.” Among its supposed sins are that the DSA calls for “replacing the two-party system.” Actually, the DSA is a faction of the capitalist Democratic Party, and it represents neither socialism nor a genuine challenge to the corporate-controlled two-party system.

But the fear, even hysteria, sweeping the Republican Party—and the capitalist political establishment as a whole—are not prompted by the DSA itself. They are concerned that the electoral victories of the DSA over the past year are a signal of a broader shift to the left by the working class and particularly working class youth that will pose a revolutionary threat to the survival of American capitalism. 

Also unlike the two previous resolutions, the latest version of an anti-socialism pledge makes no effort to win Democratic Party support. Instead, it backs President Trump’s campaign to attack voting rights, including his efforts to virtually eliminate mail-in ballots, and concludes by calling for passage of Trump’s SAVE America Act, which has been blocked in the Senate.

That language explains why there was comparatively little support for the resolution among House Democrats. In February 2023, majorities in both parties backed the anti-socialism resolution: a unanimous 219-0 among Republicans, and 109-86 among Democrats, yielding a final overwhelming vote of 328-86. The resolution in November 2025, passed after Mamdani’s election victory, also had majority Democratic support.

The resolution enacted Tuesday passed only narrowly, 220-192. Again, Republicans backed it unanimously, 212-0, but Democrats opposed it 192-8. The eight Democrats who voted for a resolution praising Trump and condemning their own party by name were all on the right-wing of the party: Kathy Castor and Darren Soto of Florida; Henry Cuellar and Vincente Gonzalez of Texas; Jared Golden of Maine; Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico; Marie Gluesenkamp Perez of Oregon; and Donald Davis of North Carolina.

*****

The 2026 version has a more immediate electoral purpose, since it foreshadows the strident red-baiting campaign that the Trump White House, the Republican Party and numerous fascist billionaires like Elon Musk are launching in the final stages of the campaign for the midterm elections, now only two months away.

The praise of Trump and the SAVE America Act were deliberately included to ensure that most Democrats would vote against the resolution, a vote that will provide fodder for campaign commercials branding the Democratic Party, dominated by Wall Street and the military-intelligence apparatus, as effectively a communist front.

The bankrupt character of this effort is demonstrated by the growing support for socialism, as shown not merely in votes for DSA candidates in Democratic Party primaries, but in opinion polls that record increasing hostility to capitalism, as well as mounting opposition to the imperialist war against Iran. Neither paper resolutions nor lying commercials can make war, runaway prices, and attacks on democratic rights attractive to the great majority of American working people.

3. United Kingdom: Burnham's government: Not tackling the “cost of living” but imposing austerity and war

That Burnham presides over a government of guns and no butter throws into sharp relief just how politically criminal it is for Britain's pseudo-left groups to portray his premiership as an opportunity to push Labour to the left.

4. United Kingdom: Burnham hosts Macron: Bayeux Tapestry pageantry, a migrant crackdown and an escalation of war in Ukraine

A Downing Street readout noted that the two "discussed next steps on establishing local assembly lines in Ukraine for the long-range missile, SCALP, which uses British technology."

5. Trump administrations tightens sanctions as Cuban government expands private ownership and foreign trade

On August 20, the Trump administration imposed an additional round of sanctions against Cuba, blacklisting more Cuban companies, organizations and officials in a relentless escalation of economic warfare aimed at the starvation and subjugation of nearly 10 million people. The move extends a sanctions campaign that, since Trump’s January declaration of a national emergency over Cuba, has assumed the character of an undeclared war of extermination.

The Cuban government, for its part, has responded to this vicious campaign with promises to open up the economy to foreign capital in a desperate bid to preserve the privileges of the Castroite ruling layer. 

*****

Taken together, the sanctions have made it nearly impossible for the economy to function. This is by design. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the main architects of the administration’s strategy in Cuba and de facto viceroy of Venezuela, told Axios on August 7, when an earlier round of sanctions was announced, “Every time they create a new mechanism in which they try to get out of the noose, we just close it off. They certainly can’t wait us out. Certainly this isn’t going to go away for the next 2½ years.”

*****

Although it might appear to be a side-effect of Washington’s efforts to tighten the noose, the expulsion of foreign companies from Cuba is part and parcel of the attempt by Trump and Rubio to recolonize the island. By forcing out the capital of rival powers, the Trump administration is carrying out its strategy to dominate the entire hemisphere and create a “Fortress America” to serve as a staging ground for global war and repression.

The Cuban working class is paying the price. Blackouts have become the norm, with power scarce even in Havana. Nearly a third of the island’s population are experiencing “aggravated problems with water supply,” according to the National Institute of Hydraulic Resources. Basic tasks like cooking have become serious logistical problems to be solved on a daily basis. Trash continues to pile up in huge mounds on the street for lack of fuel, while public transit has ground to a halt. The medical system is in free-fall, with only 30 percent of basic medications available. Infant mortality has increased 29 percent since the start of Trump’s term while maternal mortality has increased nearly 9 percent.

The main response of the Cuban government and the ruling Castroite layer has been to work furiously to implement “reforms” aimed at staving off a direct invasion and takeover by the US military while also maintaining its power and privileges.

*****

The only answer to the attacks by American imperialism and the moves by the Cuban ruling elite to open up the country to foreign capital is to mobilize the Cuban and international working class on the basis of a socialist program. Workers must oppose imperialist aggression unconditionally while extending no political support to the Cuban regime.

Dockworkers, transport workers, oil and logistics workers in the United States and internationally must refuse to enforce the blockade and demand its immediate end, along with the delivery of the fuel, food and medicine Cuba requires. 

6. Los Angeles DSA endorses mayoral candidate Nithya Raman after she abandons call to defund police

Raman secured the endorsement as she works to assure the financial elite and police that her campaign represents no threat to their interests ahead of the November 3 election.

The endorsement commits the DSA to providing volunteers, canvassers and organizational resources for Raman’s campaign against incumbent Democratic Mayor Karen Bass in the November 3 election. Raman will head a slate of nine DSA-endorsed candidates in local and federal races.

The decision is a further exposure of the DSA’s role as an auxiliary of the Democratic Party. Raman’s campaign is directed toward convincing the Los Angeles financial elite, real estate developers and the police establishment that she can administer the city’s deepening social crisis more efficiently than Bass.

This is expressed most clearly in Raman’s repudiation of her previous call to “defund the police.” Running for the City Council in 2020 amid the mass protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd, Raman adopted the slogan as millions of workers and youth took to the streets against police violence.

Now seeking the mayor’s office, Raman has dispensed with even this limited rhetoric. Asked by CNN’s Jessica Dean whether she continued to support reducing police funding, Raman replied immediately, “No.”

*****

The episode demonstrates the fraudulent character of the DSA and its claim to be a socialist organization. The DSA label is used to hoodwink workers and youth moving to the left and seeking a socialist solution to the historic crisis of capitalism, expressed in unending war, widening inequality and escalating attacks on democratic rights.

DSA Democrats, no less than their “establishment” counterparts, pursue alliances with Zionists, police organizations, developers and the financial oligarchy. Their entire political orientation is based on preserving capitalism, subordinating the working class to the Democratic Party and blocking the development of an independent revolutionary socialist movement.

7. Italian workers enter an autumn of struggles against austerity and militarism

Italian workers enter September and October 2026 in mounting conflict with the neo-fascist government of Giorgia Meloni, the most right-wing since the fall of Mussolini. After a summer in which strikes were restricted by the franchigia estiva, the ban of strikes in the transport sectors during the holiday period, the resumption of industrial action marks an escalation. The grievances driving the mobilization are the accumulated product of a government reorganizing the Italian state around austerity, repression and war.

The immediate political flashpoint is the new Security Bill, or DDL Sicurezza, approved by the Council of Ministers in July. The legislation represents a sweeping attack on basic democratic rights: it expands the state's powers to suppress protest and criminalize forms of collective action. Its aim is to intimidate those who challenge government policy. It also restricts the right to assemble, extends preventive detention to minors and increases criminal penalties for conduct deemed threatening to public order.

Taken together with the government's broader campaign against strikes and demonstrations, these measures give the police and judicial authorities expanded powers to intervene against mass political opposition. What is being prepared is not merely a tougher public-order regime but a legal framework for suppressing the forms of collective action through which workers defend their social and political rights. This is the political expression of a party, Fratelli d'Italia, whose lineage runs directly to the fascist tradition, and whose program is to dismantle the democratic rights won by the working class in decades of struggle.

The legislation is part of the government's broader assault on the right to protest. Law No. 80/2025 restored criminal penalties for roadblocks and created a new offense of “mutiny” covering nonviolent resistance in prisons and migrant detention centers. The cumulative effect is to expand the state's ability to criminalize forms of collective action that have long been weapons of the working class.

Behind this juridical offensive lies an economic one. The government's fiscal policy, set out through the Economic and Financial Document and the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, subordinates wages and public services to debt reduction and EU deficit rules.

The rail sector provides a particularly clear example. The government is moving to break up the national Intercity Universal Service into three regional lots for tender (the spezzatino, or carve-up). Parliament has rejected protections for workers’ pay and seniority when services change operators. Maintenance and station operations are increasingly outsourced to private contractors, threatening both workers' conditions and passenger safety.

*****

In the public sector, the government has left hundreds of thousands of healthcare workers without renewed contracts while restricting hiring. It continues to reject a statutory minimum wage, favoring mechanisms that leave low-paid workers dependent on inadequate contractual arrangements and the proliferation of so-called “pirate contracts.”

At the same time, the state is being openly militarized. The government is pushing military expenditure sharply upward while Italian ports, including Genoa, Salerno and Livorno, have become transit points for arms shipments bound for Israel. Dockworkers invoking Law 185/1990 have refused to handle military cargo. The grievances of this autumn are therefore simultaneously economic, political and anti-war.

The mobilizations planned through October are extensive and increasingly interconnected.

*****

Most significant politically is the convergence of labor action with the anti-war movement. Dockworkers of CALP and USB are planning actions at Genoa, Salerno and Livorno against vessels carrying military supplies to Israel. SI Cobas has called a national inter-categorical general strike for October 3, linking austerity to military expenditure, followed by a mass demonstration in Rome on October 4. The climate and anti-war movement is also mobilizing. What is emerging is a broader confrontation over the direction of Italian society.

The potential is enormous. The refusal of dockworkers to load arms for Israel demonstrates in concrete terms the strategic power of the working class. Workers who occupy the choke points of transport and logistics possess the ability to disrupt not only production but the machinery of war itself.

The implications are international and the working class can and must be mobilized as the central force against genocide and dictatorship. Once workers begin linking wages and working conditions to militarism, austerity and war, the question of political power inevitably emerges.

Precisely here lies the central danger. The organizations leading the mobilizations remain divided between the major confederations—CGIL, CISL and UIL—and the base unions, including USB, SI Cobas, CUB and SGB. Despite differences in militancy and rhetoric, both orientations remain fundamentally confined to the framework of the Italian state.

*****

But the base unions do not constitute a political alternative. Their militancy is real enough, but it is the militancy of petty-bourgeois formations that ultimately address themselves to the very state they claim to oppose. USB's response to the Genoa blockade, for example, called on the government to impose an embargo—as though the fascist government responsible for austerity and rearmament could simply be pressured into ending its participation in the war it is waging. Such appeals are not a deficiency of the base unions' program but the expression of their class character: they seek to channel working-class opposition back into the framework of the capitalist state. 

*****

The answer is not to pressure the union bureaucracies but to build an independent movement of the working class against them and the system of which they are ultimately part. Rank-and-file committees must be established in every workplace, democratically controlled by workers themselves and linked internationally through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.

Italy’s Hot Autumn contains the potential for a far broader confrontation than the individual strikes now being announced. But that potential will be realized only if workers take political leadership of their struggle out of the hands of the bureaucracies that seek to contain it and build an international movement aimed at the conquest of political power and the reorganization of society on socialist foundations.

8. Jewish artists oppose campaign to tar actor Mark Ruffalo as an “antisemite”

More than 180 Jewish actors, directors, writers, faith leaders and others have signed an open letter defending actor Mark Ruffalo against the filthy attempt by Paramount Skydance to tar him as an “antisemite.”

Using direct and sharp language, the signers decried what they called an “outrageous smear campaign” and the “weaponization of charges of antisemitism.” Hannah Einbinder, Joel Coen, Todd Haynes, Ilana Glazer, Tony Kushner, James Schamus, Emma Seligman, Jane Schoenbrun and Wallace Shawn are among the signers.

On August 21, Ruffalo, an outspoken defender of the Palestinians, reposted a video to his Instagram story that shows Safra Catz, executive vice chair of Oracle and member of Paramount’s board, describing what she calls the “really profoundly scary technologies” that Oracle is sharing with the Israeli state as it commits genocide.

In his post, Ruffalo denounced the genocide and pointed out that Oracle, which is facilitating it, is bankrolling Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. He asserted that the technologies in question will one day be used “on you.” He also mentioned the job cuts, price hikes and industry consolidation that would result from the merger. “It’s a classic antitrust case,” he wrote.

Oracle is owned by billionaire Larry Ellison, who is a major backer of President Donald Trump. Ellison also has a close relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He reportedly has donated millions to Friends of the Israel Defense Forces and supported the illegal settlements on Palestinian land.

David Ellison, Larry’s son, is chair and chief executive of Paramount Skydance. The Ellison family already has de facto control of Paramount assets, such as CBS, MTV and Nickelodeon. They have overseen mass firings at CBS News and slanted its coverage toward the right. The acquisition of Warner Bros. would give the family control of CNN, HBO and a major cable and streaming portfolio. The merger also could cost about 4,500 film and television jobs over three years, according to a report released by Los Angeles County.

Paramount responded to Ruffalo’s post with dishonesty and ad hominem attacks. A company spokesperson characterized Ruffalo’s post as “antisemitic,” adding that it revealed the “true motivation” of the merger’s opponents. Paramount objected to the actor’s use of the word “genocide” and his reference to Israel’s “apartheid system of oppression” without, however, addressing any of the facts that Ruffalo cited. The Simon Wiesenthal Center and the so-called Creative Community for Peace (a rabidly pro-Zionist organization) also lent their support to this foul slander.

Rather than backing down, Ruffalo replied forcefully to Paramount’s attack. He called the accusation of antisemitism “appalling and fundamentally dishonest,” adding,

Criticizing the actions of the Israeli prime minister, a military technology contract or the executives who supply it is not the same as criticizing Jewish people.

The new open letter vigorously defends the actor and opposes the genocide and the merger. The signers praise Ruffalo for pointing out

that the assault on the Palestinian people and the assault on our liberties at home are deeply interconnected, and there is nothing antisemitic about recognizing that fact.

*****

The letter is notable for its unabashed character and for highlighting the connection between US imperialism’s bloody crimes in Gaza and its attacks on democracy at home. It deals concretely with the Ellisons’ scarcely imaginable wealth and material interests, along with their support for the fascistic Trump and the murderous Zionist regime in Israel. Moreover, it identifies the Ellisons as members of a group of oligarchs that includes Elon Musk and Peter Thiel (cofounder of PayPal and Palantir)—both of whom, not coincidentally, are notorious promoters of the far right.

The letter is a symptom of increasing opposition to the genocide among Americans, as well as mounting opposition to unqualified American support for Israel.

9. Crisis in Peru and the lessons of the 1977 general strike

Within a month of taking office, Peru’s new president, Keiko Fujimori, Is facing growing unrest, including strikes, highway blockades and confrontations with police, from the Amazon region of Ucayali to the indigenous communities of the southern Andes.

Fujimori’s electoral promises have already proven empty. Deploying soldiers in working-class districts has not stopped hitmen from murdering public transit drivers and small business owners. More than 70 percent of firearm killings in urban areas are linked to extortion or gang disputes.

This failure provided the pretext for declaring a state of emergency in Lima and its seaport Callao and deploying the Armed Forces, not to combat street crime, but to intimidate mounting popular opposition.

The working class cannot rely on the established organizations to lead a struggle against the new rightist regime; it must draw lessons from its own history, particularly from the general strike of July 19, 1977. In that struggle it was the rank and file workers that overflowed the channels of the existing trade unions and became the indispensable driving force against the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Morales Bermúdez. Ordinary workers—not the Stalinist CGTP leadership, which remained loyal to the “Revolutionary Military Government”—were the decisive force.

*****

Peru’s growth during the 2002–2014 commodity boom resulted not from sound economic policy but from favorable conditions on the world market. Once the boom ended, poverty bounced back. Defenders of the 1993 Constitution obscure this reality by invoking the supposed “economic miracle” of the commodities boom.

The Constitution was never a framework for national development. It was an instrument of class warfare, concentrating wealth in a narrow oligarchy while condemning most Peruvians to permanent economic insecurity.

By some measures, Peru has become the most unequal country in Latin America, itself the most socially polarized region on the planet. The richest 0.1 takes in a whopping 22 percent of the country’s income, the largest share for that wealthiest layer of any country. Meanwhile, the poorest 10 percent—approximately 3.4 million Peruvians—earn just 500 soles (US$149) monthly, equal to only 48 percent of the food basket for a family of four. Forty percent earn the official minimum wage or less, while 60 percent live on less than the total family basket required for essential food, goods, and services.

This concentration of wealth is precisely what the 1993 Constitution was intended to protect.

The 1993 Constitution also opened Peru to foreign direct investment (FDI), which in the intervening years has come particularly from China and other South American countries. China’s investments now stand at $30 billion–$38 billion, compared to just $6.67 billion for the US.

The far right’s enthusiasm over Keiko Fujimori’s victory and affinity for US imperialist policy in the region is in line with a turn by ruling class layers throughout the continent, from Argentina under Javier Milei, to Chile under José Antonio Kast, Colombia under De la Espriella and Bolivia under Rodrigo Paz. US imperialism and these regimes are currently conspiring to install Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of the former far-right president who is currently serving a prison sentence for his abortive coup attempt in Brazil.

In every one of these countries, however, the new right-wing regimes lack any popular constituency, and their policies, designed to benefit only the native oligarchies and foreign capital, are provoking mass hostility. Meanwhile, their alignment with Washington and its drive to reassert US imperialist hegemony by driving out Chinese influence, flies in the face of economic development and can only provoke deeper crises and international conflict. Nowhere is this more true than in Peru.

*****

Having written off the revolutionary potential of the working class—in Peru, where the peasantry was assigned the vanguard role, and above all in the advanced capitalist countries, where revolution was declared off the historical agenda— Morenoism and the other Pabloite variants sought substitutes in existing leaderships. Adaptation to the Stalinist apparatus, the Castroite guerrillas, the bourgeois nationalist movements, and the peasant unions went hand in hand with the repudiation of the theory of permanent revolution, the international struggle for socialism and the building of a revolutionary party in the working class.

The question of a revolutionary program to unite the working class across the Americas is more important than ever. As far-right regimes across the hemisphere join forces through the “Shield of the Americas,” preparing to use the Latin American and US masses as cannon fodder in a war against China, the answer is the construction of sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International throughout the continent and beyond.

10. Quebec election called amid intensifying Canada-US trade war

The election comes amid an intensifying Canada-US trade war. After trade talks collapsed August 21, US President Donald Trump carried through on his threat to impose 50 percent tariffs on more than $US 20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Asserting that Canada was now “at war,” Prime Minister Mark Carney responded by announcing equivalent “dollar for dollar” tariffs on American products, prompting Washington to announce that tariffs of Canadian-assembled cars and trucks will rise to 50 percent at the beginning of January 2027.    

This economic war is only one front in an expanding global war. Faced with an historic crisis—exemplified by a record national debt of $40 trillion—the American ruling class is seeking to redivide the world by force in order to assert control over markets, resources, production networks and strategic chokepoints. NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, the US-Israeli conflict against Iran and the genocide of the Palestinians are battlegrounds in a developing global conflagration whose principal target is China.

A second-rank imperialist power that historically profited from its ties to the British Empire and then from its post-1940 close military-security and economic partnership with Washington, Canada finds itself plunged into the heart of this emerging third world war. Hard hit by Trump’s tariffs, the Canadian bourgeoisie does not oppose the would-be American dictator on principle, but only because his “America First” program cuts across its own predatory interests. Like Canada and for the same reasons, European imperialism is engaged in a massive campaign of aggression to escalate the war on Russia and rearmament.

Under the cover of Canadian nationalism and using Trump as a pretext, the Liberal governments of Justin Trudeau and then Mark Carney have shifted official politics far to the right. They have massively hiked military spending, pledging to spend more than $150 billion on defence by 2035. They have provided huge tax cuts and subsidies to big business and the financial elite, and launched a frontal assault on the right to strike.

It is the working class that will pay for the orgy of military spending through the imposition of austerity policies and the dismantling of workers’ democratic and social rights.

These fundamental issues—the descent into world war, savage austerity at both the federal and provincial levels, the destruction of jobs and wages, the rising cost of living, the shortage of affordable housing—will be buried during the Quebec election campaign under a deluge of reactionary Quebec and Canadian nationalist appeals.

*****

In opposition to the reactionary nationalism of the union bureaucracy in Quebec and in English Canada (where it waves The Maple Leaf and gives full-throated support to Carney’s Team Canada), all sections of the Canadian working class—francophone, anglophone and immigrant—must unite and join with their class brothers and sisters in the United States and overseas in a struggle for power and for the socialist reorganization of society. 

11. Thousands of development officers protest across Sri Lanka

Thousands of development officers across Sri Lanka took part in a lunch-hour protest on August 31 over long-delayed salary increases and other grievances. They demanded the immediate release of a Cabinet paper the government has repeatedly said was prepared to address their concerns.

The Development Officers Trade Union Alliance (DOTUA) called the protests in an effort to contain the growing anger among development officers, who number approximately 150,000 and are employed in various state institutions, including public schools. Recruited over the past three decades from pools of unemployed graduates, they remain trapped in low-paid positions with no formal promotion system or clearly defined duties.

The DOTUA, formed in March 2026 as a combination of 11 trade unions led by the pseudo-left Frontline Socialist Party (FSP), is seeking to prevent a broad struggle against the brutal austerity measures being imposed by the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna/National People’s Power (JVP/NPP) government.

World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reporters spoke with some workers who were in a group of about 70 protesting near the Chilaw Provincial Secretariat in Puttalam District. Many expressed anger at the government’s neglect of their demands.

*****

Between 2022 and 2026, real wages for public and private sector employees fell by 24 percent and 14 percent, respectively. According to the Department of Census and Statistics, inflation in Colombo rose to 8.0 percent in August 2026 from 7.3 percent in July—the highest since June 2023—as food inflation climbed to an over three-year high of 8.5 percent from 6.3 percent in July.

The official poverty line also rose to 17,679 rupees in August from 17,592 rupees in June.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has directed that Sri Lanka maintain a primary surplus of 2.3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the 2027 budget, with primary public expenditure capped at 13 percent. Austerity measures include expanding indirect taxes, removing fuel and electricity subsidies, increasing tariffs, and restructuring and privatizing state-owned enterprises. Rising global oil prices and import costs, exacerbated by the US-Israeli war against Iran, have further burdened working people.

*****

The unions are covering up the fact that the government’s refusal to address the development officers’ demands is directly bound up with its commitment to the IMF-dictated austerity agenda. DOTUA and other public sector unions have prevented state workers from launching a real struggle against this program.

The trade unions and the FSP played a major role in dissipating the 2022 mass uprising that compelled then-president Gotabhaya Rajapaksa to flee Sri Lanka. Working alongside the JVP and the entire political establishment, the unions ensured that the movement was wound down and the pro-imperialist Ranil Wickremesinghe was brought to power.

Having blocked any struggle against Wickremasinghe’s ongoing austerity measures, the unions then paved the way for the JVP/NPP to assume power in 2024. The JVP/NPP’s election promises to renegotiate the IMF’s austerity demands, and to protect the interests of workers and the poor, have been exposed as a fraud.

The development officers’ protests are part of a growing wave of working class struggles. On Wednesday, thousands of university teachers staged protests at campuses across the country, demanding higher salaries and improved facilities. More than 1,000 workers at the Sevanagala Sugar Factory have been on indefinite strike since August 25 demanding wage increases.

To prevent these struggles from being isolated and betrayed, and to expand and unify them, workers must organise independently and in opposition to the trade union bureaucracy and all the capitalist parties. Workers should form democratically elected action committees in every workplace, plantation, and working-class neighbourhood. These committees must fight to unite workers in all industries, as well as farmers, across communal and religious lines, against the IMF and the JVP/NPP government.

Workers in Sri Lanka face the same global assault on jobs, wages, and social services that confronts workers internationally. Workers’ action committees should coordinate with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) to build a powerful international struggle against war, austerity, and dictatorship.

12. United States: New Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director erases two measles deaths from the record

Two unvaccinated Lancaster County residents died of measles in August, but the CDC is saying that they died “with” the disease rather than “of” it, the same lie used to justify mass COVID-19 deaths.

13. In full: Oppose war, fascism and oligarchy! Fight for socialism! Join the International Youth and Students for Social Equality!

Students are returning to campus for the fall semester in the US under conditions of unprecedented crisis. A global war is expanding on three continents, a fascistic government of the oligarchy is dismantling democratic rights, the capitalist system is driving the planet toward climate catastrophe and there is a growing movement of workers and young people throughout the world.

In Ukraine, the US-NATO war against Russia has produced an estimated two million dead and wounded. American forces have been at war against Iran for six months, killing thousands of civilians. Venezuela was invaded in January and its president kidnapped, and at least 221 fishermen and workers have been killed by Pentagon strikes in the Caribbean. The genocide in Gaza is approaching its third anniversary, with more than 73,000 Palestinians killed by official count.

These are not separate conflicts. They are fronts of a single eruption of imperialist violence aimed at a redivision of the world, whose central targets are Russia and China. Trump’s $1.5 trillion military budget is a budget for world war, to be paid for out of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, education and housing. The ruling class is preparing to reintroduce the draft: this December, every young man between 18 and 26 will be automatically registered with the Selective Service.

This war threatens to become nuclear. Washington’s own assessment, signaled by the CIA director’s secret trip to Moscow last week, is that open warfare between NATO and Russia is an imminent danger.

For over four years, the Democratic Party has sold the war in Ukraine as a war for “democracy.” The fate of Bogdan Syrotiuk exposes this as a fraud. On August 10, a Ukrainian court sentenced the 27-year-old Trotskyist, leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, to 15 years in prison for “high treason.” The evidence: six anti-war articles published on the World Socialist Web Site and his criticism of the state glorification of Nazi collaborators. Bogdan opposed both Putin’s invasion and the NATO war drive, and called for Russian and Ukrainian workers to unite against the war. He has been denied medical care, and his appeal must be filed by September 9.

Endless war abroad cannot be sustained without dictatorship at home. In 20 months the Trump administration has built a nationwide network of concentration camps and killed workers in the streets with impunity. After federal agents shot dead Renée Good, a mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a nurse who stopped to film an arrest, Vice President JD Vance declared the killer “protected by absolute immunity.”

National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 names “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” as the common threads of “domestic terrorism.” The University of Michigan Eight face federal conspiracy charges carrying up to 20 years in prison for protesting the genocide in Gaza. The Minnesota Fifteen have been indicted for conspiracy to impede federal officers after opposing ICE raids. In the Prairieland case in Texas, 15 opponents of ICE were sentenced to a combined 556 years for “material support for terrorism.” Amid the federal dragnet against Chinese scientists, University of Michigan postdoctoral researcher Danhao Wang took his own life in March, one day after a hostile FBI interrogation.

The Trump administration is a government of the oligarchy, by the oligarchy and for the oligarchy. Its function is to transfer still more wealth to the top through tax cuts, deregulation and the gutting of social programs. On this basis it is carrying out a systematic campaign to erect a presidential dictatorship. This is not the psychology of one man, but the outcome of a protracted breakdown of American democracy, rooted in a concentration of wealth incompatible with democratic forms of rule.

The Democratic Party is not an opposition to this regime but its partner. In January, 149 House Democrats voted for the $839 billion war budget. In August, Senate Democrats passed the funding bill that keeps ICE and the camps running, which Schumer called a “responsible path forward.” Days later, Hakeem Jeffries met Jared Kushner to seek “common ground.” The Democrats’ quarrel with Trump is that he does not defend American imperialism effectively enough. What they fear is not dictatorship but the working class, and their role is to keep mass opposition to Trump under control.

The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) serves this function on the party’s “left.” Its candidates, above all Zohran Mamdani, now mayor of New York, have won the votes of young people who reject capitalism. But the DSA is not a socialist party. It is a faction of the Democratic Party, peddling the illusion that capitalism can be reformed through electoral politics, and its role is to confine the radicalization of youth within the capitalist two-party system. Mamdani has twice met Trump at the White House and governs with the Democratic establishment, imposing austerity on the workers who elected him. 

The opposition is enormous. The killings of Good and Pretti brought 100,000 into the streets of Minneapolis and set off high school walkouts across the country, feeding into the March 28 “No Kings” demonstrations, estimated at 8 million, the largest single-day protest in American history. Millions have marched against the genocide in Gaza, against ICE and against dictatorship. Among young people, capitalism’s standing has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded.

The problem is not a lack of opposition. It is one of perspective. These movements have not stopped the regime’s advance because they rest on the false premise that the ruling class can be pressured into changing course—that enough people in the streets will move the Democrats to act, the courts to intervene or Trump to retreat. But the ruling class is waging war and building a dictatorship because the defense of its wealth and global position requires it. It cannot be pressured. It can only be defeated.

The mass protests express a real determination to fight. What they lack is a perspective that connects this opposition to the one social force with the power to win. Only the working class possesses the objective social power to halt dictatorship, genocide and world war. It numbers more than 3.5 billion people worldwide, the vast majority of humanity, and it is the class that produces all of society’s wealth. It is international, and its interests cannot be reconciled with capitalism.

In 1861, the defense of democracy required the abolition of slavery. Today it requires the abolition of capitalism. The politics of the IYSSE are not “student politics.” The IYSSE fights to break students out of the isolation of the campus and turn them to the working class—to bring the fight against war and dictatorship into the factories, warehouses, hospitals and schools.

This requires the study of history. The contradictions that produced the First World War in 1914 also produced the Russian Revolution in 1917, and those forces are at work today. Trotskyism is the Marxism of the 21st century. It continues the struggle waged by Leon Trotsky, who led the 1917 revolution with Lenin, against the Stalinist bureaucracy that usurped power and murdered the socialists who had made it. The Fourth International, founded by Trotsky in 1938, is carried forward by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), and the IYSSE is its youth movement.

On every continent, workers’ struggles collide with the trade union bureaucracies, an anti-strike police force for the corporations, against which the ICFI is building the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). The IYSSE fights to build rank-and-file committees on the campuses and in the workplaces, to unite students and workers in a common struggle against war, dictatorship and the oligarchy.

Amid the slaughter of the First World War, Rosa Luxemburg posed the alternative: socialism or barbarism. Which prevails depends on whether the working class finds its revolutionary leadership—and on whether you take up that fight. Take the fight to free Bogdan Syrotiuk onto every campus. Build IYSSE clubs. Join the International Youth and Students for Social Equality and fight for world socialist revolution.

14. Autoworker crushed at Kentucky auto parts plant, one day after Governor celebrated its expansion

Bradley Clouse, a 33-year-old maintenance worker was killed on the job early Wednesday morning at the Astemo Americas auto parts plant in Berea, Kentucky, just one day after Governor Andy Beshear and local officials visited the facility to celebrate a major corporate expansion. The non-union factory produces steering and suspension components for the auto industry.

According to WBON-TV, Clouse was reportedly investigating varnish leaking from a piece of robotic equipment and entered the machine to attempt a repair when he was crushed. The equipment was reportedly locked out at the time, making it unclear how the machinery was able to move or otherwise cause fatal injuries. The exact circumstances of the incident remain under investigation.

There are conflicting reports as to the proximate time of the incident. However, Berea Police Department Sgt. Barry Manley, speaking with The Edge stated that they had “received a call at 6:50 this morning about an injured maintenance worker who was crushed by machinery he was attempting to work on after it failed.” Other outlets, citing the Lexington Herald-Leader, reported Clouse was struck on the head—a discrepancy that has not been reconciled and underscores how little has been officially confirmed.

As one worker reported on Facebook on late Wednesday afternoon, the factory immediately shut down production and sent all workers on the floor home and did not continue with production. Astemo communications manager Hiromi Mizuno confirmed operations were suspended and said grief counseling was available to employees.

The preliminary cause of death is considered to be blunt force trauma. According to Deputy Coroner Carlos Coyle, the official cause of death will be announced within two to three months by state officials. The worker’s remains have been sent to Frankfort for an autopsy, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is involved since the death occurred within the plant.

The circumstances of Clouse’s death point directly to the conditions imposed on workers throughout the auto industry. They also point to a documented history at this specific plant.

*****

The circumstances surrounding this young worker’s death are similar to those that killed 63-year-old Ronald Adams Sr., a machine repairman crushed to death at the Stellantis Dundee Engine Complex in Michigan in April 2025, when an overhead gantry crane activated while he was performing maintenance. An independent investigation by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees found that lockout/tagout protections at Dundee had been systematically bypassed through the widespread use of “cheater keys”—skeleton keys that defeat the entire safety system—with the acquiescence of the United Auto Workers unions. A former OSHA compliance officer concluded the plant had “virtually no functioning lockout/tagout system,” approaching criminal negligence. The Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration has still not released the findings of its investigation nearly 17 months since Adams’ death.

The pattern has continued unabated. In March of this year, 64-year-old Gregory Knopf was killed at Ford’s Sharonville Transmission Plant in Ohio when a press machine activated during routine maintenance and pinned him against equipment—a death, the WSWS noted, bearing “a direct and grim resemblance” to that of Adams Sr. Bradley Clouse is the latest entry in this slaughter.

These deaths are not accidents. They are the predictable outcome of an industry where corporations systematically under invest in maintenance and safety while intensifying the pace of production to extract maximum profit—and where a maintenance worker is sent to repair machinery that has broken down as a matter of routine.

*****

Kentucky has long been among the most dangerous places to work in the United States, with workplace injury and fatality rates above the national average. Last year, state authorities moved to further weaken workplace safety standards, turning back the clock on protections in a state where the Democratic governor and Republican legislature compete to offer corporations the cheapest, least-regulated conditions for extracting surplus value.

Astemo Americas is a division of Astemo Ltd., a privately held Japanese joint venture headquartered in Tokyo, with more than 15,000 employees across 23 manufacturing sites, including 12 US operations and three Kentucky locations. The company manufactures engine management systems, electric powertrains and integrated vehicle controls for major automakers. Ownership is currently split three ways: 40 percent Honda Motor Co., 40 percent Hitachi, Ltd., and 20 percent JIC Capital, with Honda in the process of acquiring an additional 21 percent stake from Hitachi to become majority owner and convert Astemo into a consolidated subsidiary. Because the company is privately held, it discloses no executive compensation.

Entry-level production work at the Berea plant pays roughly $15 to $19 an hour, according to worker-reported data and job postings, while skilled and engineering roles run considerably higher. Astemo does not directly hire its entire workforce for this pay: at least two staffing agencies, Nesco Resource and Staff Management-SMX, place workers on-site at the plant, an arrangement common across auto parts suppliers.

The day before Clouse’s death, Astemo hosted Kentucky Governor Beshear and local officials at the Berea plant to announce a $112 million expansion producing electric vehicle components. The project is described as the first phase of what is expected to become a $379 million investment.

“Kentucky continues to lead the way when it comes to advanced manufacturing and EV operations and this project represents another great company choosing to reinvest in the Commonwealth,” Beshear declared at the ceremony.

The expansion celebration is itself part of the corporate offensive surrounding the transition to electric vehicles, a restructuring that the auto bosses and their political allies in both parties are using to extract billions in public subsidies while driving down wages and conditions and eliminating jobs.

*****

Workers at Astemo and throughout the auto parts industry must build their own independent rank-and-file committees, organized across plants and companies, to fight for safety, staffing and an end to speedup. Such committees cannot be subordinated to any union bureaucracy or to the Democratic and Republican parties, which celebrate deregulation and corporate “investment” while workers are killed on the job.  

15. Over 5,600 people still missing after Nepal flood, as death toll passes 1,200

One week has passed since a catastrophic flood struck several communities in northern Nepal and part of Tibet, China. The confirmed death toll has risen to 1,280, while more than 5,600 people remain missing on both sides of the border. According to Nepal’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA), 1,252 bodies have been recovered. More than 2.5 million people who live downstream have been affected.

The disaster was not simply “natural,” but the product of the capitalist system, which has rendered Nepal’s masses defenseless against the consequences of climate change.

Thousands have been rescued, but many still listed as missing are presumed dead, trapped under rubble, swept into rivers, or buried beneath landslides. In the worst-hit parts of Rasuwa, Nuwakot, Dhading, and Chitwan, entire families have been erased; in some villages, only a handful of survivors remain. 

*****

Thousands of survivors escaped the initial surge by scrambling up the steep valley sides into the surrounding mountains. Helicopter drops of rice, lentils, and tarpaulins have reached some locations, but the scale of need far outstrips what has been delivered. Medicine, clean water, and blankets are critically short, with night temperatures dropping and monsoon rains continuing; exposure and illness are mounting threats.

At present, rescue operations are focused on the ruins of hydropower projects, where hundreds of workers are trapped. For more than a week, rescue teams have been drilling, cutting, and pumping to reach these spaces, but progress is slow and dangerous, with the risk of secondary collapses and renewed surges. Every hour that passes reduces the chances of finding anyone alive.

The disaster has laid bare the bankruptcy of Nepal’s early warning system (EWS). An article published in the Kathmandu Post on September 2 said although Nepal invested in sensors and SMS alert infrastructure over the past decade, the system collapsed when it was most needed. Automated gauging stations in upper Bhote Koshi stopped functioning at 8:40 a.m. on August 26, just as the flood crossed the border from Tibet. The first SMS warnings to downstream communities were sent only after the surge was already racing through Rasuwa.

By the time the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology posted a public update that the upstream blockage had not fully drained, five hours had elapsed, and the worst destruction was already done.

A robust, multi-hazard EWS covering glacial lake outbursts, landslide-dammed lakes, and trans-boundary floods is entirely feasible with existing technology. But it requires sustained investment, cross-border data sharing, and a state that prioritizes the lives of workers and peasants over debt servicing and elite enrichment.

*****

The hypocrisy of the imperialist powers is stark. The United States, Britain, the European Union, and Australia have pledged a combined total of around $16 million in aid for Nepal—a pittance compared to the billions they expend weekly on wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Washington allocates trillions of dollars annually to its military machine and has spent more than $100 billion on its war against Iran—nearly 28,000 times the pittance it has pledged for Nepal’s flood victims.

The same technological arsenal deployed for destruction—satellite imagery, drone swarms, thermal sensors, AI-driven surveillance systems, and rapid-deployment engineering units—could within hours locate survivors trapped under rubble, map real-time landslide risks, and deliver food and medicine to villages cut off by floods. The US military can mobilize carrier strike groups, F-35 squadrons, and precision-guided missiles for war with Iran within hours. NATO floods Ukraine with artillery shells, reconnaissance drones, and real-time battlefield intelligence daily.

Yet for Nepal, the US has not dispatched a single rescue worker, a single field hospital, or a single heavy-lift helicopter dedicated to evacuation. For imperialism, the lives of Nepali workers and peasants are expendable.

*****

The catastrophe in Nepal demonstrates the incapacity of the ruling classes to address even the most basic requirements of the masses. A socialist movement of the working class, in alliance with the peasantry and poor, must be built to break the shackles of imperialism and build a society where technology serves human need rather than profit. Halting the destruction of the environment is inseparable from the fight against the capitalist system that is destroying it.

16. Will Lehman calls for rank-and-file committees as UAW academic workers return to campuses

Will Lehman in 2023

Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker and socialist candidate for president of the United Auto Workers, issued a statement Tuesday to roughly 100,000 UAW academic workers returning to campuses across the United States, calling for rank-and-file committees linking university and industrial workers.

Academic workers now account for roughly one quarter of UAW membership. In recent years, graduate employees, postdocs, adjuncts and other university workers have carried out major strikes and repeatedly voted by overwhelming margins for strike action over wages, housing, insecure employment, immigration, democratic rights and the Gaza genocide.

“Over the past two years, graduate employees, academic workers, and the students they serve have been at the center of the opposition to the Gaza genocide and the attacks on immigrants and democratic rights,” Lehman writes. “Academic workers have also been among the most combative sections of the UAW membership—striking, rejecting sellout contracts and repeatedly colliding with a union apparatus that has worked to shut your struggles down and bolster the political establishment.”

The latest strike vote came at Columbia University last month, where roughly 1,000 postdoctoral researchers and research scientists voted by more than 90 percent to authorize a walkout. Their demands include an $80,000 salary minimum, year-long appointments instead of precarious three- and six-month positions and increased childcare support.

The vote followed a months-long struggle by more than 3,000 Columbia graduate and undergraduate student workers, whose contract expired last year. In March, they voted 91.5 percent to authorize a strike, followed by an 82.2 percent vote to begin a walkout April 23.

Lehman writes:

At Columbia University, the UAW bureaucracy—led by Democratic Socialists of America members like Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla, who cut his teeth betraying the Harvard graduate workers’ strike—has repeatedly worked to shut down the membership’s strikes and to impose sellout contracts over the opposition of the rank and file.

When Columbia student workers voted by over 90 percent to strike, the UAW threatened to withhold authorization unless the local watered down its demands. The same apparatus stood by while a UAW member, the Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, was seized by ICE and threatened with deportation for opposing the Gaza genocide.

The demands targeted by UAW Region 9A included protections against ICE, removal of police from campus, restrictions on surveillance and divestment from weapons manufacturers and companies implicated in Israel’s assault on Gaza. The UAW refused to sanction the walkout or provide strike pay. By August, the bargaining committee had dropped the divestment demand. Columbia postdocs had also voted 98 percent to strike in 2023, but no walkout took place.

Lehman continues: “And it was the UAW bureaucracy that seized on a court injunction as the excuse to shut down the University of California strike against the police repression of anti-genocide protesters.”

*****

“My campaign fights for the unification of all academic workers—graduate employees, adjuncts, lecturers, postdocs—on a program of guaranteed living wages, full-time secure positions, and an end to the university’s role as an enforcer of political repression,” Lehman writes.

The UAW’s first direct election of international officers in 2022 demonstrated how thoroughly academic workers had been disfranchised by the union bureaucracy.

“Most of you, if the last election is any guide, don’t even know that a vote for UAW president and other top officers is now underway, or know much about Shawn Fain’s record, let alone the other candidates,” Lehman writes.

*****

“I am the only candidate who opposes the escalating world war and Trump’s drive to establish a fascist dictatorship in this country,” Lehman continues. “My program calls for abolishing the UAW bureaucracy and transferring power to the workers on the shopfloor, through rank-and-file committees that unite workers in the US with their brothers and sisters in Canada, Mexico and around the world.” 

*****

Lehman rejects the portrayal of the radicalization on the campuses as separate from developments among industrial workers.

“Corporate politicians and media, along with the official ‘left’ in academia, falsely portray the working class as too conservative to fight for revolutionary change. I know firsthand that workers are seething just as much over social inequality, endless wars, and the threat to democratic rights.”

*****

“Socialism cannot be won by pressuring the Democratic Party or any other capitalist party,” Lehman writes. “It is built by workers organizing independently and fighting for political power themselves, and that fight is exactly what this campaign is for.”

“The radicalization sweeping through the universities and the working class has so far found its initial expression in votes for DSA candidates,” Lehman writes. “But the program of [New York Mayor Zohran] Mamdani and others like him is not socialism—it is working within the Democratic Party to tinker at the edges of capitalism while the war, the dictatorship and the plunder of the planet proceed.”

“There is no socialism without the working class, without the fight for political power, and the expropriation of the oligarchs.”

Lehman concludes:

Your fight cannot be separated from that of autoworkers and other industrial workers—the same corporations and the same government stand against you both, and only our united strength can defeat them.

I am calling on you to build rank-and-file committees in every university, factory and workplace. These committees—controlled by the workers themselves, not the union bureaucracy—must serve as defensive organizations, the center of an anti-bureaucratic revolt, and the embryo of the self-government the working class will need to take power.

17. Australia: Anti-corruption hearings underscore growth of far-right in Liberal Party

A semi-secret faction of hardline Catholic conservatives dubbed the “Reformers” was allegedly engaged in a plot to take over the New South Wales Liberal Party.

18.  Workers Struggles: Africa, Europe, & Middle East

Africa

Kenya:  

Nurses continue national strike over pay and conditions

 

Aviation workers on go-slow over poor working conditions 

Morocco:  

Lawyers continue nationwide strike to defend independence of judiciary

 

Nigeria:  

 Lecturers hold two-week strike over pay and conditions

South Africa: 

Workers at fruit wholesaler walk out over pay and conditions

 

Students continue protests at Cape Peninsula University of Technology over rising cost of higher education

 

Workers at food plant stage picket to defend jobs 

 

Europe

Greece:

Seasonal firefighters march in Athens for permanent jobs as dangerous wildfires continue countrywide

Romania:

Low paid office workers in business and finance sector demonstrate for pay increase and job security

United Kingdom:

Walkout by staff at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum over pay and working conditions

Haulage firm workers at West Yorkshire company in England begin all-out stoppage over pay

University press finance staff in Oxford, England strike over outsourcing

Middle East

Iran:

Jobs protests by youth as conditions worsen

Iraq:

Further protests over demands for public sector jobs

Israel:

Strike by teachers in East Jerusalem over entry permits and curriculum change

19. Australian educators rank-and-file committees demand freedom for Bogdan Syrotiuk

“People should not be forced into silence… Freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and the right to participate in public debate are fundamental human rights.” – Yasemin, Victoria

20. The Mykolaiv court invokes Ukrainian-only language rule to stop the inflow of letters demanding Bogdan’s freedom

The Mykolaiv Court of Appeal has responded to the worldwide campaign demanding the freedom of Bogdan Syrotiuk with a measure of cynical chauvinism. In reply to scores of letters from historians, artists, legal scholars, workers and students calling for the reversal of his conviction, the court has been sending an emailed statement declaring that “office work in the court is conducted in the state language” and that letters—which it designates “applications”—should be written “in the language provided for by court office work, namely Ukrainian.”

The court’s demand is aimed at the international campaign that has developed since August 10, when the Pervomaisk City District Court, in Ukraine’s southern Mykolaiv region, sentenced Syrotiuk, the 27-year-old founder and leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists, to 15 years in prison for “high treason … under martial law.” A petition posted on the World Socialist Web Site has been signed by thousands. Letters of protest have poured in from more than 30 countries. The inflow has reached a volume sufficient to force a response from the court, after the option of simply ignoring the protests was rejected. The demand that all letters be submitted in Ukrainian is an attempt to discourage and suppress public expressions of support for Bogdan.

The origins of the provision invoked by the court are thoroughly reactionary. The Law on Ensuring the Functioning of Ukrainian as the State Language, adopted on April 25, 2019, was a blatant act of discrimination against a large portion of Ukraine’s population—estimated at between one-third and one-half—whose principal language is Russian.

Pervomaisk, where Bogdan was arrested and tried, and Mykolaiv, where he has been held in prison since April 2024, are Russian-speaking cities of southern Ukraine. The court that is demanding the world write to it in Ukrainian operates in a region where a large part of the population has had its own language stripped of official standing. The same national chauvinism that deprives Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine of their democratic rights is now being directed against the international campaign for Bogdan’s freedom.

The legal pretext is fraudulent. The language restriction invoked by the court pertains to procedural documents filed by participants in proceedings, including pleadings, motions and evidence. Letters protesting a verdict, sent from abroad, are not procedural filings. There is no law that requires them to be written in any particular national language. The court has chosen to classify the letters as “applications,” and thereby subject them to the administrative language restriction, purely as a deflection tactic.

The cynicism is transparent. The court is entirely capable of understanding the import of any letter, in whatever language it is written, that contains the name “Bogdan Syrotiuk.” When dealing with its NATO masters, Zelensky and his henchmen prove remarkably fluent in whatever language is required to solicit money and weapons. The same state whose president pleads before foreign parliaments in their own languages instructs foreign workers and academics that their protest over a political prisoner must be submitted in Ukrainian.

The attempt to suppress the campaign will fail. Workers, youth, principled scholars and all those committed to the defense of democratic rights will take little note of the court’s fiat. As the facts of the case become more widely known, outrage against the verdict will grow. The number of signatures will grow. More individuals and organizations will speak out in defense of Bogdan, and the letters will continue to pour in.

*****

The significance of the fight for Bogdan’s freedom extends beyond the fate of a single individual. He has been condemned to 15 years in prison for opposing the fratricidal war that is escalating rapidly into a catastrophic military conflict threatening to engulf all of Europe and the world.

The fight for Bogdan’s freedom must be expanded. The number of petition signatories must grow by the thousands. Individuals and organizations should send letters to the Court of Appeal demanding that the verdict be overturned and that Bogdan be released immediately.

The letters of protest should be written in whatever language their authors choose. Those who have access to translation programs may, if they so decide, transpose their letters into Ukrainian. But whatever the language, the message is the same:

Free Bogdan Syrotiuk! For the unity of the Ukrainian, Russian and international working class against fascism and war!

Свободу Богдану Сиротюку! За єдність українського, російського та міжнародного робітничого класу проти фашизму і війни!

Свободу Богдану Сиротюку! За единство украинского, российского и международного рабочего класса против фашизма и войны!

Libérez Bogdan Syrotiouk ! Pour l’unité de la classe ouvrière ukrainienne, russe et internationale contre le fascisme et la guerre!

Freiheit für Bogdan Syrotjuk! Für die Einheit der ukrainischen, russischen und internationalen Arbeiterklasse gegen Faschismus und Krieg!

¡Libertad para Bogdan Syrotiuk! ¡Por la unidad de la clase obrera ucraniana, rusa e internacional contra el fascismo y la guerra!

Libertà per Bogdan Syrotiuk! Per l’unità della classe operaia ucraina, russa e internazionale contro il fascismo e la guerra!

Bogdan Syrotiuk’a özgürlük! Ukraynalı, Rus ve uluslararası işçi sınıfının faşizme ve savaşa karşı birliği için!

Liberdade para Bogdan Syrotiuk! Pela unidade da classe trabalhadora ucraniana, russa e internacional contra o fascismo e a guerra!

බොග්දාන් සිරොටියුක්ට නිදහස! ෆැසිස්ට්වාදයට හා යුද්ධයට එරෙහිව උක්‍රේන, රුසියානු සහ ජාත්‍යන්තර කම්කරු පන්තියේ එක්සත්භාවය වෙනුවෙන්!

போக்தான் சிரோட்யுக்கை விடுதலை செய்! பாசிசத்திற்கும் போருக்கும் எதிராக உக்ரேனிய, ரஷ்ய மற்றும் அனைத்துலகத் தொழிலாள வர்க்கத்தின் ஒற்றுமைக்காக!

释放博格丹·瑟罗秋克！为乌克兰、俄罗斯和国际工人阶级反对法西斯主义与战争的团结而斗争！

الحرية لبوغدان سيروتيوك! من أجل وحدة الطبقة العاملة الأوكرانية والروسية والعالمية ضد الفاشية والحرب!

ボグダン・シロチュクを釈放せよ！ファシズムと戦争に反対するウクライナ、ロシア、そして国際労働者階級の団結のために！

آزادی برای بوگدان سیروتیوک! برای اتحاد طبقه کارگر اوکراین، روسیه و جهان علیه فاشیسم و جنگ!

Vrijheid voor Bogdan Syrotjoek! Voor de eenheid van de Oekraïense, Russische en internationale arbeidersklasse tegen fascisme en oorlog!

21. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!

Bogdan Syrotiuk in 2015

"Peace for the world! Down with war!"