Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. The reality of US-Israel relations—Part Two
From its inception, the Zionist state—whose borders were shaped not by the United Nations partition plan but by Israel’s military victory in 1948 and the displacement and dispossession of more than 700,000 Palestinians—faced severe structural constraints.
Israel was a small country with few natural resources, limited water, and exclusion from the surrounding Arab economies, which imposed boycotts, closed their borders and refused trade. Few other 600‑kilometer corridors cut through so many conflict zones—Gaza, Israel, Lebanon, and Syria—making any overland route from Rafah in Egypt to Antakya in Türkiye impossible. These conditions rendered the economy non‑viable without external support and pushed successive governments toward territorial expansion, high military spending, and settlement building, generating recurring economic crises.
For nearly four decades until the 1985 Stabilization Plan, Israel took the form of a state‑led, Labor‑Zionist developmental regime, built on the institutions of the pre‑state Yishuv (settlement) and dominated by the Histadrut and the Mapai/Labor movement.
The United States provided almost no economic aid in the early years—limited mainly to food assistance. Early US policy was pragmatic, cautious, and often ambivalent. Seeking alliance with the Arab states and wary of alienating key regional partners, Washington avoided close relations with Israel. France, not the US, was Israel’s primary arms supplier in the 1950s.
US strategy in the Middle East centred instead on three pillars: Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt, with Iran the most important. Washington deepened its relationship with Saudi Arabia after Roosevelt’s 1945 “oil‑for‑security” understanding; orchestrated the 1953 coup against the elected government in Iran to restore the Shah and secure US control of Iranian oil; and initially cultivated ties with Egypt’s new regime after the 1952 Free Officers coup. During the 1956 Suez Crisis, the Eisenhower administration forced Britain, France, and Israel to withdraw from Egypt, prioritising regional stability over Israeli ambitions.
Israel nevertheless worked to secure US support. David Ben‑Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, sought to present Israel as a reliable Cold War partner, offering military cooperation and intelligence. Mossad collaborated with the CIA and MI6, including in the 1953 coup in Iran, and provided intelligence on Soviet activities. Israel also attempted covert operations to shape US and British policy, most notoriously the 1954 “Lavon Affair” in Cairo: false-flag terrorist operations aimed at ensuring a British and US presence in Egypt. It backfired spectacularly and caused a major political crisis in Israel.
Without substantial economic assistance from Washington in its early decades, Israel survived largely through diaspora funding and German reparations. Reparations and compensation payments—amounting to a sum equivalent to 86 percent of Israel’s GDP in 1956—financed infrastructure, industry, shipping, and energy systems. Even after formal reparations ended in 1966, West German aid continued at high levels.
By the mid‑1960s, Israel remained economically fragile, militarily dependent on external suppliers, and politically constrained by US regional strategy. This dependency shaped its foreign policy, its domestic economic structure, and its search for a great‑power patron—conditions that would shift only after the 1967 war.
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The 1956 Suez Crisis marked a turning point in Middle Eastern geopolitics and a warming of US–Israel relations. Although the US forced Britain, France, and Israel to withdraw from Egypt, the crisis unintentionally elevated President Gamal Abdul Nasser’s prestige, boosted pan‑Arab nationalism, and destabilized the pro‑Western regional order. The Baghdad Pact collapsed after the 1958 Iraqi revolution; Egypt and Syria briefly united; Jordan and Lebanon sought British and US military support; and Washington announced the Eisenhower Doctrine, asserting US responsibility for the Persian Gulf and Arabian Peninsula.
As the Cold War intensified, Washington reassessed Israel’s strategic value. In the early 1960s, the Kennedy administration initiated the first formal US–Israel security ties, ending the arms embargo and supplying Hawk anti‑aircraft missiles. Covert cooperation deepened as Israel positioned itself as an ally against Soviet influence, with Mossad acting as a subcontractor for US intelligence operations abroad.
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Nasser attempted to counter Israel’s nuclear advantage by developing missiles with German scientists, prompting Mossad’s 1962 campaign to intimidate or assassinate those working on Egypt’s programme. Egypt never matched Israel’s capabilities, leaving Israel the region’s sole nuclear power.
As Soviet influence expanded in Egypt, Syria, Algeria, and Iraq, the Johnson administration moved closer to Israel. In 1966, Washington cut economic aid to Egypt and began supplying Israel with tanks, aircraft, and missiles. During the 1960s and 70s, Israel also acted as a proxy for US interests, aiding pro‑Western forces in Ethiopia, Yemen, Iran, Morocco, South Africa, and parts of sub‑Saharan Africa—often where the US could not intervene directly.
In June 1967, the Johnson administration gave Israel the green light for its preemptive war against Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, hoping it would weaken Nasser. Israel’s rapid victory reshaped the region: it destroyed Egyptian and Syrian air forces and occupied the Sinai Peninsula, Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights. Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty—apparently a “friendly fire” incident that killed 34 US sailors for which it apologized and paid compensation—did not derail the emerging strategic relationship, with Washington judging that a public confrontation could play into Moscow’s hands. But it did generate enduring controversy and mistrust beneath the surface.
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The 1967 War was the decisive turning point in US–Israel relations. Israel’s rapid victory established it as the dominant military power in the Levant, shattered the appeal of pan‑Arab nationalism, and weakened Soviet influence in the region. By demonstrating that it could achieve militarily what Washington sought politically—containing Arab nationalism and checking Moscow—Israel proved its value to the US as a strategic Cold War asset, laying the foundations for the “special relationship” that would define the next decades.
Washington began formally integrating Israel into its regional security system, supplying it with advanced weapons previously reserved for NATO allies. Under the Nixon Doctrine of 1969, while Washington would provide a nuclear shield, its regional allies rather than US ground forces would police the world on its behalf, thereby reducing American intervention in local conflicts. The Nixon Doctrine opened the floodgates of US military aid to allies in the Persian Gulf as the petrostates moved closer to the US, aligning against radical Arab states and the Soviet Union.
American support for Israel increased dramatically: 99 percent of all US military aid to Israel has been provided only after 1967. US aid rose from roughly $50 million annually before 1967 to about $3 billion a year by the mid‑1980s and $3.8 billion a year 2019-28, totalling almost $318 billion since World War II and making Israel the highest per‑capita recipient of US assistance.
US aid to Israel took an exceptional form. Unlike standard American foreign aid—tied to specific projects and monitored by USAID—most US assistance to Israel is transferred as unrestricted cash, deposited directly into the Israeli treasury. Military loans were routinely converted into grants, and Congress eventually forgave outstanding balances. Washington also agreed to front‑load the entire annual aid package at the start of each fiscal year, allowing Israel to earn interest on unspent funds. Israel is uniquely permitted to spend up to one quarter of US military aid inside Israel, subsidizing the development of its domestic arms industry, and is exempt from detailed reporting requirements on how economic aid is used.
Beyond direct transfers, the US provides loan guarantees, favorable tax treatment for private donations, and even guarantees Israel’s oil supplies in the event of a crisis. Diplomatic protection has been equally crucial: since 1972, the US has used its veto in the UN Security Council to block dozens of resolutions critical of Israel, ensuring no international action is taken over its illegal occupation of Palestinian territory, settlement expansion, or nuclear weapons.
This system of support expressed a consistent political logic. After 1967, Israel became one of the pillars of US strategy in the Middle East. Its military strength, intelligence capabilities, and alignment with US interests justified an aid regime exceptional in scale, structure, and political insulation. The transfers of US arms also fueled a regional arms race, generating lucrative contracts for American defense manufacturers.
In return, Israel acted as the custodian of Washington’s interests in the region, preventing victories by Palestinian movements and their allies in Jordan (1970) and Lebanon (1976-82), that threatened the decrepit, corrupt, US-dependent Arab regimes, and countering Soviet‑aligned states during the Cold War. It served as a conduit for US arms to regimes Washington couldn’t be seen arming openly: apartheid South Africa, Khomeini’s Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, Central American death squads. Mossad provided intelligence and carried out illegal covert operations on Washington’s behalf. In effect, Israel replaced Britain—after its withdrawal “East of Suez”—as Washington’s primary strategic partner and security proxy in the Middle East.
In the surprise attack mounted by Egypt and Syria against Israel in October 1973, Israel suffered early losses, prompting it to consider a nuclear alert (the “Samson Option”). The US responded by launching a massive airlift—the largest since the Berlin Airlift of 1948-49—that enabled Israel to regain the initiative, cross the Suez Canal, and encircle Egypt’s Third Army, while signalling to Moscow that it would not permit an Arab victory. It also demonstrated Israel’s dependence upon a powerful backer.
The war triggered the 1973–74 oil embargo, unleashing global inflation and recession and convincing Washington that regional stability—and secure energy supplies—required deeper diplomatic and military engagement. After the collapse of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in March 1975, and in recognition of Israel’s dependency, President Gerald Ford ordered a punitive “reassessment” of US–Israel relations to pressure Israel into limiting its territorial ambitions and avoid alienating Arab oil producers.
This pressure forced Israel to accept ceasefire and disengagement agreements with Egypt and Syria, laying the foundation for the Camp David Accords and the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty, which returned the Sinai to Egypt and cemented the US role as the region’s indispensable mediator. It laid the basis for Arab-Israeli normalization (Jordan in 1994 and eventually the Abraham Accords in 2020) and the isolation of the Palestinians, as key Arab states no longer viewed the Palestinian question as a barrier to cooperation with Israel.
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The 1979 Iranian Revolution removed Washington’s most important ally in the region. The Shah’s sudden overthrow produced a regime openly hostile to both the US and Israel. The Islamic Republic backed the Palestinians—handing the former Israeli embassy in Tehran to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—energized Islamist movements across the region, and destabilized conservative Arab monarchies. For Washington, the loss was profound: Iran had been its strongest regional ally, a key intelligence outpost on the Soviet border, a major arms client, and a crucial source of recycled petrodollars.
The US responded—alongside the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan—with the 1980 Carter Doctrine, reversing the 1969 Nixon Doctrine. President Jimmy Carter declared that the US would use military force to defend its interests in the Persian Gulf. This led to a major expansion of the US military presence, the creation of what became CENTCOM, and a long era of direct American intervention. The Reagan administration reinforced this posture in 1981, pledging to protect the “internal stability” of Saudi Arabia.
With Iran lost, Israel was left as the only stable, militarily capable, pro‑Western power in the region. Washington increasingly relied on Israeli intelligence and military capacity, while Israel pressed for expanded US aid and advanced weapons systems. This dovetailed with Defense Minister Ariel Sharon’s 1981 doctrine of unilateral military dominance, preemption, and the destruction of hostile political infrastructures.
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Although Washington publicly criticized some actions—such as the Osirak strike, the Lebanon invasion, and the massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila —cooperation continued to deepen. Israel’s wars offered the US real‑time testing of American weapons, often against Soviet‑supplied systems, while Israel’s nuclear arsenal provided long‑range deterrent capacity.
During the Iran-Iraq war (1981–86), Israel served as the conduit for secret US arms sales to Iran despite official American opposition. The arms helped prolong the war, weakening both hostile states, while the proceeds funded US‑backed “Contra” forces in Central America.
At the same time, Israel pursued its own interests, sometimes at Washington’s expense. The most damaging episode was the Jonathan Pollard espionage case, in which a US Navy intelligence analyst passed classified material to Israel, some of which reached the Soviet Union. The scandal strained relations for years. But despite such tensions, US policymakers continued to view Israel’s military strength and intelligence capabilities as essential to American power in the Middle East.
Israel became known in Washington as “America’s aircraft carrier.” In 1985, the US concluded its first-ever free trade agreement with Israel, and in 1987 designated it a major non‑NATO ally, embedding Israel within the broader Western security and technological ecosystem.
Israel’s strategic utility was repeatedly emphasized in Washington. In 1986, Joe Biden, during a Senate speech, argued against selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, saying, “It’s about time we stop apologizing for our support for Israel. It is the best $3 billion investment we make. If there weren’t an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interests in the region.” This was an opinion he was to restate more than once.
To be continued.
2. US Secretary of War again targets China at Shangri-La Dialogue
In a speech last Saturday replete with hypocrisy and falsity, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth told the annual strategic-military Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore that there was “rightful alarm regarding China’s historic military buildup and the expansion of its military activities in the region and beyond.”
Once again Hegseth demanded all strategic allies and partners throughout the Indo-Pacific dramatically boost military spending and act in concert with United States to prepare for war against China under the pretext of maintaining regional peace and stability.
The absurdity of Hegseth’s remarks would not have been lost on the defence ministers, top military officers and strategic officials gathered at Asia’s top security conference—even those that side with US imperialism.
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Addressing the assembled political and military leaders, Hegseth insisted that all allies and partners had to step up as the military strength required was “not a burden America can or should carry alone.” He declared: “You don’t have a strong alliance unless everyone has skin in the game. No freeloading.” He added point blank: “We demand 3.5 percent [of GDP spending on defence] from our allies and partners.”
Hegseth’s remarks inadvertently point to the historic decline of the United States that underpins the real reasons for the accelerating US war drive against China over the past decade and half. US imperialism regards the rapid economic rise and growing technological sophistication of China as the chief threat to US global domination and is determined to eliminate that danger through its remaining military might.
The Trump administration’s military actions have a strategic logic—the consolidation of US control over, and exclusion of China from, the Western Hemisphere and the domination of energy reserves and global crossroads of the Middle East in preparation for war against China. It is no accident that Venezuela and Iran, both heavily sanctioned by the US, have been the chief suppliers of discounted oil to China. The war against Iran, as well as the ongoing US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine, are integral to an unfolding world war that will envelop China sooner rather than later.
If Hegseth’s speech was less bellicose than at last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, it is only because the Trump administration has been compelled to take a temporary step back in its economic war on China after Beijing countered by imposing strict limits on exports of critical minerals needed for a vast array of technologies—including for military purposes. China has a virtual global monopoly over the production of most rare earths and other critical minerals.
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China’s defense minister did not attend last year’s Shangri-La Dialogue nor this year’s, given the domination of the US and its allies. The Chinese delegation was headed by Major General Meng Xiangqing, a professor at the People’s Liberation Army National Defence University. He reserved his critical remarks for Japan’s rapid remilitarization and plans to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS alliance with Britain and the US. He also warned that any move by Taiwan to declare independence was “incompatible” with peace across the Taiwan Strait.
However, on the US, Meng’s comments were muted. Referring to Trump’s recent meeting with Xi in Beijing, he said: “We also hope that China and the United States will move towards each other… promote the development of military-to-military relations along a healthy, stable and sustainable path.”
Beijing has no progressive response to Washington’s criminal aggression or drive to war against China. While constantly seeking a new deal with US imperialism, it is engaged in an arms race that can only spiral into a global conflict that spells disaster for humanity. The only means for halting the further descent into world war is the building of an international anti-war movement of workers in the US, China and around the world, fighting for a socialist perspective to put an end to capitalism.
3. Italian rank-and-file unions hold nationwide strike against austerity and war
WSWS reporters spoke to members of the SI-Cobas rank-and-file union, which mainly organizes logistics workers, at a demonstration in Rome.
4. United Kingdom: CWU pushes through sellout deal at Royal Mail with record low vote
CWU leaders Ward and Walsh have not been in a dispute with the company, but with their own members.
5. German metal and electrical industry bosses threaten destruction of 300,000 jobs
Employers' association Gesamtmetall is threatening the loss of 300,000 jobs in the metal and electrical industry. The consequences of the Iran war are being passed on to the working class through mass layoffs and social cuts.
6. American Axle workers strike major GM supplier in Three Rivers, Michigan
The strike, backed by a 98 percent authorization vote, opens a new front in a wave of rebellion throughout the auto parts industry, alongside ongoing contract battles by 1,300 workers at Nexteer Automotive in Saginaw and thousands more at Dana, Magna International and Bridgewater Interiors.
7. The rise of anti-refugee violence in the Netherlands: What history reveals
What is unfolding is not a spontaneous eruption of "popular anger,” as it is often portrayed, but the outcome of a consciously cultivated political campaign by the bourgeois establishment and official media, developed over many years.
8. Global sea level rise threatens 77-132 million people with inundation
As global warming accelerates, sea levels are projected to rise on average 1 meter (3.3 feet) by the end of the century, inundating vast low-lying areas.
9. Trotsky’s My Life: An imperishable contribution to Marxism and world literature
Mehring Verlag, the publishing house of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party) in Germany, will soon release a new German-language edition of Leon Trotsky’s My Life.
10. More than 4.5 million Canadians living in poverty
A report from Statistics Canada, published in late April and based on 2024 data, demonstrates that at least 11 percent of Canadians—more than 4.5 million people—now live in poverty. This is roughly equal to the entire Census Metropolitan Area of Montreal, the country’s second largest urban area.
The current poverty figures are a devastating indictment of the policies of the ruling federal Liberal government, first under Justin Trudeau and now Mark Carney. For over a decade, the Liberal-led government has overseen the impoverishment of large sections of the Canadian population, the slashing of spending on critical social programs and infrastructure, and the reckless and costly rearming of the military to secure the interests of Canadian imperialism amid a new redivision of the world between the great powers.
The growing numbers of poor also expose the consequences of decades of trade union-backed concessions on workers across all economic sectors, from auto assembly and industrial manufacturing, to public services and the service sector. Layoffs, plant shutdowns, the destruction of worker rights, wage stagnation in the face of the increasing cost of living, and a vast expansion of precarious employment have contributed to a situation in which many people cannot afford to live decent lives, even when they have a job.
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The income levels needed to keep individuals and families afloat have risen sharply, particularly in the big cities and industrial centres where the lion’s share of the country’s population lives. A family of four in Toronto would, for example, have needed an income of $61,763 in 2024 just to be able to afford basic necessities. For Calgary the figure for the same year was $57,840, while in Vancouver it was $64,351, and in Montreal $49,244.
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Aside from the devastating social, psychological, and health impacts poverty is having on the millions condemned to it, the impoverishment of broad sections of the working class produced by the ruling elite’s class war agenda has an important historical and political dimension. For decades following World War II, the “left-wing” of official politics—the NDP, together with the trade union bureaucracy and a broad swathe of middle-class “progressives”—portrayed Canada as a “kinder, gentler” society than the US dollar republic. This narrative was always a fraud, but for a time objective conditions appeared to lend it some veracity. The reality during this period was that due to Canadian capital’s weaker position relative to its US rival, the Canadian bourgeoisie was forced to go further in the concessions it made to a militant working class upsurge that reached its peak between 1965 and 1975.
These concessions, wrenched from the hands of corporate Canada, never changed the ruthlessly exploitative character of Canadian capitalism; but they did enable significant sections of workers to obtain a higher standard of living and secure access to Medicare and other public services. However, all these conditions have long since passed into history. The open and repugnant growth of poverty and misery on a scale unprecedented since the Great Depression, combined with the disgusting increase in wealth at the very top of society, are creating the social and economic conditions for an explosion of class struggle and a revival of socialist consciousness.
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Meanwhile, Canada’s Liberal government is pouring hundreds of billions of additional dollars into the military as part of the ruling class’s drive to rearm and violently lay claim to “its share” of the spoils in the imperialist redivision of the globe. The announcement by Carney earlier this year of the government’s Defense Industrial Strategy underscores the rapid transition to a wartime economy with disastrous consequences for millions of ordinary working people. The government’s latest budget—passed with the support of the New Democratic Party and Greens—pledged $81.8 billion in new defense spending.
In addition, Ottawa has pledged to ramp up defense spending to 5 percent of GDP by 2035 in what observers have noted is the largest “peacetime” military buildup in the nation’s history. The eye-watering sums involved—projected to reach nearly $160 billion annually by 2035—will exceed the size of all federal transfers to the provinces for healthcare, social welfare, post-secondary education and equalization.
11. Fascistic candidate tied to paramilitaries leads first round of Colombian elections
The runoff election in the third-largest country in Latin America, a long-standing hub for US operations, has started with allegations of fraud and appeals for military intervention.
12. Mass protests erupt in Kenya against US offshore Ebola quarantine camp
Mass demonstrations in Nanyuki, Kenya, have erupted against a planned US Ebola quarantine facility, denouncing Washington’s callous and imperialist response to the catastrophic outbreak ravaging central Africa.
13. Landlord endangers tenants in condemned 292-unit apartment complex in Kalamazoo, Michigan
After months of complaints, a coverup and a 20-day delay by the landlord to acknowledge that the complex had been condemned by local building officials, residents of Wildwood Off Main apartments in Kalamazoo were abruptly forced to vacate their residences in the 292-unit complex.
14. Left Voice’s “united front” aims to prop up the union bureaucracy and Democratic Party
On March 19, 2026, Joe Wrote, a Denver-based member of the DSA who maintains a substack with some 9,000 subscribers, attacked Kshama Sawant on Twitter/X, writing, “After months shitting on DSA, you beg for our help? No wonder Stalin ice picked your boy.”
The “boy” was Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the 1917 Russian Revolution and founder of the Fourth International, murdered in Mexico on August 20, 1940 by GPU agent Ramón Mercader, as part of Stalin’s systematic campaign to liquidate a generation of Marxist revolutionaries. Sawant is a former Seattle City Council member and current congressional candidate, who that week had urged the DSA to support her campaign. She herself is part of the pseudo-left milieu, a former member of the DSA and Socialist Alternative, who collaborates with the Democratic Party and sections of the trade union bureaucracy.
The same day, Left Voice posted to its website a lengthy article by Joe Wrote promoting the DSA’s alliance with and functioning within the Democratic Party, and attacking other left groups as “sectarian” and politically irrelevant. Wrote was responding to an invitation by Left Voice to the DSA and other groups to submit articles to its website as part of a discussion aimed at establishing a “united front” and a “new workers’ party.”
When the tweet threatening Sawant drew attention, Left Voice removed Joe Wrote’s article on March 22 with a brief disavowal on Twitter. It has issued no further statement, political accounting or explanation of how a figure publicly glorifying Trotsky’s murder came to write under its imprimatur.
The incident is an exposure of the broader political orientation of Left Voice. Since November 2025, Left Voice has been calling for the construction of what it terms a “united front” of tendencies, including the DSA, the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), Socialist Alternative, Tempest and sections of Labor Notes. Its May Day 2026 statement declared it “essential to build a broad united front of unions, social movements, community and grassroots organizations, and the Left.” In other words, Left Voice seeks a regroupment whose purpose is to channel workers’ opposition back into the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy.
The call by Left Voice comes amid an escalating crisis of American and world capitalism, above all the criminal US-Israeli war against Iran—part of an expanding global war—which is sharply intensifying the economic and social breakdown inside the United States. The response of workers has been a series of major class battles, including strike action by New York City nurses, Kaiser Permanente nurses and other healthcare workers; walkouts by New York City building service workers; mounting anger over union shutdowns of authorized strikes, including among University of California workers; and the repeated rejection of pro-company contracts by Nexteer autoworkers in Saginaw.
In each case, the Democratic Party and the trade union bureaucracy worked in tandem to suppress the fight by workers and force through sellout contracts. One of the most egregious examples was the three-day strike by 3,500 Long Island Rail Road workers, which paralyzed North America’s largest commuter rail system, and was shut down through backdoor negotiations between New York Governor Kathy Hochul, the union apparatus and New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a member of the DSA.
Joe Wrote’s article, before its quiet removal from Left Voice’s website, was a full-throated defense of these right-wing forces. In it, he asserted that the only way to “bring socialism to Americans” is to “give them a practical alternative” in the Democratic Party because “the duopoly is the prism through which Americans understand politics.” Using this crudely pro-imperialist framework, he then stated that the only “realistic option” was to vote for the Democrats.
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Left Voice published Wrote’s article because it has no fundamental disagreement with the DSA’s reactionary politics. In 2021, following Ocasio-Cortez’s denunciation of WSWS criticism of then-President Joe Biden as “privileged,” DSA leaders and supporters launched a coordinated social media campaign featuring ice-pick imagery and celebrating Trotsky’s assassination, documented in detail by the WSWS.
SEP National Chairman David North wrote to then-DSA National Director Maria Svart demanding the posts be repudiated and those responsible expelled. Svart never replied. And Left Voice, which purports to be a Trotskyist organization, never uttered a protest.
The anti-Trotskyist position of Left Voice stems from the organization’s Pabloite political history. It is associated with the Argentine Partido de los Trabajadores Socialistas (PTS), whose international tendency rebranded itself in 2025 as the Permanent Revolution Current–Fourth International (PRC-FI).
The origins of the PRC-FI go back to the 1950s, when the founder of the Morenoite movement, Nahuel Moreno, initially supported the break by the Fourth International in 1953 from the liquidationist tendency led by Michel Pablo and the formation of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) to defend the program of orthodox Trotskyism.
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The Marxist conception of the united front bears no resemblance to this type of opportunist politics. Lenin and Trotsky elaborated the united front tactic at the Third and Fourth Congresses of the Communist International in 1921 and 1922. It referred to defensive joint action between organizations of the working class—at that point the Communist Party and the mass social democratic parties—on concrete questions of working class interest, while maintaining complete political independence.
Trotsky further developed this conception between 1930 and 1933 in his writings warning against the rise of fascism in Germany and the call for a united front of the German Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party. Trotsky proposed defensive agreements between the two organizations to mobilize their combined forces against the fascist threat. He insisted on no mixing of banners, no political concessions to the Social Democrats and no restriction on the Communist Party’s freedom to criticize reformist politics. The Stalinist leadership of the Comintern, having designated the Social Democrats as “social fascists,” rejected this perspective. The result was the disarming of the German working class and the victory of Hitler in January 1933.
Following the catastrophe in Germany, the Stalinist bureaucracy adopted the policy of the “Popular Front,” which subordinated the working class to alliances with bourgeois “democratic” parties in the name of defending democracy against fascism. The Popular Front led to the demoralization of the French working class in 1936-38 and to the defeat of the Spanish Revolution and the victory of Franco. Earlier applications of the same method had produced the crushing of the Chinese Revolution in 1927 and the betrayal of the British general strike in 1926.
What Left Voice advances today is the application in the United States of the opportunist line of the international Morenoite tendency of which it is a part. What they propose is not a mistaken application of the united front, but a variety of the Stalinist Popular Front, applied to organizations such as the DSA—a faction of the Democratic Party that represents privileged sections of the upper-middle class—along with the corporatist trade union apparatus.
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Wrote’s article—which Left Voice published and only removed after the ice-pick tweet—was a full-throated defense of the Democratic Party as the only “realistic option.” Left Voice published it because it shares its basic political orientation.
The real way forward is by building the only organization capable of resolving the crisis of leadership in the working class—the International Committee of the Fourth International. The proof is in our record of struggle, against the bourgeois parties themselves, the trade union bureaucracies and all forms of political opportunism and attempts by the pseudo-left to block the independent mobilization of the working class.
15. The American Axle strike and the revolt of the auto parts workers
The walkout by members of UAW Local 2093 is part of a growing revolt among auto parts workers, who are fighting to overturn decades of UAW-backed concessions.
16. “It requires a fight”: NYC transit worker speaks out on contract demands
Around 40,000 subway and bus workers in New York City’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) remain on the job more than two weeks since their collective bargaining agreement expired. Their determination to fight significant concessions demanded by management, while winning pay increases to keep pace with inflation and other key demands, is bringing them into direct conflict with both management and the union bureaucracy.
Workers are fighting against the staggering inequality and corporate oligarchy centered in the world’s financial capital. The consequences of decades of neglect of the transport infrastructure were underscored last Friday when a fire broke out in Penn Station, the country’s busiest train station and located only a few miles from Wall Street, injuring five people.
Management claims that wages keeping pace with inflation, currently running at 4.6 percent in New York City, are “unaffordable.” Its initial “offer” was only 2 percent annually, combined with a doubling of healthcare contributions by workers and sharp limits on overtime and sick leave.
The three-day strike last month by 3,500 Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) workers was an opening stage in this struggle. The LIRR, New York City’s busiest commuter rail system, is part of the MTA although under a separate contract. The three-day strike was shut down abruptly without any input from the membership, while union officials refused to release details, on the grounds that they did “not want to fail ratification.” The shutdown underscored the role of the bureaucracy in limiting the struggle and bypassing the democratic will of members.
17. Ukraine repatriates the remains of Nazi collaborator Andriy Melnyk
Almost three years after the Canadian parliament celebrated the Waffen SS veteran Yaroslav Hunka with honours and standing ovations, Ukraine has elevated his political boss to the status of “national hero.”
In a hastily organized ceremony in Kiev’s National Military Cemetery on May 24, Ukraine’s political and military leadership re-interred the ashes of the WWII Ukrainian nationalist, fascist leader and Nazi collaborator Andriy Melnyk and his wife Sofia. Melnyk had been buried in Luxembourg since his death in exile in 1964.
The chairman of the Israeli Holocaust memorial site Yad Vashem, Dani Dayan, publicly raised concerns about the ceremony in honor of the Nazi collaborator. He was promptly added to a notorious Ukrainian blacklist called Myrotvorets, which has close ties to the Ukrainian government, for allegedly spreading “Russian-fascist propaganda narratives.”
Melnyk led one faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the eponymously named OUN-M, from 1939 until his death, advocating the establishment of a fascist Ukrainian ethnostate subordinated to Nazi Germany. His OUN-M forces enthusiastically collaborated in the Holocaust of European Jewry and in the Nazi war of extermination against the Soviet Union. The OUN-M-affiliated newspaper, Krakivski Visti, described the onslaught as “the most justified war in history” while celebrating Adolf Hitler as “the greatest leader of the 20th century.” When the Nazis lost WWII, Melnyk and other fascist collaborators effortlessly adapted themselves to the Cold War campaign of American, British and Canadian imperialism to destroy the Soviet Union.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, two years after the expiry of his own legal mandate, announced on May 19 that the remains of Melnyk and soon other fascist nationalists, such as Yehven Konovalets, would be repatriated and reburied within days as part of a government plan to establish a “pantheon of national heroes.”
18. Workers and students in northern Sri Lanka oppose the US-Israeli war against Iran
Opposition to the war is growing among workers and youth, who face soaring living costs and worsening social conditions.
19. Australian government echoes US threats against China
The Labor government and the fascistic Trump administration were as one at the forum in their denunciations of China and their plans for a further military build-up.
20. SEP (Australia) meetings oppose Iran war and austerity offensive against working class
The final meeting in the series will be held Saturday June 6 at the University of Newcastle and online.
21. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Argentina:
Canada:
Cuba:
Peru:
United States:
The fight for the Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist's freedom is an essential component of the struggle against imperialist war, genocide, dictatorship and fascism.
