Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Nazism, big business and the working class: Historical experience and political lessons
This October 16, 2025 webinar examines the historical relationship between Nazism, big business, and the working class—a discussion with urgent contemporary relevance.
Moderated by David North, chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, the discussion involves three distinguished historians: David Abraham, Professor Emeritus of Law at the University of Miami and author of The Collapse of the Weimar Republic: Political Economy and Crisis; Jacques Pauwels, Canadian historian and author of Big Business and Hitler; and Mario Kessler, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany, whose scholarship focuses on the German Communist Party and European labor movements. Also participating is Christoph Vandreier, chairman of the Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei in Germany.
2. After the “No Kings” protests: What next?
It is first of all necessary to understand that the demonstrations themselves, however massive, will not stop Trump’s drive toward dictatorship. The president’s own response, in the promotion of AI-generated videos depicting himself dumping feces on protesters, was both vile and violent. It expressed the contempt of a criminal regime for the population.
Trump speaks not as an individual but as the political representative of a class, the capitalist oligarchy. Confronted with mounting economic, geopolitical and domestic crises, the ruling elite has drawn the conclusion that the preservation of its wealth and privileges is incompatible with democratic forms of rule.
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What was most clearly absent from the protests was a defined program upon which this government can be opposed. The declaration “No Kings” expresses a democratic sentiment that is very broadly felt, but in and of itself it is an abstraction in that it does not define how the drive to dictatorship is to be stopped. This weakness reflects both the as yet low level of historical and political consciousness among broad sections of the population and the fact that the demonstrations remained, however tenuously, under the political control of the Democratic Party and its affiliates.
It must be stated bluntly that any subordination of this movement to the Democratic Party will prove fatal—absolutely fatal—to the struggle against Trump’s fascistic conspiracies. The Democratic Party is, and has always been, a capitalist party. Historically, it has functioned as the “graveyard of social movements,” the place where popular opposition is buried and defanged. This is all the more true today, when the Democrats act not as opponents of the Trump administration, but as its collaborators and enablers.
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The basic deceit is the claim that it is possible to oppose Trump and the growth of fascism without opposing the capitalist system that gives rise to them. But this is the fundamental issue.
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The working class has not yet intervened as an organized force, with its own program. This must change. The central target of all the Trump administration’s actions is the working class. It is workers who are being thrown into unemployment by the mass firing of federal employees, who face the destruction of vital social programs, and who will suffer from the elimination of the Department of Education and the escalating attacks on teachers.
The dismantling of public health has driven conditions for healthcare workers to the breaking point, while Trump’s trade war policies have fueled soaring inflation that is wiping out living standards. And it is the working class that will be used as cannon fodder in the escalating global war.
The fundamental target of the assault on democratic rights is the working class. When Trump speaks of the “enemy within,” he is giving voice to the fears of the capitalist oligarchy of the working class. And when he denounces “socialism” and “Marxism” with ever-greater hysteria, he is articulating the terror of the billionaires that the masses of workers and youth in the United States and internationally will turn consciously to a revolutionary program aimed at abolishing the capitalist system.
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Opposition to dictatorship can only go forward to the extent that it is rooted in the social and political struggles of the working class. The defense of democracy is impossible without the development of a socialist movement to end capitalism and place the wealth of society under the democratic control of the working class itself.
We call on all those who agree with this program to join the Socialist Equality Party.
2. First Brands collapse a symptom of spreading financial rot
The collapse of the auto parts company First Brands, which filed for bankruptcy at the end of last month with debts of more than $10 billion and counting, is not a “Lehman moment” for the US financial system. However, it has brought multiple warnings about the stability of the $2 trillion private credit and the potential for even bigger collapses.
The story of how First Brands owner, Patrick James, went from a secretive small-scale businessman, with a history of defaults and questionable financial practices, to the owner of a business, with connections to some of the biggest names in the financial world is bound up with the rise of private credit over the past decade.
A major report earlier this month in the Financial Times (FT) on the rise of James, detailed how he was able to become the owner of a multi-billion dollar company and acquire a string of luxury homes. It was bound up with a major shift in the US financial system.
“How he raised billions of dollars with little public scrutiny, after moving on from more conventional forms of borrowing, is a story not just of one man’s past practices and the debts and lawsuits that they spawned.
“It is also a reflection of the nearly $2 trillion private credit industry—lending by non-bank institutions that can often be opaque—and the broader risks created by its rise.”
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First Brands was financed through collateralize loan obligations (CLOs). This is a procedure in which loans across a range of companies are bundled up and made into a security which is then sliced up and sold off. The logic behind it is that major investors are protected from failure by one or two companies.
The CLOs are highly leveraged as the firms financing them use debt to boost their profits. The FT has noted that in some cases a CLO could be leveraged ten-fold. That is an equity contribution from the firm may be $50 million, supporting a $500 million loan portfolio.
Such an arrangement can bring vast profits provided the value of the underlying asset keeps rising. But it brings major losses if the value of the asset falls.
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The notion that the First Brands collapse is the expression of a coming crisis or is a “canary in the coal mine” for the broader financial system has generally been dismissed on the grounds that the amounts involved are small relative to the size of the market. The same, it should be recalled, was also said of the subprime mortgage market in 2007.
But as a column in the Australian Financial Review noted, even as it backed the assertion that it was not the start of a systemic crisis, the First Brands fallout did raise two questions.
“First, how on earth could a no name, relatively small company borrow so much money from the smartest people in the room, and no one noticed a problem until it was too late?”
The second question, it said, related to the recent fall in the share prices of some of the private capital giants which have dropped by as much as 14 percent since mid-September. Did this indicate that “there are more unexploded hand grenades such as First Brands out there?"
3. Ukraine: From sporadic resistance to war to the first hotbeds of collective struggle
[This is the latest report from Ukrainian journalists who report to the readers of the World Socialist Web Site on topics that are forbidden or invisible to the pro-capitalist press.]
Since the beginning of the summer, a wave of mass protests has been sweeping across the planet from the United States to South Asia. Ukraine is no exception. At the end of last year, we pointed out, “Both Ukrainian and Russian public opinion is currently focused on the presidential elections in the United States, with many having the misguided hope that a Trump victory could provide the basis for a quick, peaceful settlement of the war. It seems that only the failure of these expectations can open the way for mass interest in a revolutionary alternative. We are at a turning point in history.” The beginning concentration of antiwar direct action around certain locations marks a new stage in this process.
4. Amid “No Kings” protests, the Trump administration flexes military muscle to intimidate opposition
On Saturday, as millions across the United States joined the “No Kings” demonstrations, the Trump administration staged a chilling display of militarism and intimidation at Camp Pendleton in Southern California.
Under the pretext of commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States Marine Corps, Trump’s political enforcers organized an immense warlike spectacle involving live-fire artillery, amphibious landings and low-flying aircraft.
The deliberate timing of this display, coinciding with the eruption of nationwide anti-authoritarian protests, exposes its real purpose. It was a political demonstration of force, staged to threaten the population.
The exercise, which temporarily shut down a 17-mile stretch of Interstate 5 between San Diego and Los Angeles, brought one of the nation’s most vital transportation corridors to a standstill. Under orders from California Governor Gavin Newsom, the state closed the freeway citing “safety grounds” as Marines fired 155-millimeter howitzers over the road. Thousands of civilians were stranded for hours, and commercial traffic was paralyzed. The use of live ordnance so close to a public highway underscored the recklessness—and the unmistakable political character—of the event.
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The Marine Corps’ public relations department described the event as a “routine training exercise,” though its scale—1,300 Marines, 4,000 sailors and the use of amphibious craft, howitzers and aircraft—was anything but routine. The location was “Red Beach,” the site of training for amphibious landings since World War II. According to state officials, California authorities were informed of the overflight of live munitions near Interstate 5 less than 48 hours before the event.
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Governor Newsom’s criticisms, widely covered by the media, were not to the militarization itself but to what he called “a lack of coordination” between federal and state authorities. “Anything we can do to celebrate our vets, to celebrate our heroes, I’m all for,” Newsom stated. “Let’s just do it in coordination and collaboration with state and local leaders. That continues to be a struggle with this administration.”
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Behind this attempt to downplay the significance of the event, there is an ominous subtext. Trump, Vance and Hegseth regard the state of California as enemy territory, no different, from their perspective, than Venezuela or Cuba. The assertion of federal power over the largest US state contains more than a whiff of civil war.
The timing and location were deliberate. Closing Interstate 5, a key artery between two major West Coast metropolitan regions, symbolized the militarization of everyday life and the subordination of civil society to the armed forces. Thousands of commuters became an unintended audience to the administration’s message: Roads, skies and public spaces are instruments of military power.
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Behind the patriotic pomp and martial ceremony, the ruling class is gripped by fear. Rising inequality, collapsing public services and deteriorating living standards have created explosive conditions. The “No Kings” demonstrations were an initial expression of this opposition, and the elite’s response is repression, not reform.
The Camp Pendleton event was not a commemoration but a rehearsal: a live exercise in domestic military coordination involving the vice president, active-duty troops, police and state agencies.
The militarization of American life marks a decisive turn. The fusion of military and civilian authority—the use of armed forces as an instrument of internal control—has defined every modern authoritarian regime, from the German Freikorps to the Chilean junta. The same process is now underway in the United States.
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...The Camp Pendleton display is a warning: The same forces that wage endless wars abroad are being turned inward. Only a conscious, socialist working class movement can halt the descent into dictatorship and end the system that breeds militarism and oppression.
Less than a week apart, two industrial catastrophes—one in Bucksnort, Tennessee, and the other in Dhaka, Bangladesh—claimed the lives of at least 16 workers each. Though separated by 8,200 miles, the October 10 explosion at the Accurate Energetic Systems (AES) munitions plant and the October 14 garment factory fire in the Bangladeshi capital share the same root cause: the subordination of human life to corporate profit.
In both tragedies, families held vigils and clutched images of missing loved ones as authorities prepared DNA tests to identify remains. The youngest victim in Tennessee, Adam Boatman, was just 21; in Bangladesh, two were 14-year-old child laborers.
At AES, the $18–$19 an hour wage was considered good in a region where the median household income barely tops $34,000. Several victims had complained of unsafe conditions but felt trapped by debt. Twenty-six-year-old LaTeisha Mays told relatives she suffered nosebleeds at work and dreaded every shift but could not quit until she paid off her car loan.
In Dhaka, victims lived in slums wedged between chemical warehouses and garment plants. The Anwar Fashion factory paid just 7,000–7,500 taka a month—$57–$61. “Just the day before, my sister said, ‘I’ll leave this factory. There’s never a day off here,’” a sibling told The Daily Star.
In both countries, authorities ignored workers’ warnings and shielded the corporations responsible....
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The same capitalist logic that drives Bangladesh’s sweatshops drives America’s military-industrial complex. Both depend on a cheap, expendable labor force, whether stitching clothes for global fashion brands or packing explosives for imperialist wars. Throughout the world, workers face the same exploitation by the same multinational corporations and their political servants. In the US, Trump’s “America First” nationalism, backed by the corporate media and the United Auto Workers (UAW) bureaucracy, seeks to pit American workers against their class brothers and sisters abroad. But the Tennessee and Bangladesh tragedies show that workers share the same conditions and enemies.
The fight for safe workplaces cannot be waged within the framework of nationalism or through the corrupt, pro-company union apparatus. It requires international unity and the independent organization of the working class.
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The July 27 public hearing convened by the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) demonstrated what this means in practice. The hearing presented findings from its investigation into the death of Stellantis worker Ronald Adams Sr. at the Dundee Engine Complex in Michigan. Six months after Adams was crushed to death inside the plant, neither Stellantis, the United Auto Workers (UAW) nor the Michigan Occupational Safety and Health Administration (MIOSHA) has explained how it happened.
Workers, family members and youth who attended the hearing unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the establishment of rank-and-file safety committees in every workplace—democratically controlled by workers themselves and independent of the pro-corporate union bureaucracies. Such committees must investigate unsafe conditions, expose cover-ups and assert the right of workers to refuse dangerous labor.
The resolution concluded:
We, therefore, call on all workers—in the United States and internationally—to join the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees and take up the fight for a national and international movement to end the sacrifice of workers’ lives and limbs on the altar of profit. The time has come to organize, to resist, and to reclaim the right to live and work in safety and dignity.
The Tennessee and Bangladesh catastrophes confirm the urgency of this demand. From munitions plants and auto factories to hospitals, rail yards and schools, the working class must seize control of safety from the hands of corporate management and union bureaucrats who function as its enforcers.
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The task facing workers is clear. Independent rank-and-file organizations must link the struggles of defense workers, auto workers, garment workers, teachers and all sections of the working class into a unified global movement against exploitation and imperialist war.
6. Australian protests against fascism and the far-right
Rallies were held around Australia on Sunday to oppose the rise of the far right. Organized as counter-protests to the anti-immigrant “March for Australia,” they drew thousands in major cities across the country, especially young people.
The first “March for Australia,” held on August 31, was the largest far-right mobilization in the country in years, if not decades. The marches, centrally organized and planned by the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network (NSN), targeted immigrants and refugees as the source of all social problems.
The numbers at last Sunday’s marches were significantly lower. In Sydney, where the first march drew around 15,000, police estimated 5,000 people attended.
In Melbourne, counter-protesters far outnumbered the “March for Australia” and were attacked by a massive police deployment.
The widespread hostility to the NSN and exposures of their central role in the first “March for Australia” protests likely contributed to the smaller turnout. The speakers repeated the same line as at the first rallies, hysterically denouncing “foreigners” for all social problems. They were attended primarily by older layers of the population.
The organizers of the counter-protests, including pseudo-left groups such as Socialist Alternative, have sought to channel opposition back behind the Labor government and the official political establishment. The Sydney counter-protest was endorsed by both Young Labor and the Young Greens.
In reality, Labor is centrally responsible for the growth of the far-right. It is scapegoating immigrants and refugees for the housing and social crisis. And by inflicting social pain and the pro-business agenda it is creating the conditions for far-right forces to make an appeal.
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After the rally, Victoria Police Commander Wayne Cheeseman gave a frothing press conference, denouncing purported “left-wing” violence. Prominent comments in the press, including the Melbourne Age have demanded the curtailment or abolition of the right to protest.
That underscores the point raised by World Socialist Web Site and Socialist Equality Party campaigners at the counter-protests. We explained that the rise of the far-right, as well as growing authoritarianism by governments of all stripes, is the response of the ruling elite to mounting social and political opposition amid a breakdown of capitalism.
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World Socialist Web Site reporters spoke to some of those in attendance.
Josie and Jas, both students at the University of Melbourne, attended the counter-protest in Melbourne. Josie said, “We’ve come today because we’ve noticed a very scary uptick in fascism in this country. I think it’s important to try and combat that in any way I can.”
Referring to Albanese’s remarks that there were “good people” in the first March for Australia, Josie said: “I think it’s disgusting. It reminds me of what Trump said about Charlottesville many years ago. It’s frightening that a leader who is supposedly left-wing could say the sort of thing that Trump, a fascist, did. All of Albanese’s comments on the first March for Australia were disgusting. It just showed the complicity of the Labor Party and their willingness to use this as a pillar for their own policies.”
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Artemis, a student, said, “I think that as things get worse across the world, we’re heading probably towards another depression. You either look at the true face of what is happening, and that’s global capital, or you can scapegoat. You can hide behind immigrants and scapegoating other races.”
Artemis said that in the US, “the liberal world order has been proven to be a farce. Palestine is the greatest failure of liberal politics that I think has ever been seen. The easiest turn is towards fascism, towards racism, and that is the epitome of Trump’s politics. Racism and fascism have always been tools of capital. The bounty of imperialism no longer works. You see it in Europe, as austerity takes away social safety nets. People become more uncomfortable. That's when you have to put the boot on.
“Thirty percent of the US population voted for Donald Trump—it’s not the majority. I think that properly messaged socialism is the majority view. People like being fair, people like feeling accomplished, and I think that socialism is the best way to do that. But you have had the demonization of socialism through the Red Scare and through the Cold War.”
Referring to the No Kings demonstrations in the US, Artemis said, “This is a massive upswelling and everyone who is fighting in the front lines there is doing their solemn duty. Whatever goes on in the US, you cannot give up. You have to keep fighting. It is awe-inspiring, seeing the crowds. It’s easy to go to one protest, shout a bunch, and then go home. The goal cannot be just that. The goal has to be to continue the fight. It has to stay determined, to get organized, to fight as a continuous movement, and not just once.”
7. Trump adds Colombia to Latin America target list
In a major expansion of imperialist warmongering throughout the Caribbean region, US President Donald Trump denounced the president of Colombia as a narcotics trafficker and imposed major economic penalties on the country.
Trump said on Truth Social Saturday: “President Gustavo Petro, of Colombia, is an illegal drug leader strongly encouraging the massive production of drugs, in big and small fields, all over Colombia. It has become the biggest business in Colombia, by far, and Petro does nothing to stop it, despite large scale payments and subsidies from the USA that are nothing more than a long term rip off of America.”
With his typical gangster vulgarity, Trump said that Petro was a “lunatic” with “a fresh mouth toward America,” adding that he “better close up” drug operations in Colombia “or the United States will close them up for him, and it won’t be done nicely.” Only a few days before, Trump told a press briefing that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro understood that “he doesn’t want to fuck around with the United States.”
Petro replied Sunday on X, denouncing what he described as “an act of murder. … Mr. Trump, Colombia has never been rude to the USA; on the contrary, it has greatly admired its culture. But you are rude and ignorant toward Colombia.” He added, “Trying to promote peace in Colombia is not being a drug trafficker.”
He continued, “I don’t do business like you do—I am a socialist. I believe in solidarity, the common good, and the shared resources of humanity, the greatest of all: life, now endangered by your oil. If I’m not a businessman, then I am even less a drug trafficker. There is no greed in my heart.”
Petro is not a socialist but a bourgeois nationalist, part of the “Pink Tide” of left-talking Latin American politicians who have promised economic and social reforms but have failed to deliver because they remain within the framework of a global capitalism system dominated by the imperialist powers.
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The war of words has already become economic warfare and could erupt into military violence. Press reports indicate that the Pentagon has been restoring and rebuilding Roosevelt Roads, a huge but abandoned US naval base in Puerto Rico, with hundreds of Air Force personnel deployed to repair runways and restore the control tower.
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Legal and diplomatic experts have criticized the US military incineration of small boats in international waters as violations of international law, more akin to piracy than “law enforcement.” In that context, the Trump administration’s decision to repatriate the two survivors of the so-called drug submarine, to Colombia and Ecuador, rather than bring them to the United States for trial, is revealing.
Trump and his fascist inner circle never tire of boasting of the great success of this one-sided warfare of multimillion-dollar missiles against small fishing boats, with Trump even claiming that every strike saves 50,000 lives by destroying large quantities of illegal drugs that would otherwise enter the United States.
But the administration has provided zero evidence of these claims—not an ounce of drugs—and now, with the opportunity to parade supposed drug smugglers before television cameras, they have instead chosen to return the survivors of last week’s attack to their home countries.
Clearly they wished to avoid the legal complications that would be involved if the survivors were put on trial, including both the lack of evidence and their status as victims of violent kidnapping by the US military.
8. Explosion at factory in Bashkiria, Russia kills 3 workers
An explosion at the factory Avangard in the city of Sterlitamak in the Republic of Bashkiria, Russia, on October 17 took the lives of three workers. At least six more were wounded. Five of the wounded workers are still hospitalized, one of them in serious condition. The three workers who were killed were all women, one of them as young as 23. The other two leave behind children. Production at the facility, which produces ammunition and military equipment, continued despite the horrific disaster that destroyed an entire building.
The Republic of Bashkiria is located between the Ural Mountains and the Volga River. With around 280,000 inhabitants, Sterlitamak is the region’s second-largest city and an important industrial center, especially for the chemical industry.
While authorities have not given an official reason for the explosion, they have initiated a criminal case into the “neglect of safety practices.” Many Russian press reports declared that workers were to blame for the explosion. However, the governor of Bashkiria, Radii Khabirov, implicitly admitted that the disaster occurred due to outdated equipment. He acknowledged that “the factory is quite old but fulfills important tasks for the state.” He promised that the authorities would aid the factory with maintenance work.
The explosion is the latest in an unending series of factory disasters throughout the world. Just in the last 10 days, this has included an explosion at a Tennessee munitions factory in the US, which killed 16 workers, a garment factory fire in Bangladesh, which also killed 16, and a construction site collapse in Madrid, Spain, that killed four.
Almost 35 years after the Stalinist destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the restoration of capitalism, Russia records a particularly high fatality rate for workplace accidents. According to official figures, as of 2024, Russia has about 3,000 to 4,000 work-related deaths each year, a ratio of five deaths for every 100,000 full-time workers. For comparison, in the US, where the World Socialist Web Site has extensively documented industrial carnage, the official ratio is 3.5 deaths for every 100,000 full-time workers. Just recently, on August 17, a major factory explosion at a factory in the Riazan region took the lives of at least 28 workers, wounding over 100.
The latest factory explosion in Bashkiria sheds light not only on the industrial slaughter in Russia but also on the social relations prevailing in the country amid the war in Ukraine. Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine by the Putin regime, which was deliberately provoked by NATO, Russia has geared much of its industrial production toward the war effort. The Avangard factory is one of many affected by this shift.
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The Avangard factory fire is a stark illustration of the fact that the Putin regime invaded Ukraine not to protect the working class from imperialism but to protect the interests of the oligarchs against what they saw as unacceptable interference with their own profit interests by imperialism.
Now, the Putin regime is engaged in negotiations with the fascist Trump administration. Whatever their immediate outcome, these negotiations will neither resolve the existential threat posed by imperialism to the working class, nor the social devastation in both Russia and Ukraine. For the Russian working class, both the fight against imperialist war and the deadly social disaster it faces must proceed through a unified struggle with its class brothers and sisters in Ukraine, the US and across Europe, in complete independence from all factions of the oligarchy and imperialist powers.
9. New Zealand government denounces looming strike by 110,000 workers for being pro-Palestine
On October 19, New Zealand’s Minister for Public Service Judith Collins, who is also the defense minister, issued an “Open letter to the people of New Zealand” denouncing the strike actions scheduled for Thursday involving roughly 110,000 workers and demanding that they be called off.
The strikes being held simultaneously by teachers and public healthcare workers will be the country’s largest industrial action in four decades. They are part of an international radicalization of working people, driven by the deepening crisis of capitalism. In the US, Europe and elsewhere millions of workers are seeking to fight back against austerity measures, attacks on democratic rights, imperialist wars and the Gaza genocide.
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Collins’ open letter is a desperate and lying outburst that smears teachers, nurses and doctors as greedy and selfish. She blamed striking workers for jeopardizing children’s education and patients’ health; in reality, the crisis in schools and hospitals is the result of years of austerity measures under National and Labour Party governments.
The letter falsely asserted that the government had “met unions’ demands for pay increases in line with inflation.” The offers put to teachers, firefighters, doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers have actually been around 2 percent per year or less. The annual inflation rate is 3 percent, food prices are up 4.1 percent and electricity prices a staggering 11.3 percent.
The letter falsely asserted that the government had “met unions’ demands for pay increases in line with inflation.” The offers put to teachers, firefighters, doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers have actually been around 2 percent per year or less. The annual inflation rate is 3 percent, food prices are up 4.1 percent and electricity prices a staggering 11.3 percent.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has trumpeted a deal reached with the Primary Principals Collective Bargaining Union, which has accepted a below-inflation 2.5 percent pay rise this year, followed by a 2.1 percent rise next year, as a model for the striking workers.
In an attempt to divide workers by stoking nationalism and xenophobia, Collins declared that the strikes were “politically motivated” by the issue of Palestine. Conditions facing teachers in Palestine were mentioned by the Post-Primary Teachers’ Association (PPTA) in a meeting with Education Minister Erica Stanford earlier this month.
“Palestine. Not terms and conditions. Not student achievement. Not the new curriculum. Palestine. That’s not what students or parents should expect,” Collins stated. On Monday, Luxon told the media that a union wanting to talk about Palestine was “completely insane.”
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he union apparatus is staffed by affluent officials who are loyal defenders of capitalism. While workers want to fight, union leaders have sought to limit industrial action as much as possible. Two of the unions involved in the October 23 strike, the NZ Nurses Organisation and the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, have not even called a full-day strike; their members will only stop work for 4 hours.
Workers must be warned that the union bureaucracy is looking for an excuse to call off the strike and future planned industrial action. Its aim is to persuade workers to lower their expectations and accept a sellout agreement which fails to address the real cost of living.
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Working people must oppose any attempt to curtail Thursday’s strike. Instead, they should fight to expand it to include workers in every industry, all of whom face attacks on their living standards.
The objective conditions exist for a general strike and a sustained industrial and political campaign to stop the ruling elite’s onslaught against public services, jobs and wages, and its militarist agenda.
10. Life of a Showgirl: Taylor Swift’s latest self-portrait
Uninterested in the burning issues of genocide, war and resurgent fascism—or the daily concerns of her many admirers—Swift recorded an album “that really exhibits who I am in this moment,” as she told Apple Music. The Life of a Showgirl, which Swift recorded during her Eras Tour last year, focuses mainly on her own celebrity and her relationship with football star Travis Kelce. Though slightly more lively than Tortured Poets Department (2024), the album is mediocre at best.*****
In the closing song, which is the title track, Swift presents herself as a showgirl, as she does on the album cover. This choice is appropriate, because she excels at showmanship more than anything else. Swift’s record-breaking success results in part from her blandness, which broadens her appeal (or at least does not actively alienate listeners) and allows her fans to project their own ideas and dreams onto her. At the same time, Swift’s stellar career is a symptom of the general decline in popular music—and in popular culture in general.
But The Life of a Showgirl has already encountered a backlash. Some critics, and even fans, argue the star is out of ideas and is cannibalizing her old songs. Others correctly suggest she’s completely out of touch with a world engulfed in crisis.
11. Communist Party’s Jeannette Jara leads Chile’s presidential polls
In Chile’s 2025 presidential race Jeannette Jara, a member of the Communist Party and presidential candidacy for the alliance “Unidad por Chile” (Unity for Chile), is leading in the polls. November’s election raises the possibility that for the first time in its 103-year history, the Chilean CP will head the executive committee of Chile’s ruling oligarchy.
Unidad por Chile is a right-wing alliance which includes the pro-1973 coup Christian Democrats, President Gabriel Boric’s Broad Front, the capitalist Socialist, Radical, Liberal and Humanist parties and some pseudo-left groups. It will continue and deepen the program of pro-market fiscal austerity and police state authoritarianism that has characterized the incumbent coalition “Apruebo Dignidad” (I Support Dignity). Boric’s Minister of Labor until April of this year, Jara’s signature “reforms” have had more in common with the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustments than any measures to ameliorate social conditions.
“Long live the individual capitalization system,” José Piñera exclaimed after Jara’s pension reform was passed with overwhelming Congressional support last March. Piñera, who served as Minister of Labor for Gen. Augusto Pinochet in the 1980’s was the architect of the privatized pension system, regressive labor laws and other deeply anti-social and anti-working class measures entrenching extreme social inequality.
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Support for Jara and a leftward shift is explained by the immense expectations and illusions that have been created almost by default: Jara’s association with the nominal Communist Party and the thousand and one myths surrounding the 1970-1973 Popular Unity government of which it formed a key part.
The tragedy of the Communist Party is that very early it severed any connection to Luis Emilio Recabarren who was inspired by Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and the Russian Revolution to build the Chilean section of the Comintern in 1922.
By the 1930s, the Party was completely under the influence of Stalinism and its program of Socialism in One Country, and like all other Comintern sections, became a subservient appendage to the Kremlin bureaucracy and its foreign policy objectives.
The Chilean party adopted Stalin’s “two-stage” theory of revolution, which at its heart subordinated the working class to the so-called progressive capitalists who would ostensibly overthrow the landed oligarchs and the yoke of imperialism, realizing the tasks of the bourgeois democratic revolution. They also adopted Stalin’s “Popular Front,” which argued that the threat of fascism necessitated the Communist Party forming a front with “progressive” capitalist forces and launching a war to defend bourgeois democratic rule.
The Communist Party remained wedded to these theories for four decades, promoting a national exceptionalist myth that Chile’s bourgeois had democratic traditions and adhered to constitutional norms. It rejected any need for revolutionary struggle in favor of the “parliamentary road to socialism.”
These were not mistaken ideas of misguided individuals, but the outlook of an organization that had abandoned the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and that had been transformed, like Stalinism in every country, into a counterrevolutionary agency of capitalism within the workers’ movement.
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Right to the last, President Salvador Allende placed his faith in the capitalist state and the forces of repression, bringing the military brass into his government where they used their positions to launch their coup, unleashing a nightmare lasting more than a decade and a half.
Jara personifies the transformation of the Communist Party which took place more than three decades ago, when the Moscow Stalinists dissolved the USSR, plunging the masses into poverty and making oligarchic owners out of the former directors and managers of the privatized state-owned industries.
The critical question confronting the Chilean working class and youth is that of revolutionary leadership. A new party must be built based upon the genuine program of revolutionary international socialism fought for by the International Committee of the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky. Only this international party has defended the political continuity of Marxism through its implacable fight against Stalinism, Social Democracy, Pabloite revisionism and every other form of nationalist anti-Marxism.
12. Workers Struggles: The Americas
Canada:
British Columbia General Employees Union agrees to non-binding arbitration as province-wide strike continues
British Columbia General Employees Union agrees to non-binding arbitration as province-wide strike continues
Part-time Ontario community college support workers vote to strike just as full-time support workers end their own strike
Mexico:
Rural and Urban workers rally in Mexico City
Rural and Urban workers rally in Mexico City
Peru:
Generation Z protests against newly appointed president, José Jeri
Generation Z protests against newly appointed president, José Jeri
United States:
Indianapolis casino workers strike for union recognition
Kapiolani Medical Center staff walk out in Honolulu, Hawaii
South St. Paul, Minnesota tannery workers strike over wages, benefits and working conditions
South Carolina Waffle House workers in four-day strike
13. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
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.
