Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: November 24-30
- 25 years ago:
United Nations climate summit ends in failure
50 years ago:
75 years ago:
Chinese begin Second Phase Offensive in Korean War
100 years ago:
2. The Mamdani-Trump Pact and the bankrupt politics of the upper middle class pseudo-left
What “shared analysis,” one might ask, would a supposed “democratic socialist” have with a fascist representative of the capitalist oligarchy about the “affordability crisis” in New York or anywhere else?
The answer is to be found not in the armchair psychoanalysis of Jacobin, but in the class analysis of Marxism. The DSA speaks for privileged sections of the upper-middle class that are deeply opposed to a fundamental redistribution of wealth. It is not and has never been independent from the oligarchy and the state apparatus. Politically, it is a faction of the Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street and the military-intelligence agencies.
Indeed, a significant factor in the gushing of the DSA over Mamdani and his love fest with Trump is a feeling within these layers that Trump is not so bad after all. Dictatorship, fascism, genocide, mass deportation might just be ok if there is a little space for the upper-middle class pseudo-left.
There is precedent for this brand of “left” collaboration with the far right. In August 1939, Stalin’s Soviet Union signed the infamous Hitler-Stalin Pact, aligning with Nazi Germany in a temporary “non-aggression” agreement that disoriented millions of workers and helped pave the way for World War II. Today’s alliance between Mamdani and Trump flows from a similar logic. And within the DSA, and Jacobin in particular, there is a very strong influence of Stalinism.
As the WSWS wrote 10 years ago, following the experience of Syriza in Greece, answering the question, “What is the pseudo-left?”:
The pseudo-left is anti-socialist, opposes class struggle, and denies the central role of the working class and the necessity of revolution in the progressive transformation of society. It counterposes supra-class populism to the independent political organization and mass mobilization of the working class against the capitalist system. The economic program of the pseudo-left is, in its essentials, pro-capitalist and nationalistic.
Mamdani’s actions once again demonstrate that the use of the term “pseudo-left” is not an epithet or a throw-away phrase, but a political and class characterization. There is nothing “left” about these forces.
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The events of the past several days must be a turning point for all those who genuinely oppose fascism and dictatorship and want to fight for socialism.
For Mamdani, his meeting with Trump, held before he even takes office, will define him for all time as a political scoundrel of the lowest order. For the hundreds of thousands of young people and workers who supported Mamdani in the election, who were drawn to his rhetoric and viewed his victory as a sign of hope, the lesson must be drawn.
The fight for genuine socialism, for the interests of the working class, requires an irreconcilable break with the Democratic Party and the bankrupt politics of the pseudo-left. Their strategy leads not to socialism, but to confusion, demoralization and betrayal.
3. World Socialist Web Site to launch Socialism AI
The announcement of Socialism AI came at the conclusion of an extensive lecture addressing the fundamental question: “Where is America going?” North opened by noting that most people would respond, “To hell”—a judgment he acknowledged as largely justified given the accelerating political crisis.
Drawing on Marx’s description of France’s financial aristocracy as the “lumpenproletariat on the heights of bourgeois society,” North characterized the contemporary American ruling class as “a super-Mafia at the summit of capitalist society, flaunting crime and perversion while ordinary people pay the cost in misery and blood.”
North presented extensive data documenting the unprecedented concentration of wealth in the United States. Trump’s cabinet and top appointees possess a collective net worth exceeding $60 billion, with sixteen of his twenty-five wealthiest appointees ranking among the 813 billionaires in a nation of 341 million people—placing them in the top 0.0001 percent. “This is not symbolic representation,” North stated. “It is direct rule by the oligarchy.”
The lectures traced the historical roots of the crisis to the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971 and the subsequent financialization of the American economy. North documented how the total value of publicly traded US stocks now exceeds 220 percent of annual economic output—more than double the GDP—compared to just 80 percent in 1971. This represents an economy increasingly detached from real production and built on “fictitious capital.”
North argued that moral outrage alone cannot provide the foundation for revolutionary struggle. What is required is a scientific understanding of capitalism’s contradictions, particularly Marx’s law of the decline in the rate of profit. The current frenzy of investment in artificial intelligence under capitalism, while appearing to promise increased profitability through mass layoffs, will in fact accelerate the systemic decline in the rate of profit by further reducing the source of surplus value—living labor.
North concluded with a powerful metaphor:
The world in which we live is like a sleeping volcano upon whose slopes civilization builds its monuments, establishes its institutions, and organizes its daily life. For periods of time, the volcano appears dormant. But beneath the surface, immense pressures accumulate. The magma rises. The tremors intensify. And finally, the eruption comes with catastrophic force, transforming the landscape entirely.
He continued:
The eruption of class struggle in the United States will destroy the rotting structures of capitalism but will also open the possibility for a new world. From the depths of social oppression will arise a force greater than any army or corporation—the collective power of a class that produces all wealth yet owns nothing. When that force acts consciously, guided by scientific socialism and the analysis of objective reality, it will sweep away the barriers of nationality and ethnicity and unite humanity in a common struggle for liberation.
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In the coming days, the World Socialist Web Site will post the full video recording of the London lecture.
4. European powers denounce proposed US peace deal on Ukraine
The major European powers have reacted with dismay to the Trump administration’s proposed peace plan, worked out in US negotiations with Moscow. Desperate to continue the war with Russia in Ukraine, which they have made a central justification for their own remilitarization and cuts to social spending to fund the “war economy,” they rejected the plan as a “capitulation” to Russia.
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It was not a war to preserve Western democracy from Russian aggression, nor were Russian troops bumbling fools suffering lopsided losses at the hands of superior, NATO-backed Ukrainian forces. The NATO imperialist powers armed the Ukrainian regime to the teeth, successfully goading the reactionary post-Soviet Russian capitalist regime to attack it. They all competed in a war aiming to crush Russia and secure domination of Eurasia. This war has now failed, leaving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky deeply unpopular, and Ukraine bled white.
Trump’s deal would leave much of eastern Ukraine in Russian hands, rule out NATO membership for Ukraine and force Zelensky—who has collapsed in the polls and cancelled elections—to suddenly hold new elections. It would cement raw material deals that give Washington, not the European powers, the lion’s share of rare earth minerals in Ukraine. Washington would get 50 percent of the profits from the reconstruction of Ukraine, which Europe would have to fund to the tune of $100 billion.
Bitter conflicts erupted at a meeting last Friday between US and European diplomats in Kiev, chaired by US Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll. According to transcripts European officials present at the meeting gave the Financial Times, Driscoll bluntly informed European negotiators they would have no say in the terms of the peace deal.
“We are not negotiating details,” Driscoll told them in a foul-mouthed tirade, declaring: “We need to get this shit done.” He said, “The US Armed Forces love Ukraine and stand behind Ukraine, but it is the honest US military assessment that Ukraine is in a very bad position and now is the best time for peace.”
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While German Chancellor Friedrich Merz again called last week to give Ukraine Taurus missiles for long-range strikes on Russia, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would keep trying to send French or European ground troops to Ukraine despite mass popular opposition. French head of the army general staff General Fabien Mandon demanded that French people be prepared “to sacrifice their children” in a war against Russia.
Such remarks underscore the enormous danger of military escalation that still exists, particularly as the Trump administration threatens to launch new wars, from Iran to Venezuela.
Europe’s hysterical war propaganda is not driven by any real military threat facing Europe but by the imperialist interests and antidemocratic political agenda of European capitalism. The European Union has more than three times Russia’s population of 143 million and more than seven times its economy of approximately US$2 trillion. Russian forces have neither the capacity nor the intention to conquer Europe.
By waging the Ukraine war, the European powers hope to enforce both their commercial and military interests in Eurasia, and—inextricably bound up with this—an ultra-reactionary political climate at home. Fully 89 percent of Western Europeans opposed sending troops to Ukraine, and there was explosive social anger at pension cuts and other austerity measures used to fund the war. Yet the war proceeded, plunging US and European governments ever deeper into debt, and working class opposition to war was politically suppressed.
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The defense of the interests of the working class in Europe requires building a socialist anti-war movement in the working class. The bloodshed and the looting of the working population of the warring countries must stop. Furthermore, far-reaching political and historical conclusions must be drawn from this war, which has caused millions of Ukrainian and Russian casualties.
In the period since the Stalinist bureaucracies dissolved the Soviet Union and restored capitalism in Eastern Europe, capitalism has utterly failed to provide prosperity and peace. The fratricidal Ukrainian-Russian war incited by NATO exemplifies the catastrophes it has produced. Averting even greater disasters requires the unification of the struggles of the working class, bringing down governments across Europe in a struggle to replace the European Union with the United Socialist States of Europe as part of an international struggle for socialism.
5. Despite “ceasefires,” Israel massacres dozens in Gaza and Lebanon over the weekend
The Israeli military killed dozens of people in Gaza and Lebanon over the weekend, continuing its rampage throughout the Middle East under the cover of “ceasefires” in both Gaza and Lebanon.
The massacres, which have become customary, have gone largely unreported in major newspapers, which have accepted the fraudulent proclamation by President Trump, as he put it on Friday, that “we actually have now for the first time, peace in the Middle East.”
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The attacks on Lebanon are part of an ongoing and developing war in the Middle East and, in particular, are preparatory to any direct war by Israel against Iran. The Jerusalem Post commented on Sunday, “Israel now has tensions with Syria, as well as Lebanon, and in Gaza, the West Bank, and on other fronts. The Beirut strike may send a message to Iran.”
On Saturday, Israel killed 24 people and wounded 80 more, including children, in attacks throughout Gaza. This followed a series of airstrikes in Gaza on Wednesday and Thursday that killed 33 Palestinians.
The strikes bring the number of people killed by Israel in Gaza since the announcement of a “ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas a month ago to over 312, with 760 more wounded. It has leveled 1,500 buildings over the past month.
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Despite a promise by Israel to allow food and medical supplies into Gaza, the enclave continues to suffer shortages of all essential supplies, including critical medical supplies.
6. Australian establishment pays tribute to ruthless Labor powerbroker
Tributes have poured in from across the official political spectrum following the death on November 8 of former Labor Party powerbroker, political fixer and bagman Graham Richardson at the age of 76. Richardson is to be accorded a rare state funeral organised by the federal Labor government.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among those lauding Richardson, hailing him as a “Labor legend.” He told Sky News that Richardson was loyal, insightful and a close friend. Albanese was joined by two right-wing ex-prime ministers—Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison—from the opposition Liberal Party, who also spoke warmly of their friendship with Richardson. Former Greens leader Bob Brown joined the praise.
How can this effusive affection be explained? Richardson was known only as a Machiavellian Labor Party numbers man and utterly ruthless factional brawler for the powerful Right faction of Labor’s branch in the most-populous state, New South Wales (NSW).
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Richardson is feted because of the essential role that he played behind the scenes in keeping the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating in power federally from 1983 to 1996. That period is widely regarded in ruling circles as the golden era of pro-market reform, in which Labor rammed through the anti-working class agenda identified with US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
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Across the corporate media following his death, Richardson has generally been portrayed as a likeable rogue. He was in fact a ruthless political operator and Labor bureaucrat who, by his own admission, did “whatever it takes,” not only to advance his own career, power and wealth, but to refashion the Labor Party into an instrument of social regression and war.
Capitulating to a ruling-class campaign of intimidation and repression, the leaders of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) ended walkouts by two separate groups of Société de transport de Montréal (STM) workers earlier this month.
For weeks, employers, the corporate media and the political establishment—federalist and Quebec sovereignist alike—joined forces to demonize the Montreal transit workers, accusing bus and subway (Metro) drivers and maintenance workers of “holding the population hostage.”
This campaign was led by Quebec Labor Minister Jean Boulet, the right-wing populist tabloid Le Journal de Montréal, Parti Québécois (PQ) leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, and the newly elected mayor of Montreal, former Trudeau Liberal government minister Soraya Martinez Ferrada.
After denouncing the Administrative Labor Tribunal (TAT, Tribunal administratif du travail) for not being strict enough in limiting STM workers’ right to strike, Boulet and Quebec Premier François Legault introduced Bill 8 into the National Assembly on November 12 with the aim of advancing the entry into force of their draconian Law 14, originally scheduled for November 30.
This law (formerly Bill 89) is widely despised among workers because it imposes severe limitations on the right to strike in both the public and private sectors. It dramatically broadens the concept of “essential services,” and gives the Quebec labor minister the power to illegalize strikes on his say-so and impose contracts through binding arbitration.
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In recent years, the federal Liberal government under Justin Trudeau, and now his successor Mark Carney, has repeatedly intervened to criminalize strikes using a fraudulent reinterpretation of Section 107 of the Canadian Labor Code. Those directly targeted include Canada Post workers, railway workers, port workers, and Air Canada flight attendants. Last month, Alberta’s far-right United Conservative Party provincial government criminalized a strike by more than 50,000 teachers.
Governments have been able to systematically intervene in labor disputes to break strikes with special laws and authoritarian back-to-work orders because the Canadian Labour Congress (CLC), Unifor, CUPE and the other unions have not lifted a finger to oppose them, even when workers were pressing for defiance despite the threat of fines and other reprisals.
When the Air Canada flight attendants defied the Carney government and its minions on the Canada Industrial Relations Board, the CUPE leadership quickly ended their “illegal” walkout and accepted a sellout agreement that was subsequently rejected by more than 99 percent of the rank and file.
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Whether Law 14 is brought forward or only comes into force at the end of this month is not the real issue for workers. The unions have effectively sabotaged their struggle, and the law still hangs like a sword of Damocles over their heads. The unions are advising Legault to use their services to impose concessions-laden agreements, but they will submit to binding arbitration should the government impose it.
Workers must vigorously oppose either alternative by developing a new strategy based on making their struggle the spearhead of a broader working class industrial and political struggle.
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Workers in Quebec and across Canada must draw critical lessons from the transit workers’ struggle. It has exposed the class divisions that run through society and determine the conduct of all the political actors. In the face of a challenge from below, all the squabbling factions of the ruling elite—federalists (PLQ), sovereignists (PQ, Québec Solidaire) and Quebec national-autonomists (CAQ), from the hard right to the so-called “left”—quickly put aside their tactical differences to attack their real common enemy: the working class.
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The main obstacle to mounting such a struggle is the union bureaucracy, which time and again isolates different sections of workers, disarms them politically, and imposes concessions-laden contracts.
The union bureaucracy is organizing a “Grand public and inter-union rally” on November 29. They aim not to launch an offensive against austerity and the anti-strike laws, but to prepare the union bureaucracy’s intervention in next year’s provincial elections. The unions intend to use the elections to divert and channel workers’ anger over the CAQ’s cuts and Bill 14 behind the establishment opposition parties, principally the Parti Québécois, which they tacitly support.
In opposition to the efforts of the union apparatuses to divide workers from their class brothers and sisters in Canada, the United States and around the world, Quebec workers should seize upon the November 29 demonstration as an opportunity to make an appeal for a cross-Canada and international mobilization of the working class against capitalist austerity, authoritarianism and war.
Such a movement will only be possible if workers take matters into their own hands and form rank-and-file committees independent of the nationalist, pro-capitalist union apparatuses. Through such committees workers will give themselves the means to mobilize their social power; unify their struggles, cutting across all the attempts of the ruling class to divide them along national, racial and ethno-linguistic lines; and to develop an independent industrial and political offensive in opposition to austerity and war and for the socialist reorganization of society, so that human needs are prioritized, not enriching the few.
8. Australia: Cobar miner warns fatal accident at Endeavor Mine could be repeated
A miner in the town of Cobar has warned that the fatal accident that claimed the lives of two workers and injured a third in late October could be repeated, under conditions where the company, Polymetals Resources Ltd, last week carried out a full resumption of operations at its Endeavor Mine where the tragedy occurred.
The World Socialist Web Site is protecting the miner’s anonymity to ensure that he is not subjected to victimisation.
The worker raised specific concerns about the ongoing use of electrical detonators at the mine in the central west of New South Wales, noting that there were discussions among workers that the devices could have been responsible for triggering the unplanned explosion.
The worker knew 24-year-old Holly Clarke, one of the victims of the October 28 disaster, alongside 59-year-old Patrick Ambrose McMullen. Mackenzie Stirling, also 24, has reportedly been left with serious injuries and trauma.
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“It’s insane where the world has gotten to. Everything is organized for a few people to make as much money as possible off the backs of all the workers. Studies have shown that if someone is earning $50,000 a year, an additional $15,000 could make their lives a lot better. But if someone is already on a salary of $10 million a year, an extra $5 million doesn’t change anything at all in terms of their lifestyle.
“Twenty to twenty-five years ago, there were hardly any billionaires. Now we’re talking about the prospect of the world’s first trillionaire. Capitalism has gone too far.”
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The worker expressed appreciation for the WSWS continuing to report on the Endeavor tragedy. “You guys are the only people still covering it. Every other media company that I’ve seen has just moved on. They covered it for a few days and that was it. I’m glad to see that you guys are still covering it, it’s really good. And your coverage is quite thorough. You’re not biased to the mine. You’re there for the workers from what I’ve seen.”
He concluded: “Everyone around the town wants justice. We need to know what caused the explosion and who was responsible and make sure something like this does not happen again.”
9. Australia: Queensland Teachers Union calls second one-day strike
Facing mounting discontent among teachers, the Queensland Teachers Union (QTU) leadership last week announced a second 24-hour strike for this Tuesday, over the state Liberal National Party (LNP) government’s continuation of years of real pay cuts, severe staff shortages and intolerable workloads.
Even in belatedly calling a stoppage, QTU officials pleaded for talks with right-wing Premier David Crisafulli to prevent the strike and end the dispute. This must be a sharp warning to teachers that the union is preparing another sellout agreement, just like the ones it imposed under the previous state Labor government from 2015 to 2024.
In announcing the stoppage, QTU vice president Leah Olsson told the media: “This strike could have been averted, this strike should have been averted… We need Crisafulli to pick up the phone and start the dialogue—this can end today.”
Olsson said the union was prepared to halt strike action if the state delivered an improved offer or accepted the QTU’s conditions for arbitration in the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission (QIRC). That arbitration could drag on for two years.
Similar unrest is brewing among teachers nationally, including stoppages and protests in Tasmania and Victoria. But the teacher unions, each affiliated to the Australian Education Union (AEU), are intent on keeping the struggles isolated to individual states. The union bureaucrats want to avoid a conflict with the federal Labor government, which is continuing to systematically underfund public schools.
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In the face of this developing disaffection, a pseudo-left group, Socialist Alternative’s Queensland Teachers Fightback, is trying to corral teachers back into the bureaucratic and complicit straitjacket of the QTU and wider trade union apparatuses.
Despite decades of betrayals by the QTU, AEU and the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), under Liberal-National and Labor governments alike, the Fightback group is telling teachers to “rebuild class-struggle unionism.”
That is “not going to happen overnight, but there are no alternatives,” a “QTU Fightback activist” wrote in Socialist Alternative’s Red Flag newspaper on November 20.
The article urged teachers to learn “how the processes of the union work: meeting procedure and protocol, moving and speaking to a motion.” These were “all valuable skills” to “give a lead to members who want to see the union fight for more.”
This is a recipe for keeping teachers’ opposition within the straitjacket of the union apparatus.
Since the 1970s and 1980s, all the unions, including the QTU, have been transformed into ruthless industrial policing agencies, to subordinate the opposition of workers to the “free market” dictates of the corporate elite and its political servants in parliament.
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It is time to draw the political lessons of years of bitter experiences. Far from “no alternatives” there is definitely an alternative—an essential one. There must be a breakout of the union stranglehold. New forms of working-class organisation must be built—rank-and-file committees that will take up the fight for workers’ rights, amid the assault on workplace and living conditions and the preparations for war.
The Committee for Public Education (CFPE), the educators’ rank-and-file network, urges teachers to set up their own committees independent of the trade union machines. Rank-and-file committees are necessary in schools, across the public sector and throughout all workplaces.
10. ICE death of Chinese detainee raises questions of torture and coverup
On August 5, 2025, Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old Chinese national, was found dead at ICE’s Moshannon Valley Processing Center (MVPC) in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, run by the private GEO Group. In its initial news release on Ge’s death, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) claimed he was found “hanging by the neck” in the “shower room” but neglected to note that he was also found with his hands and feet bound together.
ICE’s Detainee Death Report simply stated that Ge was found “with a cloth ligature around his neck in a shower stall.” However, according to an autopsy report obtained by David B. Rankin, a lawyer for the Ge family, he was found with a bedsheet and linens tied around his wrists and ankles in what the report describes as a “hog-tied” position. Chillingly, the medical examiner noted that there had been other reported incidents of people who had been found hanged in a similar fashion. Whether these incidents also involved ICE detainees is not clear.
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According to attorney Rankin, there has been no investigation into Ge’s death. A “Notice to Preserve” was sent to MVCP on August 18, 2025, requesting all information and material related to Mr. Ge’s detention and death be preserved. Ge’s family filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on September 9, 2025, seeking information about Ge’s detention, the conditions at MVPC, his treatment by MVPC personnel and the circumstances of his death. As of this writing, these requests have been ignored by both ICE and DHS.
In response, Ge’s family filed a FOIA lawsuit in the Southern District of New York on November 12, 2025. Rankin has stated that Ge was in extreme distress prior to his death and that no one in the facility could speak Mandarin. Ge had difficulty communicating his needs and issues to MVPC staff, being forced to write them as notes and relying on staff to send them to someone outside of the facility to be translated and sent back, which could take days. The lawsuit also alleges that the GEO Group did not provide Ge’s family with an explanation of how his death occurred. No one at MVPC could speak Mandarin, and facility staff “refused to even try to communicate with” Ge and did not offer mental health care to him, the lawsuit states.
There is no question that a major cover-up is underway. Following Ge’s death, ICE and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem unlawfully blocked both Pennsylvania Congresswomen Summer Lee’s and Mary Gay Scanlon’s oversight visits to MVPC on August 25, 2025 and August 28, 2025 respectively, a routine practice under the Trump regime. Congresswoman Scanlon alluded to Ge’s death as a reason for her visit to the facility.
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A full and accurate number of deaths of ICE detainees is somewhat difficult to determine. While ICE has been mandated by Congress since 2018 to report deaths in its custody, it does not adequately keep these lists updated. Chaofeng Ge is only one of at least 25 people in ICE custody to have died in 2025, the highest number reported in 20 years. For context, ICE reported 36 deaths during Donald Trump’s entire first presidency, which includes the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.
Since Ge’s death, ICE has reported three other detainee deaths: Lorenzo Antonio Batrez Vargas on August 31; Oscar Duarte Rascon on September 8; and Ismael Ayala Uribe on September 22. Notably, Gabriel Garcia-Aviles died on October 23 at the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, though ICE has not yet listed him on its website detailing detainee deaths.
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In response to the record deaths in ICE detention, 45 members of Congress sent a toothless letter on November 21 to Secretary Noem and DHS Acting Director Todd Lyons. They “demanded” by December 5 an explanation of what steps ICE has taken to increase medical staff, revise its medical policies, track patterns of neglect and address delays in notifying families when detainees die. The letter gives no indication of any consequence should Noem or Lyons ignore it. It amounts to little more than a request that ICE follow its own procedures and ends with a flaccid appeal for the agency to honor its “legal and moral obligations.” In the context of the lawless Trump regime, it is almost laughable.
This outcome is not surprising. The abuse of immigrants by DHS and ICE spans every presidential administration because it is a deliberate bipartisan policy aimed at criminalizing migration and terrorizing the working class. No change of personnel in Washington will end these crimes. Only the international working class, armed with a socialist program and united across national boundaries, can defeat this system of brutalization.
11. Status report by UAW monitor points to deepening crisis in union apparatus
As anger mounts among rank-and-file autoworkers over escalating layoffs and deteriorating working conditions, there are continuing signs of deep crisis in the United Auto Workers apparatus, already despised by a large and growing number of workers.
On November 14, the court-appointed UAW monitor, Neil Barofsky, released another scathing status report citing the union’s “toxic culture of division and retaliation at the highest levels of the organization,” laying particular blame on UAW President Shawn Fain.
While citing supposed progress on implementing certain, largely cosmetic, structural reforms, the reported stated, “As of the date of this Thirteenth Status Report, for the reasons discussed below, the Union does not appear to be on the path to sustainable cultural reform. The reality is stark: the current prioritization of political infighting and settling personal grievances over meaningful reform are stalling improvement and undermining good faith attempts to complete the necessary compliance infrastructure.”
The report went on to state that the UAW International Executive Board had even excluded the monitor from meetings of the UAW Culture Committee. This body was created as part of the federal monitor’s oversight to implement reforms around internal union culture (ethics, accountability, retaliation, etc.).
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Previous reports have revealed that Fain operates an authoritarian regime and frequently uses threats and profanity directed at subordinates. At one meeting of hundreds of union officials, the monitor reported, Fain threatened to “slit the f**king throats” of anyone who “messed” with members of his staff. “You could hear a pin drop,” one witness recalled.
The monitor also alleged Fain sought to push through a no-bid contract with a Washington D.C. consulting firm in violation of the federal consent decree, which requires a minimum of three bids.
In addition, the UAW bureaucracy is still refusing to turn over certain key communications, including text and WhatsApp messages from central figures, in defiance of court orders. In the previous filing, Barofsky stated his office had not received requested documentation related to a separate corruption probe involving an unnamed UAW regional director.
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The effort to bring charges against Fain was derailed by the UAW monitor on the basis of alleged procedural errors, giving Fain at least a temporary reprieve.
However, the strong support given to Mock by the monitor’s report and the corporate media suggests that a plan B is being prepared ahead of the upcoming 2026 elections for top union officers in case Fain appears too discredited to win or even seek reelection.
At a November 6 online town hall, dozens of rank-and-file workers posted comments denouncing the UAW apparatus for colluding in the elimination of their jobs. At one point, an exasperated Fain lashed out at a worker at the Warren Stamping Plant who had been laid off for more than a year, saying, “Get real, the union doesn’t lay people off.”
Under conditions of growing popular opposition to Trump’s attack on immigrants, gutting of food stamps and other essential programs, and further moves to establish a dictatorship, Fain has emerged as a critical political supporter of the fascist president and his trade war policies, which have destroyed the jobs of workers in the US and internationally.
Fain has shamelessly hailed the decision by Stellantis to shift production from its plant in Brampton, Ontario in Canada to the idled Belvidere, Illinois Assembly Plant, potentially costing 3,000 Canadian autoworkers their jobs. Fain has also said shifting some Dodge Ram pickup production from Mexico to the Detroit area showed the success of “targeted tariffs.”
All factions of the UAW apparatus continue to collude with management in imposing long hours of forced overtime and covering up the circumstances surrounding the preventable deaths of Stellantis Toledo Jeep workers Antonio Gaston in August 2024 and Stellantis Dundee Engine skilled trades worker Ronald Adams Sr. in April this year.
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The crisis in the UAW apparatus is of acute concern to the ruling class, since the auto union has long served as a vehicle for suppressing the struggles of this critical section of the working class. The years-long federal corruption investigation, the removal and jailing of leading officials and the imposition of a court appointed monitor in order to supposedly root out corruption were aimed at restoring the credibility of the union’s bureaucratic apparatus.
Last month, the US Department of Labor issued a 36-page document defending the rigged 2022-23 UAW election for top national officers. The election was carried out amid massive voter suppression by the UAW apparatus, with only 9 percent of the membership voting.
Just like Biden’s labor department had done before them, Trump’s DOL officials brushed aside evidence submitted by rank-and-file Mack Trucks autoworker and UAW presidential candidate Will Lehman that the UAW bureaucracy deliberately failed to inform members of the election, refused to update mailing lists and allowed tens of thousands of ballots to go undelivered.
Lehman, who ran as a socialist candidate against Fain and other union bureaucrats, called not for the reform, but the abolition, of the UAW bureaucracy and the transfer of power and decision-making to workers on the shop floor through the expansion of a network of rank-and-file committees in every factory.
The monitor’s report again demonstrates complete imperviousness of the UAW bureaucracy to attempts at even cosmetic reform. It exists as an arm of management in the factories whose sole purpose is to prevent a fightback against speed-up, job cuts and deteriorating safety. In return for this service, hundreds of UAW officials live the high life off members’ dues.
The conclusion that must be drawn is the need to abolish the whole corrupt structure through a rebellion by the rank and file. Power must be wrested from the apparatus and put in the hands of workers themselves. These committees must mobilize workers to oversee safety and production in the factories, wage a collective fight to defend all jobs, and unite with Canadian, Mexican and all workers to defend the right to a secure and good-paying job.
The fight against capitalist exploitation must be combined with an industrial and political counter-offensive to end the threat of dictatorship, expropriate the oligarchy, and reorganize society to meet social needs, not corporate profit.
12. Trump administration threatens further cuts to food benefits
In an appearance on Fox News last week, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said a benefit of the longest shutdown in US history was that it provided Republicans an opportunity to “completely deconstruct” the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). SNAP is the largest federal anti-hunger program in the United States, used by some 42 million people, including 16 million children.
During the shutdown, the Trump administration halted funding for SNAP for the first time in the program’s history. Even though the shutdown has ended, there are still many states that have not issued payments due to technical or budget issues related to funding. The Food Research & Action Center found that while many states were going to begin issuing payments starting on November 14, others, such as Illinois, did not resume until November 20. Other states, such as Florida, have not issued full payments, only noting that benefits will be “reduced in accordance with federal guidelines.”
Though benefit payments have started to resume, millions will soon find themselves permanently removed from SNAP eligibility because of a tightening of requirements. In July, Congress passed new funding provisions for the program, which would cut about $186 billion in federal funding, while at the same time adding new work requirement stipulations and record keeping aimed at pushing otherwise eligible people off the program.
In line with this objective, Secretary Rollins opined during the shutdown that she would require all SNAP recipients to reapply in an attempt to whittle even more people from SNAP. However, due to a backlash, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has temporarily shelved that proposal.
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In addition to rising hunger, corporations are laying off more workers while hiring at lower rates. The September employment report, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which was ostensibly held back for seven weeks by the government shutdown, continues to show little to no job growth, rising unemployment rates, slowing wage rises and significant job losses in key productive sectors, such as manufacturing, warehousing and logistics.
Last month, US-based employers reported 153,074 job cuts, a rise of 175 percent from October 2024. There have been over 1 million layoffs so far this year, the most since the pandemic year of 2020 and a 65 percent increase over last year. The layoffs are across industries as major companies use advances in artificial intelligence to eliminate entire professions. Amazon, UPS and Paramount Global have announced plans to lay off at least 50,000 jobs before the end of the year.
As workers and their families find it increasingly impossible to survive, the rapacious, opulent, luxurious lifestyles of the modern day capitalist aristocracy proceeds uninterrupted at the other pole of society. The technology sector, which is also one of the leaders in the job bloodbath, has seen a year over year increase in its net profit margin of 27.7 percent and an increase of 2.6 percent over the previous year’s increase. Only four firms, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet, account for more than $15 trillion in global market value.
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It is not just food insecurity which is on the rise amongst US workers. Homelessness reached an all-time high in January 2024 with over 771,000 people without a roof over their heads on a single night that month. This was an 18 percent increase over the previous year and the highest number since records began being kept. The number includes an increase in every demographic group, with adults over 55 and children seeing a significant escalation in their numbers.
The explosion of homelessness within the American working class is a direct result of the current restructuring of US industry, which is seeing a jobs bloodbath in every industry, coupled with an exorbitant increase in rents since the pandemic.
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And while the housing market is increasingly out of reach for ordinary workers due to high interest rates, not so for the wealthy, where a large majority of houses are purchased in cash, negating the need for high interest mortgage rates. While the market for working class is contracting and foreclosures are increasing, the market for the rich continues to see strong demand and increasing prices.
There are two Americas: One is made up of the overwhelming majority of the population, which has seen its standard of living continually decline over the course of decades, and the other is made up of a tiny minority that wallows in isolated luxury that increases on a daily basis.
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There is only one answer to end this state of affairs, and that is for the working class to organize itself independently of the two parties of big business and those in their orbit. Workers need to create independent organs of democratic power in rank-and-file committees in every workplace, school and neighborhood. These organizations need to be linked with the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) and begin making preparations now for a general strike, which will profoundly change the relationship of forces.
13. Mass layoffs and welfare cuts: Germany at the center of the European crisis
A social counterrevolution is developing in Europe, the likes of which has not been seen since the 1930s. Hundreds of thousands of well-paid jobs are being destroyed, alongside the dismantling of pensions, healthcare and social spending, upon which the livelihoods of millions of people depend. At the same time, enormous sums are being poured into armaments and war and into further enriching the already wealthy.
In its latest report on the economic situation in Europe, the International Monetary Fund calls for “deep cuts in the European model and the social contract” in order to plug the budget holes created by increased military spending and handouts to the banks during the financial and coronavirus crises. The report is aptly titled: “How Can Europe Pay for Things It Cannot Afford?”
An unprecedented jobs massacre is taking place in industry and, increasingly, in administration. Advances in electric mobility, information technology and artificial intelligence, which could greatly facilitate social life and solve social problems such as poverty and the climate crisis, are being used to increase profits and wage a bitter struggle for markets, raw materials and the redivision of the world—all at the expense of the working class.
This is not an economic downturn that will eventually be followed by an upswing but rather a structural crisis. The entire capitalist system is bankrupt. All the symptoms that led to fascism and two world wars in the last century are back: unrestrained speculation, the bitter struggle for raw materials and markets, trade wars, wars and dictatorship.
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Germany, which accounts for almost a quarter of the economic output of all 27 EU members with a Gross Domestic Product of €4.3 trillion, is at the center of the crisis. What was long considered the strength of the German economy—its large share of exports and high foreign trade surpluses—is now proving to be its Achilles’ heel. Trump’s punitive tariffs and China’s rise as a high-tech producer are hitting it particularly hard.
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Since 2019, the German economy has grown by only 0.3 percent. During the same period, the Chinese economy grew by 27 percent and the US economy by 12 percent, although growth in the US is largely based on speculative gains. The German Council of Economic Experts is predicting growth of just 0.9 percent for the coming year.
Corporations are passing on the full brunt of this crisis to the working class. In the industrial sector alone, 160,000 jobs have been destroyed in the last 12 months, or 3,000 per week. The three largest industries—mechanical engineering, auto and chemicals—which together employ more than 2.5 million people, are particularly affected.
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The only industry still growing in Germany is the arms industry. Over the next five years, Germany will invest a trillion euros into the business of death. Industry leader Rheinmetall increased its sales by 38 percent last year and by 30 percent this year. Its share price has risen twelvefold since 2022 and threefold since the beginning of this year.
While the livelihoods of workers and their families are being destroyed and entire regions are being deprived of their economic basis, the rich cannot get enough and continue to enrich themselves despite the crisis. There are now 3,900 people in Germany with assets in the hundreds of millions, an increase of 500 persons compared with a year ago.
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Germany’s ruling class is responding to the economic crisis with the same methods it used in the 1930s: by declaring war on the working class and returning to its criminal militarist traditions.
Ten years ago, the government had already announced that Germany sought to play a military role in the world in line with its weight as the third-largest economy. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, provoked by NATO, then served as a welcome pretext to put these plans into action.
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Germany has spent €76 billion to date solely to support the war in Ukraine, making it the largest donor after the US. Its aim is not “defense” and “freedom” but rather economic dominance in Eastern Europe and Ukraine and the subjugation of Russia with its vast mineral resources, i.e., the same war aims Germany pursued in the First and Second World Wars.
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The onslaught against jobs, pensions and social gains won by the working class after World War II is in full swing worldwide and is meeting with increasing resistance.
In France, President Macron is sticking to his pension reform, even though mass protests have forced him to replace his prime minister five times. The hated “president of the rich” remains in office only because the Socialists are backing him. In Italy, Belgium and Portugal, general strikes and mass protests against social cuts and austerity budgets will take place in the coming weeks.
In the US, President Trump is cutting social benefits on which millions depend. American companies have announced 1.1 million layoffs this year. In China, millions of jobs have been lost in recent years to automation and the crisis in the construction industry, and youth unemployment in cities stands at 19 percent. In African and Asian countries, Generation Z has been protesting for three years against the lack of any prospects for the future.
This movement of the international working class and youth, however, lacks a viable perspective.
The corporatist trade unions, which used to negotiate social compromises within the framework of “social partnership,” have become the spearhead of social cuts and mass layoffs. In Germany, the trade union federation (DGB) and its works councils develop layoff plans within the framework of legally regulated “co-determination” and suppress resistance to the layoffs. Union bureaucrats sit on company supervisory boards and often move on to the executive.
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Jobs and social gains can only be defended on the basis of a socialist perspective that places the social needs of the working class above the profit interests of the capitalists and links them to the struggle against war and capitalism.
The deeper cause of the capitalist crisis is the incompatibility of modern global production, which unites hundreds of millions of workers into a single transnational process, with private ownership of the means of production and the nation-state, upon which capitalism is based.
The imperialist powers seek to resolve this conflict by violently redividing the world at the expense of their rivals, which will inevitably lead to a Third World War. This is the essence of Trump’s MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement and all those who emulate it. The working class, which produces all social wealth, can resolve this conflict by overthrowing capitalism, overcoming national borders and socializing the large corporations and fortunes.
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Workers and young people must unite in action committees, functioning independent of the trade unions and all of the parties that defend capitalism, and build the Socialist Equality Party and its sister organizations in the International Committee of the Fourth International into mass socialist parties.
14. World Socialist Web Site speaks to family of worker killed in Sri Lankan factory explosion
On November 2, an explosion at a rubber-processing factory in the Kiriporuwa Estate, Yatiyanthota, killed a worker, Rajinikantha, while he was operating a machine, and left two others injured. The factory is situated 75 kilometers east of Colombo.
Workers accuse the estate administration of assigning Rajinikantha an ageing machine with inadequate safety measures and allege that the estate administration is seeking to cover up the incident and resume business as usual. They demand a proper investigation into the worker’s death and urgent action to ensure workplace safety.
On November 16, World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) reporters returned to the Kiriporuwa Estate and met with workers in their line rooms. A line room is the barrack-style dwelling that many plantation workers are forced to live in.
A World Socialist Web Site article, “Two Sri Lankan workers die in industrial accidents in one week,” had highlighted Rajinikantha’s death and also that of another worker, Vijayakumar, three days later. He had been operating a tea grinding machine at the Maussakelle tea factory in the central hill district of Sri Lanka.
Rajinikantha’s mother, Muthukumar Subalakshmi, spoke to World Socialist Web Site reporters about her son, with tears running down her face. She said her son was “very hard-working” and “friendly with co-workers in the factory.”
“We lost our son who was looking after us. The factory won’t tell us what happened. The police have filed a lawsuit, but we don’t know what will come out of it.
“Officials are preparing to reopen the factory without even an acceptable investigation. People are angry about the crime committed against my son. I want to know what happened to my son,” she said.
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[W]orkers, youth and others [are invited] to attend the public meeting on the death of plantation worker Vijayakumar at the Maussakelle Tea Factory on Sunday, November 30. It will also discuss the industrial death of Rajinikantha at Kiriporuwa Estate.
The meeting will also be streamed live on social media.
Date: Sunday, November 30
Time: From 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Venue: P.M.D Cultural Hall, Upcot Road, Maskeliya
15. 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.
