There were, indeed, “but two sorts of men in the world, freemen and
slaves,” John Adams concluded. For the first time in world history,
slavery became conspicuously wrong, requiring therefore a defense, an
explanation that ultimately created racism as a modern ideology.
A map shows the West Indies and Caribbean, 1732
As the Trump administration imposes the military closure of the ports
of Iran, part of its wider neo-colonial war against the peoples of the
Middle East, it is notable that 250 years ago last week, on April 6,
1776, the Continental Congress, the revolutionary government of the
American colonies, announced that its ports would be open to world trade
rather than just to the ships and merchants of imperial Great Britain.
It
was a declaration as consequential as any battle of the American
Revolution, and one that speaks with unexpected directness to the
present.
*****
Trotsky once wrote of the world imperialist system that with the Russian
Revolution “the chain broke at its weakest link.” “But,” he added, “it
was the chain that broke, and not only the link.” A similar observation
could be made about the American Revolution in 1776. It destroyed the
mercantilist system and monarchical world where it was weakest, at its
very outer edge. But the results were nonetheless momentous. As Marx
wrote to Lincoln in 1864, “the American War of Independence initiated a
new era of ascendancy for the middle class,” giving birth to “the idea
of one great Democratic Republic.” It was then and there that “the first
Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse
given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century.”
It seems that the conflicts that shaped one era have a way of
resurfacing in another. The tyrannical power that the revolutionary
generation of 1776 confronted in monarchy and its mercantilist system
has, in our own time, reappeared in new and grotesque forms. The Trump
administration has erased the line between public office and private
enrichment with a brazenness that would have impressed even the most
predatory of the old Crown monopolists—a government in which the
president’s family openly profits from tariffs he imposes, from
cryptocurrency ventures he promotes by executive decree and from foreign
governments seeking access to his favor. US “trade policy” now
reproduces features of the mercantilist logic the Revolution dismantled:
that slices of the world are to be seized through war for the personal
enrichment of the American oligarchy, or else be destroyed so no one
else can have them.
Behind all of this lurks the attempted resurrection of something the
Founders would have recognized immediately—the aristocratic principle:
the claim that public office is simply an extension of private property,
that wealth confers the right to rule, that inherited and accumulated
fortune is its own justification, and that the distinction between the
great man and the commoner is natural and permanent. It is a system that
once again holds labor, the working class, in contempt.
These attributes are not the personal qualities of Donald Trump, but the
characteristics of a diseased and exhausted social order that has long
outlived its historically progressive role. Just as the monarchical
system of the 18th century had become an intolerable fetter on the
development of society—and was swept aside not by the wishes of great
men but by the objective logic of history—so too the decayed capitalism
of our own time is creating the conditions for revolutionary upheaval.
The force that will carry this forward is the international working
class, the true heir to the emancipatory traditions of 1776, 1789, 1865,
1917, and indeed all that is progressive in history. It is a powerful
weapon in the hands of the working class.
The Pentagon is planning a military operation in Cuba to topple the Castroite government in Havana, according to a USA Today report published Wednesday.
Sources
familiar with discussions told the newspaper that the White House has
issued a direct order to ramp up preparations for action against the
island, marking a dangerous escalation in Washington’s long-standing
campaign to reassert colonial domination across the hemisphere.
These
preparations follow a series of increasingly explicit threats by Donald
Trump. Standing next to a woman wearing a “DoorDash grandma” T-shirt at
the White House on April 13, Trump spoke in the language of a gangster
talking about a drive-by shooting, declaring that the United States “may
stop by Cuba” after concluding its war of aggression against Iran. Two
weeks earlier, he similarly said that “Cuba is going to be next” for
military intervention.
Such statements are not idle rhetoric.
They are the public expression of advanced war planning that is already
underway. The same administration that is posturing as alternately
escalating and de-escalating its war against Iran is, in reality, using
negotiations as a tactical cover.
In the case of Iran, diplomatic
maneuvers buy time to mobilize the necessary resources for the next
phase of US operations: securing control over the Strait of Hormuz and
Iran’s vast oil and gas reserves, by whatever means necessary, including
the open threat of annihilating Iranian society.
A similar
strategy appears to be unfolding in relation to Cuba. Limited contacts
with the Castro family, alongside carefully calibrated concessions—such
as the decision to allow a single ship carrying Russian oil to dock with
at most a two-week supply—could suddenly give way to a devastating
military intervention against a country of roughly 8 million people
whose economy and armed forces are already in shambles.
The humanitarian situation inside Cuba is catastrophic. Decades of
the genocidal US economic blockade—intensified through an oil embargo
since January—have resulted in daily blackouts lasting for hours,
alongside severe shortages of drinking water, food, and medical
supplies. The economy has effectively ground to a halt, with workers
frequently unable to report to their jobs due to lack of transportation,
electricity, or basic necessities.
Internationally, tensions are
mounting. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated during a visit
to China that Moscow would continue providing assistance to Cuba and
expressed hope that the United States would not return to the era of
“colonial wars.” A Russian tanker, the Universal, is currently
sailing in the North Atlantic and is expected to reach Cuba within
approximately 15 days. Analysts have identified it as the likely next
fuel shipment to the island.
Washington, for its part, has
indicated that such shipments will be permitted only on a “case-by-case”
basis—another lever of pressure in its escalating campaign.
*****
Cuba occupies a position of immense strategic importance for US
imperialism. Its proximity to Florida, its control over key Caribbean
shipping lanes and its potential use as a military base all contribute
to its significance. Washington has repeatedly invoked allegations that
China and Russia maintain signals intelligence facilities on the island
to justify its aggressive posture.
Executive Order 14380, issued
in January 2026, declared a national emergency over Cuba and threatened
punitive tariffs against any country supplying it with oil. This move
effectively forced Mexico, Cuba’s primary supplier after the US
intervention cut off Venezuelan exports, to halt shipments.
The current offensive is codified in what has been termed the “Trump
Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, outlined in the 2025 National
Security Strategy. This doctrine reasserts US dominance over the Western
Hemisphere by denying rival powers access to “strategically vital
assets,” including ports, military bases and natural resources.
Framed
in openly expansionist terms—akin to Hitler’s “Greater Germany”—the
administration has advanced the concept of a “Great North America,”
stretching from Greenland to the equator through a program of
recolonization.
The objective is not merely geopolitical control
but the dismantling of all social gains associated with the working
class and national liberation struggles of the 20th century, including
the 1959 Cuban Revolution that led to vast nationalizations and basic
social and labor rights.
*****
Already, the Cuban regime has implemented sweeping measures to open
the economy to foreign investment and has actively courted wealthy Cuban
exiles in Miami—the very social layers that have historically supported
terrorist attacks and coup attempts against the island.
In this
context, the continued role of pseudo-left organizations to
mischaracterize the regime and thus US imperialism’s actions is
particularly pernicious. The Morenoite Left Voice, affiliated
with the so-called Permanent Revolution Current, claims that the Cuban
government continues to be a bureaucratic workers’ state that retains a
“socialist character” and merely needs to be pressured by the working
class to adopt more democratic policies. It warns of “capitalist
restoration” in the absence of greater mass participation, thereby
promoting the illusion that the existing regime can be reformed in a
progressive direction.
Within the United States, Left Voice
calls for opposition to Washington’s policies through appeals to union
bureaucrats and activist networks dominated by the Democratic Party.
These proposals are designed not to mobilize the working class
independently but to subordinate it to the very institutions of the
capitalist state responsible for imperialist aggression.
This
mirrors the role played by revisionist tendencies in the 1960s, which
hailed Fidel Castro’s movement as a model for socialist revolution and
denounced the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
as “ultra-left” and “sectarian” for rejecting this characterization.
The Socialist Workers Party, led by Joseph Hansen, promoted the Cuban
revolution as the “acid test” for Trotskyism, arguing that a
petty-bourgeois guerrilla movement had established a workers’ state.
In
opposition, the Socialist Labour League, the British section of the
ICFI, defended the fundamental principles of Marxism. It insisted that
conscious revolutionary leadership by the working class is
indispensable, that Cuba represented a negative confirmation of the
Theory of Permanent Revolution and that Hansen’s empiricism amounted to
an adaptation to bourgeois and non-proletarian forces.
Today, as
the United States prepares for a new colonial war against Cuba, these
lessons assume urgent relevance. It is not long before Trump speaks of
turning Cuba into the 52nd state—having already proposed the annexation
of Venezuela as the 51st. The implications of this war must be grasped
in their full historical and political significance.
Washington’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has been in force since
Monday in what marks a major escalation of the war against Iran. The
attempt by US forces to halt all tanker traffic to and from Iranian
ports aims to compel Tehran to accept sweeping concessions to American
imperialism, while also cutting across the interests of China, which
relies on cheap oil from Iran and the broader Gulf region for much of
its energy imports.
US
Vice President JD Vance made clear Tuesday that the US war of
aggression is aimed at restructuring the Middle East. He declared at an
event that President Donald Trump was not interested in “small deals”
but was seeking a “grand bargain” with Iran, which would see the US
treat Iran “economically like a normal country.” Trump and Vance want to
roll back the clock to before 1979, when the Iranian Revolution ended
US imperialism’s financial and military dominance over the country of 93
million people.
Trump’s statements since the beginning of the war
demonstrate that American imperialism will resort to the most ruthless
barbarism in order to secure its preeminence over the world’s most
important energy-exporting region. He vowed to bomb Iran “back to the
stone ages” and made the genocidal threat on 7 April that an “entire
civilisation” could be wiped out. The US/Israeli bombardment of Iran was
conducted with indiscriminate bloody-mindedness, as shown by the
destruction of a girls’ school on the first day of the war, killing over
160 children. Independent investigations and on-the-ground reports
following last week’s ceasefire revealed that even when the US claimed
to be hitting military targets, the collateral damage to surrounding
civilian infrastructure and residential buildings was extensive.
In
an interview this week with Fox Business, the war criminal Trump
menaced Iran with further war crimes if it refuses to bow to American
imperialist dictates. Speaking like a mafia don, Trump said, “If I
pulled up stakes right now, it would take them 20 years to rebuild that
country. And we’re not finished...We could take out every one of their
bridges in one hour...every one of their power plants.”
Trump speaks for American imperialism, which has never forgiven the
Iranian people for the 1979 revolution that toppled the US-funded Shah’s
repressive dictatorship. His concern is not with Iranian “terrorism,”
let alone the democratic rights of the Iranian people. Rather, as David
North put it when summing up the historical relationship between US
imperialism and Iran in a recent lecture
given at Berlin’s Humboldt University, it all boils down to “oil,
geopolitical influence, and the class interests of American capitalism.”
*****
Home to the world’s fourth-largest oil reserves and second-largest
natural gas reserves, Iran exported between 80 and 90 percent of its oil
to China. Beijing has benefited from cut-price Iranian oil over recent
years due to the brutal sanctions imposed on the country by Trump during
his first term in office, when he unilaterally abrogated the UN-backed
nuclear accord with Tehran in 2018. In 2021, China signed a 25-year
strategic partnership with Iran that included major investments in
Iranian infrastructure in exchange for $400 billion worth of oil for the
Chinese economy. Washington now hopes that what its sanctions could not
accomplish can be achieved through brute military force, but the first
six weeks of this war have demonstrated that even the world’s most
powerful military cannot overcome the impact of American imperialism’s
protracted decay.
Prior to the war, China was receiving some 1.4
million barrels of oil per day from Iran and over 5 million barrels per
day from the Gulf region as a whole. Although the US blockade does not
directly hinder exports from other Gulf states to China, the region’s
output has been hit sharply by the war, threatening global economic
disruption. China reportedly has oil reserves able to cover 5 months of
demand, but long-term reductions in supply could seriously weaken its
already fragile economy. Moreover, the prospect of a global economic
recession, raised this week in a report by the IMF, would mean a
decreasing market for Chinese exports, which the Stalinist regime in
Beijing relies upon to maintain economic growth.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated during a visit to Beijing
Wednesday that Moscow could offset any oil shortfalls for China
resulting from the war in the Middle East. However, this assertion is
more than dubious. Pipelines between Russia and China are reportedly
already operating at full capacity, and Russia lacks the tankers needed
to substantially increase its approximately 2 million barrels of oil per
day reaching China. Russia would have to more than double its present
exports to China to offset entirely Iranian oil exports and partially
cover the decline from other Gulf nations.
Faced with the aggressiveness and criminality of American imperialism
unparalleled since the Nazi regime during World War II, Beijing has
responded to the US blockade by holding out the prospect of a stable
“multi-polar world” in which the interests of all states are respected.
According to a Xinhua report, Xi told Lavrov that Beijing and Moscow
should “strengthen multilateral cooperation, firmly uphold and practice
multilateralism, join hands to revive the authority and vitality of the
UN, engage in closer coordination and cooperation within the frameworks
of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRICS countries, and
promote the development of the international order in a more just and
reasonable direction.”
This modern-day version of the Soviet
Stalinist bureaucracy’s policy of “peaceful coexistence” has even less
of a basis in the realities of world capitalism today than it did during
the 20th century, when it led to the Stalinists’ liquidation of the
Soviet Union in a failed bid to integrate Russian capitalism into the
imperialist world order. Under the would-be dictator Trump, American
imperialism is fully committed to waging a third world war to defend its
global hegemonic position amid its accelerating economic decline.
Trump’s blood-curdling threats to wipe out Iranian civilization testify
that American imperialism is not simply going to peacefully accept an
expansion of Chinese and Russian influence under the banner of
“multilateralism” at its expense.
As workers around the world are hit with the ever-worsening
consequences of the US war on Iran—crippling rises in petrol and gas
prices, food price hikes and the growing threat of food shortages in
poorer countries—major corporations and banks are raking in increased
profits to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.
First in
line to benefit from the profit bonanza, as could be expected, are the
oil companies. But the flow of increased money extends across the board.
*****
Apart from the oil producers, trading firms which deal in oil, food,
metals and other necessary commodities, largely dominating global
markets, are already cashing in. The Wall Street Journal
reported that the Swiss commodities trader Gunvor said it had already
made as much money in the first quarter of this year as it did in all of
2025 when it made a profit of $1.6 billion. Others will be experiencing
a similar boost.
Also not surprisingly, US arms manufacturers have been cashing in. On
the first day of the US attack on Iran major firms recorded a rise in
their total market value of up to $30 billion.
The profit and price gouging extends across the US economy under conditions where, according to a recent article in the New York Times, corporate profits “have reached a record share of the US economy.” Corporate America intends to keep it that way.
*****
Major US banks have also been cashing in on the opportunities
generated by the war. The six major US banks reported collective profits
of $47.6 billion for the first quarter, much of it generated because
market volatility provided conditions for significantly profitable
trading.
*****
JPMorgan led the way in absolute terms with a 13 percent increase in
profits, over the same period last year, to $16.5 billion, with market
jitters being characterized as a “gift to trading desks.” Goldman Sachs
reported a 19 percent increase in profits to $5.6 billion. Citigroup
reported a 42 percent profit surge and Morgan Stanley’s profits rose 29
percent.
The combined increase in the profits from the trading desks of the major banks is estimated to be the highest in 12 years.
*****
The banks have benefited from the relaxation of regulations under
Trump. Bank of America chief financial officer Alastair Borthwick said
the bank was “encouraged by the work the administration is doing,” as it
bought back $7.2 billion of its own stock in the quarter, the highest
level in four years. The Trump regime is moving to reduce the amount of
capital the banks must hold as a reserve, freeing up money for trading
and buybacks.
The overall sentiment on Wall Street is that the
profit bonanza will continue, at least for now, with the S&P 500
passing the 7,000 mark for the first time on Wednesday. Inflation
profiteering fueled by the war is one factor. Another is the wave of
mass layoffs, hitting tens of thousands of workers in many cases,
especially in the high-tech industries.
*****
Giant corporations and banks are feeding on death, destruction and
the impoverishment of the working class the world over. This makes it
urgently necessary for workers and youth to draw the sharpest political
conclusions.
The war on Iran itself is not the product of the
individual Donald Trump, but is driven by the historic crisis of
imperialism, of which he is the most grotesque personification.
Likewise,
the obscenity expressed in the present day economic and financial
system is not the product of the individual greed of the ruling
oligarchs, though that exists in abundance. It is a product of the
capitalist system itself, the objective logic of which, as Marx
explained 150 years ago, is the creation of fabulous wealth at one pole
of society and poverty, misery and degradation at the other.
Today the necessity for its overthrow and the establishment of socialism is not confined to the pages of Das Kapital but is being written large in the language of daily life.
Since February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel have waged a
war of aggression against Iran. Trump publicly threatened to exterminate
Iranian civilization, in remarks of an undeniably Nazi character. Tens
of thousands of Iranian civilians have been killed or wounded. The
nuclear site at Natanz and the famous Golestan Palace have been struck.
The war has set the entire Middle East ablaze and is shaking the world
economy.
In the face of this, Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his France
Unbowed (LFI) party has not called on the millions of workers who vote
for LFI to strike or protest against the war. They confined themselves
to lamenting the violation of international law, while remaining silent
on workers’ struggles in Iran and on Washington’s political maneuvers to
manufacture a crisis there before it launched the war.
Mélenchon's inaction in the face of the war has the same roots as his
silence on the intrigues Washington used to prepare it. It stems from
the class character of LFI: a populist and anti-Marxist party, born out
of the bourgeois Socialist Party (PS), whose founder explicitly rejects a
policy oriented towards the working class and the socialist revolution.
In L'Ère du peuple, published in 2014 as he founded LFI,
Mélenchon declared that the entire left was dying: “The harm is well
advanced. It will not be repaired with clever explanations to
distinguish the true left from the false.” He called for burying the
foundations of Marxism: “Here, it is the people that takes the place
formerly occupied by the ‘revolutionary working class’ in the left’s
project. The citizens’ revolution is not the old socialist revolution.”
These
conceptions primed LFI to serve as a political instrument of French
imperialism to block a mobilization of the working class against the war
in Iran and the genocide in Gaza, and against the global social and
economic crisis that flows from the catastrophes in the Middle East.
*****
The full social power of the working class in France, Europe, the
United States, and the Middle East must be mobilized to stop imperialist
governments who are committing crimes of historic gravity. This is not
an abstract political question.
In December 2025, before the
demonstrations backed by Washington and Tel Aviv erupted, a wave of
strikes swept through Iran, objectively indicating the possibility of
such a mobilization. These strikes had deep causes. Years of US
sanctions had ravaged the Iranian economy, causing persistent inflation
and a continuous fall in workers’ living standards. The war waged by
Israel and the United States against Iran in June 2025 had further
aggravated this situation, disrupting oil exports and deepening the
economic crisis.
Thousands of oil, gas, and electricity workers demonstrated on 10
December in Tehran outside parliament. Steelworkers struck in Shadegan
on 8 December, and more than 5,000 workers at the key South Pars
refineries had walked out on December 8-9. Workers at the Middle East
Sugar company in Shush followed suit during the second half of December,
as did railway workers in Lorestan, Zagros and Andimeshk.
Mélenchon
and LFI, like the entire French media and political establishment, were
silent on Iranian workers’ struggles. Instead, they latched onto a
movement that began at the end of December with demonstrations by bazaar
merchants, centered on the fall of the Iranian currency and the collapse
of the Iran’s Ayandeh bank. It was not by accident that Mélenchon
ignored the strikes while focusing on this second movement. A
working-class, internationalist policy would have required supporting
the strikes, explaining what was at stake, and calling on workers in
France to support them and to mobilize against the policy of war,
sanctions, and genocide being waged in Gaza, against Iran, and
throughout the Middle East. Mélenchon does not practice this kind of
politics.
The popular demonstrations in Iran testify to the dead end of a
religious power trying to manage a developed society without gagging it.
A people like ours always watches with sympathy the popular
insubordination that asserts the right to a dignified life. However, in
expressing its support, the Mossad seeks to inflame tensions among
Iranians.
This declaration exemplifies Mélenchon’s political
method. It mentions the Mossad’s intervention only to minimise its
significance, relegating it to the role of an external factor that
“inflames” Iranians, rather than explaining the way imperialism and
Zionism intervened in this movement. In doing so, it suppresses the
essential fact: Washington deliberately engineered the economic crisis
that triggered these demonstrations and then tried to exploit it
politically to achieve regime change.
Two weeks later, on January 13, the Wall Street Journal
wrote: “The harbinger that everything was about to collapse in Iran did
not come from the anger of the opposition in the country, or from the
frustrated hopes of young people eager for personal freedoms. It came
from the collapse of a bank. At the end of 2025, the Ayandeh bank, run
by regime insiders and saddled with nearly $5 billion in losses, had
gone bankrupt.”
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated
publicly on 5 February, 2026, before the Senate Banking Committee: “What
we did was create a dollar shortage in the country. That ended quickly
and gloriously in December, when one of Iran's largest banks collapsed.
The central bank had to print money, the Iranian currency went into free
fall, inflation exploded, and so we saw the Iranian people in the
streets.”
Trump has since admitted to having attempted to arm the demonstrators by
sending weapons via Kurdish nationalists in the region. This confirms
that the fascist in the White House sought to transform protests into a
pro-imperialist armed insurrection. His policy does not aim to defend
the democratic rights of Iranians.
From the very start of the movement, however, it was already clear that
NATO and Israeli leaders were aggressively intervening to try to steer
it. Mossad officials had publicly expressed their support for the
demonstrations; former CIA director Mike Pompeo tweeted: “Happy New Year
to every Iranian in the streets. Also to every Mossad agent walking
alongside them.” These forces were monitoring and directing the movement
from its outset, precisely because Washington had engineered the
financial crisis that provoked it.
This information was available as Mélenchon was hailing the movement.
His tweet of January 1 treated it straightforwardly as a popular
affirmation of the right to dignity, without warning workers that
Washington and Tel Aviv had deliberately triggered and were actively
steering the movement.
*****
As the Iranian regime crushed armed attacks targeting its police and
internal security forces, Mélenchon applauded the movement. In his post
of January 14, headlined, “You are right to be afraid!”, he lumped
together bazaar merchants ruined by the US Treasury and insurgents
linked to the CIA and Mossad as actors in a “citizens’ revolution.”
*****
It is revealing that Mélenchon described the December-January
movement as a “citizens’ revolution” the central concept from his own
2014 book. The “citizens’ revolution,” by definition, transcends classes
and unites “the people” against power. It does not ask which social
classes or political forces organize and direct a movement. It need not
ask who engineered the dollar shortage, who triggered the banking
collapse or which Mossad agents marched among the demonstrators.
Mélenchon deliberately suppressed these facts, which were nonetheless
accessible, thereby depriving his readers of the information necessary
to analyze the ongoing movement and to oppose the war that was being
prepared.
The bankruptcy of this position becomes glaring in light
of subsequent events. The genocidal forces carpet-bombing Iran and
threatening to exterminate its civilization had instigated and supported
from the very beginning the movement that Mélenchon presented as a
quest for human dignity. To present this operation as a movement for
dignity is to whitewash imperialism using pseudo-left language.
*****
Mélenchon adopted an apparently critical posture after the start of the
war on February 28, but in reality continued his previous policy. While
observing on X that a war of aggression is the “negation of all
international law,” he proposed to workers that they trust not the class
struggle but Macron’s diplomacy in the face of the aggression against
Iran: “Faced with the mounting danger, now more than ever law and the
United Nations are France’s only means.”
In his tweet, Mélenchon denounced Ayatollah Khamenei—the head of the
Iranian regime, killed along with his family in an American-Israeli
strike—as “the butcher of the Iranian people.” This formulation, at the
very moment when the most powerful military state in the world was
carpet-bombing Iran, deserves comment.
It is true that the Iranian
regime had suppressed by force the movement instigated by Washington
and sentenced opponents to death. But calling Khamenei “the butcher of
the Iranian people” at the moment of his death in American-Israeli
strikes is to cover for imperialism. The biggest butcher of the Iranian
people resides in the White House: it was he who threatened to
exterminate Iranian civilization, bombed civilian sites, and organized the economic collapse that led up to the war. He has for this purpose
the active complicity of the French state, which placed its Istres base
and its Persian Gulf bases at Washington’s disposal.
Mélenchon’s statements do not mention these facts. They do not mention
the tens of thousands of civilians killed, nor the families of regime
officials who bear no direct responsibility for the regime but are
nonetheless struck by bombs. The asymmetry between Mélenchon’s severity
toward the Iranian regime and his silence on Washington’s crimes and
French complicity amounts to pro-imperialist hypocrisy.
*****
LFI’s response to the war against Iran vindicates the irreconcilable
opposition of the International Committee of the Fourth International
(ICFI) to the pseudo-left tendencies oriented to the political
establishment. Mélenchon uses his influence not to organize the working
class’s resistance to imperialist war and the continuous reduction of
its living standards under Macron, but to subordinate it to the
framework of the capitalist nation-state.
Mélenchon was a member
of the Organisation communiste internationaliste (OCI), Pierre Lambert’s
party, which broke with the ICFI in 1971 to support Mitterrand’s
bourgeois PS. His trajectory—from the OCI to the PS for more than 30
years and finally to LFI—produced not a revolutionary workers movement,
but a faction of the capitalist establishment that drapes itself in
radical language in order to contain mass opposition.
The war
against Iran provides the most recent and damning demonstration of this.
Only the intervention of workers into the historical process can stop
this war. The task is to prepare the mobilization of the working class:
to build the rank-and-file organizations capable of opposing the war, to
unify workers’ struggles internationally, and to prepare workers to
wrest power from the war-making capitalist oligarchies.
*****
The Parti de l'égalité socialiste (Socialist Equality Party), the
French section of the ICFI, puts forward the following demands, on the
basis of which it calls on workers, youth, and progressive layers among
intellectuals to give it their support:
— Stop the war against Iran and the genocide in Gaza!
— French troops out of the Middle East!
— Not a euro, not a soldier for the wars of imperialism!
— For an international movement of the working class against war and for socialism!
It is well-established science that the concept of race is a social
construct not a biological reality. Genetic variation within “racial”
groups is greater than between them, thus refuting claims there is any
scientific basis for claims that there are fundamental racial
differences. Yet racism, in various forms, persists in the modern age
under capitalism, as a weapon employed by the ruling class to divide and
oppress the working class. What role does inadequate education in
genetics play in perpetuating the concept of racial difference, and the
superiority of one “race” over another, in the face of scientific
knowledge to the contrary?
*****
Genetic essentialism is a form of psychological essentialism, which
is an early-developing bias in humans. Psychological essentialism is
observable across human cultures and refers to the belief that members
of a social category share an unobservable and internal essence that
determines their traits. People who endorse genetic essentialism believe
that such essences are genetic, which leads them to believe that
same-race individuals are genetically homogeneous, that races are
nonoverlapping genetic groups, and that most racial differences are
therefore determined by genes.
Essentialist beliefs are socially
dangerous and a biological misconception. For example, genetic
essentialist beliefs about race facilitate intergroup hostility, support
for eugenic policies, discrimination and disinterest in cross-racial
friendships.
*****
“The problem is that the basic genetics education that the US public
receives is a risk factor for the development of genetic essentialism
during adolescence,” he writes. “Because basic genetics education does
not discuss patterns of racial similarity in the human genome, and
because it does not discuss the multifactorial basis of complex human
traits, students are never exposed to information that explicitly
counters genetic essentialist views about race.”
*****
To test the hypothesis that teaching a more complex view of genetics
and inheritance could effect a reduction in genetic essentialism and, by
consequence, racism, Donovan and his associates designed and carried
out a series of scientifically controlled experiments with middle and
high school students and teachers from six US states. “Participating
teachers received 40 hours of professional development to learn how to
implement the humane genomics intervention and how to align their
Mendelian and molecular genetics curricula with basic genetics.”
To
randomize the effects of teaching basic genetics versus humane
genomics, half of each class was taught the two modules in that order
(basic genetics first followed by genomics) and the other half in
reverse order. The researchers took care to avoid any biasing factors
which might imply a preferred result, such as implications that genetic
essentialist beliefs are socially unacceptable.
At each stage of
the program—before the start of instruction, after the first module, and
at the end— students were tested to gauge their understanding of the
subject. They were measured with regard to a number of parameters:
“…
(a) basic genetics knowledge, (b) knowledge of genomics, (c) belief in
the genetic discreteness of racial groups, (d) genetic attributions for
complex human traits, (e) environmental attributions for complex human
traits, (f ) belief in racial genetic essentialism, (g) belief in social
constructionism, (h) colorblind racial beliefs, and (i) emotional
response to instruction.”
The results were clear.:
The
results of the first model fully supported each component of the humane
genomics hypothesis. Relative to basic genetics, classrooms that
received humane genomics instruction had greater knowledge of genomics
and less belief in genetic essentialism. Humane genomics classrooms also
had less belief in racial discreteness and lower genetic attributions
for complex human traits. Furthermore, humane genomics classrooms had
greater environmental attributions. All effects were reproduced in the
second half of the crossover trial.
In the subsequent analysis, the resulting data “was explored
[regarding] whether students gravitated toward racial colorblindness or
social constructionism.” These are two alternative concepts of race.
“People who believe in the former [racial colorblindness] contend that
racial discrimination is no longer a problem or that it can be ignored
because race is not socially important, or real. By contrast,
constructionism contends that race is a social concept and that racial
disparities are caused by prejudice, discrimination, and institutional
racism.” According to the authors, colorblindness tends to be associated
with genetic essentialism.
The study found that “[w]hereas there
was no effect of genetics instruction on racial colorblindness, there
was a positive effect of humane genomics instruction on belief in social
constructionism after the first and second rounds of instruction.”
Based
on this result, the researchers “… contend that the ideal instructional
sequence to reduce genetic essentialism is to introduce students to the
models of Mendelian genetics and then move beyond these models and
highlight their limitations using a humane genomics curriculum.”
Furthermore, they recommend that “[c]oherent learning experiences that
are implemented repeatedly can create enduring changes in how people
view the world. Several humane genomics learning experiences spread over
many years of biology instruction will be needed to reduce the
prevalence of genetic essentialist beliefs.”
This study is a
valuable contribution to our understanding of the role of education
design in developing a correct, scientific view of how racist
conceptions are, if inadvertently, reinforced by an insufficient course
of study in genetics. Furthermore, it demonstrates that racist attitudes
are learned and are not in any way innate. However, it does not, and
did not attempt to address the underlying social, economic and political
factors that promote racism, which is a tool of class oppression used
to divide and subjugate the working class under capitalism.
Racism and other forms of discrimination, such as those based on
religion or sex, did not begin with capitalism. They are inherent in
class society as tools employed by the elite to divide and subjugate the
oppressed classes. Education alone cannot overcome the ill effects
which are products of the objective economic interests of the ruling
class in defending its social position. It is precisely those interests
that are driving the Trump administration’s assault on science and
historical truth. Discrimination of all kinds can be definitively
eradicated only with the elimination of class society.
It is in fact because of this study’s value that the lead author,
Brian Donovan, is one of the many scientists targeted by the Trump
administration and his scientific career destroyed. The study was
initially supported by a grant to Donovan from the U.S. National Science
Foundation (NSF). Based on this study, Donovan was awarded this year’s
Elizabeth W. Jones Award for Excellence in Education by the Genetics
Society of America, recognizing someone who has helped the public better
understand the science of DNA. The article in STAT cited above chronicles the long struggle by Donovan to build his research team and carry out the investigation.
Despite
the high praise the study received, last April, both of Donovan’s
National Science Foundation grants were terminated, part of a mass
cancellation of science education awards. The NSF’s justification was
that the grants “no longer effectuate administration priorities.”
Donovan and his team at the University of Colorado were left without
jobs. They were not alone. The Trump administration massively slashed
grants for science education, accounting for 40 percent of the agency’s
terminations and 65 percent of funding cuts. In spite of his
groundbreaking research and the high regard with which he is held by
many in the field, his quest for an academic position has also been
fruitless. He is now studying to become a nurse.
Both Democrats
and Republicans are carrying out major assaults on education and science
as part of their drive to increase the wealth of the super-rich
oligarchy and to prepare for world war.
Thailand’s new government was formally sworn in on April 6, two months
after the February 8 general election. The Bhumjaithai Party (BJT)
secured a parliamentary majority through a coalition with Pheu Thai (PT)
and a number of small conservative and military-aligned parties.
The coalition government led by Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, who
is one of Thailand’s wealthiest politicians, is no more stable than its
predecessors. Years of court rulings, Senate interventions, backroom
deals, and military influence have eroded even the semblance of a
democratic façade that took shape after the formal end of the most
recent military junta in 2019.
*****
The new cabinet, in which the BJT holds 31 positions and Pheu Thai
holds nine, is unmistakably pro-business and pro-military. It includes
Lieutenant General Adul Boonthumjaroen as defense minister and Police
Lieutenant General Rutthapol Naowarat as the justice minister. The
economic ministries have been handed to an assortment of trusted
corporate and bureaucratic figures.
The new government faces the
worst economic conditions since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997.
Global shocks from the US/Israeli war on Iran portend a significant
economic contraction with declining investment and tourism, rising
inflation and the destruction of jobs.
With total trade equivalent to more than its annual GDP, Thailand is
one of the most vulnerable in the region to the ongoing energy crisis,
with the World Bank predicting the country’s economy will grow by only
1.3 percent this year as a result.
The Strait of Hormuz is a vital
source of resources for Thailand including oil, liquefied natural gas
(LNG), and fertilizer. Diesel has risen from 23 to 52 Thai baht per
litre, the Asian spot LNG price has risen from 350-420 baht per MMBtu to
about 680 baht, and urea, the main fertilizer used, has risen from
17,500 baht to just under 24,500 baht a tonne.
The government has
no solution but to foist the new economic burdens on working people.
Household debt, already among the highest in Asia relative to GDP with
86.7 percent, leaves millions highly vulnerable.
*****
Political tensions and border clashes last year were seized upon by
the Thai conservative elites to force out the previous Pheu Thai
government and to brand social opposition as “unpatriotic.” Anutin was
only able to form a minority government with the support of the People’s
Party, which claimed to offer a democratic alternative to the country’s
conservative establishment dominated by the military and monarchy.
The
appointment of Adul as defense minister is significant. He previously
served as deputy defense minister in Anutin’s first cabinet. His
military career was spent in the lower Isan border area with Cambodia,
where he was made commander of the 2nd Army Area in 2023. Adul retired
from the army in 2024 and retains close connections to the military top
brass.
In his policy statement, Anutin pledged to increase the number of
volunteer soldiers by 100,000 and to cancel or suspend the 2001
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) 44 with Cambodia—an agreement tied to
negotiations over the shared maritime boundary. The MOU and similar
agreements ostensibly established guidelines for resolving the border
dispute between the two countries stemming from France’s colonization of
Indochina over a century ago.
Last year during the conflict that began in May, more than 640,000
people were displaced near the land border between Thailand and
Cambodia, with military clashes resulting in over a hundred soldiers and
civilians killed.
Pheu Thai, which has long postured as a party
of reform, is completely discredited. Over the past two decades, it has
twice been ousted by military coups. In 2010, sustained mass protests
Pheu Thai’s “Red Shirt” were violently suppressed by the military which
gunned down protesters in the streets, killing nearly 100.
*****
Last August, a second Pheu Thai prime minister, Paetongtarn
Shinawatra, was removed from office by the Constitutional Court over
“ethical violations” based on the claim that she had criticized the
military’s handling of the border dispute with Cambodia. Now under
conditions of economic crisis, Pheu Thai functions as a junior partner
to the right wing BJT in the name of the “national interest.”
Pheu
Thai has been appointed the key ministries of agriculture, education
and labor. In other words, it has been charged with suppressing unrest
among farmers, students and the working class, under conditions of
spiralling costs of living, mounting debt, and deepening social
inequality.
All of the capitalist parties, including Pheu Thai and
the People’s Party, have proven utterly incapable of meeting the
democratic aspirations and pressing social needs of the masses of
ordinary working people. The right-wing Anutin government will not
hesitate to resort to police state measures in an attempt repress any
social opposition.
On Tuesday, the Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers
(SWC-UAW), which covers over 3,000 student workers at Columbia
University in New York City, announced that the UAW leadership rejected
its request for strike approval.
The SWC membership had voted by 91.5 percent to authorize a strike
last month, 1,129 to 105. They voted 82.2 percent in favor of starting
the strike on April 23. Over a hundred members wrote letters urging
Region 9A Director Brandon Mancilla and UAW President Shawn Fain to
authorize their strike.
In an email to the membership, the SWC
wrote, “This does not mean we cannot strike this semester, but it does
mean that we would not get strike pay from the UAW should we go on
strike to win some or all of our demands.”
The UAW bureaucracy has
twice now rejected their democratic vote. Student workers must organize
to impose their decision, with or without the approval of corrupt and
unaccountable bureaucrats! Columbia student workers should form
independent rank-and-file strike committees to prepare a struggle
themselves and to demand full strike pay, which is paid out of their own
dues money.
Columbia student workers should appeal to the working
class throughout New York City and beyond for support and solidarity.
Graduate workers at Harvard University, also organized in the UAW, have
already set a strike deadline of April 21.
Will Lehman
Will Lehman, a rank-and-file autoworker and candidate for UAW president,
responded to the UAW’s decision by declaring: “Your fight against
intolerable learning, living and working conditions at Columbia
University, which the Trump administration has made a central target of
its efforts to establish a presidential dictatorship in the United
States, will resonate powerfully with workers across the globe. Power
must be seized from the bureaucracy and placed in the hands of the rank
and file so that we can fight for a politically conscious movement of
workers together.”
*****
Student workers should reject with contempt the argument that their
demands are “too political.” The prospect of a political strike
terrifies management at Columbia, because it would pose a serious
challenge to the status quo: The Trump-Columbia partnership, Columbia’s
collaboration with US imperialism, and the staggering disparity between
the multi-billion-dollar assets of the university and the paltry wages
and benefits it gives student workers in one of the most expensive
cities in the world.
As the World Socialist Web Site wrote:
“The union bureaucracy, bound by a thousand threads to the political
establishment, primarily through the Democrats, functions as the
corporate oligarchy’s industrial police force… The more powerful the
potential for a mass movement, the more openly and shamelessly the union
bureaucracy attempts to disrupt it.”
In Michigan, UAW leadership
has kept 1,300 Nexteer Automotive workers on the job for nearly two
weeks after workers rejected a sellout contract by 96.2 percent. When
workers asked why a strike had not been called, UAW officials said it
was “illegal” to walk out under the terms of the contract.
At the
University of California, UAW leadership kept 40,000 academic workers on
the job for nearly three weeks without a contract after 93.3 percent of
workers voted to strike. It refused to set a strike date and ultimately
rammed through a contract without a fight.
It
is high time to revive the old union slogan, “No contract, no work!”
But this cannot happen without confronting the union bureaucracy, a
parasitic layer full of figures
like Mancilla and Fain who siphon six-figure salaries off workers’ dues
while doing everything in their power to demobilize the fighting
strength of the working class.
*****
In a recent article in the Columbia Daily Spectator, SWC
president Grant Miner remarked nervously about “undue scrutiny from
parties which are not a part of our community and not a part of our
bargaining… people from outside of the University who don’t have,
frankly, the best interest of either the union or the University at
heart.”
The UAW’s denunciation of unstated “outside parties,” long
used as part of a red-baiting strategy to cut workers off from
socialist militants, reflects the extreme nervousness about their
ability to keep a lid on the situation and enforce the UAW’s no-strike
dictate.
Fain and the rest of the UAW apparatus fear that the
Trump Administration could use a strike as the impetus to reverse a 2016
National Labor Relations Board ruling that gave governmental sanction
to student workers unions, thereby jeopardizing their dues base. They
are also fearful that a movement of student workers, opposing not only
poverty-level wages but also the fascistic assault on immigrants and
genocidal wars, can serve as a nucleus for a broader offensive of the
working class far beyond what the union bureaucracy can control.
In
New York City, 34,000 building workers are poised to strike next week.
Next month, the contract expires for 40,000 transit workers, raising the
prospects for a strike that could cripple the city.
*****
The working class is the only social force with the potential to bring down the Trump administration, stop the war against Iran,
and end social inequality, but it cannot do so without breaking free of
the shackles imposed by the union bureaucracy and building independent
organizations controlled directly by the rank and file. Columbia student
workers: Do not let the UAW bureaucracy sabotage your struggle. Seize
the initiative, build rank-and-file committees and get involved with the
International Youth and Students for Social Equality today.
The World Socialist Web Site urges members of the Writers
Guild of America to reject the tentative agreement with the Alliance of
Motion Picture and Television Producers by the widest possible margin in
voting from April 16 to April 24. This is not a “contract” but a slave
charter, surrendering key positions without even the pretense of a
fight.
The contract contains huge givebacks on healthcare, accepts
sub-inflation pay increases and has no meaningful AI protections. The
union did not even seek a strike authorization vote before springing the
contract a full month before the expiration of the old one. It is
dealing far more ruthlessly with the strike of its own staffers than with management: cutting off healthcare and taking punitive measures against them.
Not
only the current struggle, but future ones are at stake. The four-year
deal moves WGA workers off the schedule of SAG-AFTRA, who are also
currently in contact talks. This splits the industry and allows
management to divide and conquer.
*****
A growing “Vote No” movement has formed among rank-and-file writers.
They reject claims that there is no alternative, considering
unprecedented levels of wealth.
But this opposition must be
organized. Writers and other workers in the entertainment industry must
be organized, with a particular appeal to SAG-AFTRA members, and support
must be built across the entire working population. Rank-and-file
committees must be organized to build a movement from below, freeing
writers from the straitjacket of the WGA bureaucracy and taking the
initiative to build a broader movement.
*****
The Writers Guild leadership presents the four-year deal as necessary
to stabilize a health plan it says is close to insolvency. The deal
would add $321 million to the plan, but $41 million of this is obtained
by cutting benefits and shifting money from other union funds, including
parental leave.
For decades, the “Guild Shop” model provided a
basic level of security in a highly unstable freelance industry, with
employer-funded benefits helping offset irregular work. The new
agreement breaks with this model. Writers who previously had fully
covered healthcare will now face higher premiums, deductibles and
out-of-pocket costs.
For a family of four, these changes mean thousands of dollars in new
annual expenses. This is effectively a cut in real income, especially
for lower-paid writers already struggling with high living costs in
cities like Los Angeles and New York.
*****
Under the deal, writers receive a 1.5 percent raise in the first
year, followed by 3 percent annual increases, provocative numbers that
fail to keep pace with inflation.
The 2026 agreement does not stop
the use of AI to slash jobs. It allows studios to use writers’ work for
training through union-approved deals, without giving individual
writers the right to refuse. AI can still be used in early stages such
as outlines and concepts, letting studios reduce the role of writers and
lower pay.
Loopholes around “source material” remain: The 2026
deal allows studios to work around it indirectly, especially through
early-stage AI use and ownership control. Disclosure rules are weak,
making it difficult to verify how AI is used. At the same time, any
financial gains from licensing may not go directly to writers. In
practice, the deal regulates AI use while leaving the main threats to
jobs, pay and creative control intact.
The agreement does include
limited improvements, such as minimum standards for “page-one” rewrites
and expanded eligibility for guaranteed second steps. But enforcement is
weak, and the long-standing practice of unpaid “shadow rewrites”
remains largely untouched.
*****
These tensions are unfolding alongside major industry consolidation. The
proposed merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery
creates a media giant with unprecedented control over film and
television production. This reduces the number of buyers for scripts,
weakens writers’ bargaining power and allows studios to impose lower
rates and stricter terms.
Streaming platforms further reinforce this shift. Viewership data is
tightly controlled, reducing transparency and weakening residual
payments. At the same time, short-term contracts, “mini-rooms” and other
forms of contingent work are becoming more common, deepening the
“gig-ification” of writing work.
*****
The defense of democratic and social rights is bound up with the
defense of culture. Corporate America is carrying out a massive
vandalism operation, laying off tens of thousands of cultural workers
and millions across all industries. AI is being used not only to
eliminate writers and actors, but to undermine genuine independent
artistic expression.
In its place, the corporations hope to have
made-to-order, homogeneous, machine-produced content aimed at the
highest possible margins and the lowest common denominator. A related
goal is to deaden the public’s senses, as a way to deal with a growing
mass movement as it develops against dictatorship and inequality. Media
consolidation is cementing a framework where a handful of huge
corporations, integrated with the state, are working to censor critical
voices.
The union bureaucracy everywhere is doing its best to disrupt this
movement in order to avoid disrupting its connections with management
and the political establishment. This latest sellout follows the
cancellation of the strike in Los Angeles of 70,000 teachers and school
workers, as well as the struggles of New York City nurses, Kaiser
Permanente nurses, San Francisco educators and others.
*****
The fight against this agreement is inseparable from the broader
struggle of the working class against austerity, censorship and
authoritarianism. Writers are not alone! Teachers, nurses, logistics
workers and others are confronting the same attacks and the same
apparatus of suppression. A unified movement, built from below and
across industries, can break this stranglehold and open the way for a
genuine defense of jobs, living standards and artistic freedom.
The German government is planning the most comprehensive attack on
public healthcare since Reich Chancellor Otto von Bismarck introduced
statutory health insurance in 1883.
In this, Bismarck was reacting
to the growth of the officially banned Social Democratic Party (SPD),
which under August Bebel advocated a Marxist program. By protecting
workers in the event of illness, and later also with pensions, Bismarck
sought to weaken the influence of the SPD and prevent a revolutionary
development.
After the November Revolution of 1918, and again after the Second
World War, Germany’s statutory health insurance system was further
expanded. Through income-based contributions and the free co-insurance
of family members, low-income wage earners could also access relatively
good healthcare, even if it never reached the level of care of the
wealthy privately insured.
This is now over. The squandering of
hundreds of billions of euros on war and rearmament and the boundless
enrichment of billionaires and multimillionaires can no longer be
reconciled with equitable social compensation. The defense of health,
pensions and other social rights requires nothing less than a social
revolution.
*****
Central is the attack on free family co-insurance. For the time
being, it is only to be abolished for spouses who have no children under
7 years of age and no relatives in need of care. In the future, a
contribution of 3.5 percent of the family income is to be levied.
Children, pensioners, caring relatives and parents of children under age
7 will remain co-insured for the time being. But once the ice is
broken, the cuts will continue.
A further focus is directed
against the chronically ill and the elderly, who regularly rely on
medication. For them, the 50 percent increase in co-payments means a
considerable financial burden. Instead of €5 to €10, they will in future
have to pay €7.50 to €15 for each individual medication. Many will not
be able to afford this, will fall ill more often and die earlier.
Another
austerity measure, the effects of which can only be guessed at so far,
is the capping of hospital expenditure. From now on, expenditure on
nursing staff is not to grow faster than the income of the health
insurance scheme, and the refinancing of contractually agreed pay
increases is to be curtailed. This will further exacerbate the
catastrophic situation in hospitals and the miserable working conditions
of nursing staff, which were already unbearable during the COVID
pandemic.
*****
Other austerity measures also show the inhumane brutality with which
the government is acting. For example, the free skin cancer screening
previously available every two years is to be abandoned. This does not
save the health insurance any money, since cancer treatment is much more
expensive than the relatively simple screening. But many cancer
patients will die earlier and thus relieve the pension and social
security funds—which is likely the actual purpose of the austerity
measure.
No one should underestimate the aggressiveness with which
the government is proceeding against social achievements and democratic
rights in order to realize its rearmament and war plans. It
unconditionally defends the Israeli war crimes in Gaza, the West Bank,
Iran and Lebanon and acts against anyone in Germany who criticizes them.
It supports the goals of Trump’s war against Iran, even though the US
president has threatened to bomb the country with its 90 million
inhabitants “back to the Stone Ages.”
A government that endorses such war crimes is also capable of any atrocity against its own population.
*****
The resistance against the government’s social devastation can only come
from those affected themselves. It requires the independent mobilization of the international working class based on a socialist
program directed against war, social cuts and capitalism.
Australia’s 2026 National Defence Strategy (NDS), released yesterday,
is a statement of the Labor government’s complete commitment to US-led
wars globally, and above all to Washington’s advanced preparations for a
catastrophic war against China.
The NDS has been accompanied by a
commitment to increase military spending by $53 billion over the coming
decade, on top of record defense expenditure of almost $60 billion this
financial year.
As significant as the size of the outlay is the focus of the NDS and an
associated “Integrated Investment Program” on the acquisition of
missiles, drones and other weaponry of a plainly offensive character.
That is in line with Labor’s 2023 Defence Strategic Review, which called
for every branch of the military to be overhauled, with the aim of
“impactful projection” and strike capacity, above all in the
Indo-Pacific.
*****
The entire build-up is occurring as part of a deepening of the
US-Australia alliance. That includes the establishment of a vast naval
precinct in Perth, Western Australia, which will function as one of the
main US maritime bases adjacent to the strategically critical Indian
Ocean, and the transformation of the north of the continent into a
launching pad for aerial operations far into the Indo-Pacific, including
by US B-52 bombers, which can carry nuclear weapons.
