Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. New York City transit workers confront need for fight against Wall Street and Mamdani
A major class battle is brewing this weekend in New York City. On May 16, contracts covering more than 40,000 subway and bus workers expire. The same day, 3,500 Long Island Rail Road workers in five unions become legally free to strike against the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).
A combined walkout at the two MTA systems would shut down mass transit for more than 4 million daily riders, bringing economic activity to a halt at the center of American and world finance. It would have the widespread support of the working class and could become the spark of a far broader movement in New York City and across the country. It would also set the tone for other major class struggles, including the expiration in November of the contract covering 100,000 municipal workers in AFSCME District Council 37.
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The conflict pits the working class in an exceptionally sharp form against the financial oligarchy. New York State’s 154 billionaires have more than $1 trillion in wealth. Wall Street bonuses alone reached a record $49.2 billion last year. The ruling class claims there is “no money” for wages that keep pace with inflation, but no expense is spared to bail out Wall Street when its bets run bad. The MTA itself pays 15 to 20 percent of its entire operating budget servicing $49 billion in bonds to Wall Street investors, with the largest positions held by BlackRock.
The WSWS and the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC) urge transit workers to form independent rank-and-file committees at every depot and line, so they can prepare for the fight on their own terms—maintain control over decisions, block sellouts by the union bureaucracy and mobilize the broadest possible support throughout the working class.
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Mamdani’s election was a sign of the deep-seated hatred of capitalism and the radicalization of the working class. But his administration governs on behalf of finance capital, using insincere populist and “radical” phrases to cover policies of austerity and repression.
Mamdani betrayed the aspirations expressed in that vote before he even took office. He met with Wall Street executives to assure them that New York City remained in reliable hands. And he has made two visits to Donald Trump’s White House, one before and one after he was sworn in as mayor, touting a “partnership” with the fascist president on “affordability.”
Mamdani has dropped his popular proposal for free city buses and abandoned a millionaires’ tax as part of his alliance with Governor Hochul. His property tax hike—one of the few revenue measures not requiring the governor’s approval—was quietly ditched this week, as Mamdani and Hochul jointly announced a $4 billion budget deal cementing their alliance at the precise moment the transit deadline arrives.
At the request of Wall Street, Mamdani has kept billionaire heiress Jessica Tisch as police commissioner. His NYPD arrested 13 striking New York City nurses, while Hochul directed the scabbing operation against them. His administration is now facilitating ICE raids across the city, including at a Brooklyn hospital, where officers attacked protesters and cleared a path for federal agents.
Good pay and benefits and affordable public transit can be won only through struggle, including a strike. Everything workers have ever won has come in defiance of anti-strike laws, court injunctions, the police and other instruments used by the ruling class to crush working class resistance and declare it “illegal.”
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The TWU’s current International President John Samuelsen sat on Mamdani’s transition team. He now calls Hochul “the bosses’ governor,” but in 2022 TWU Local 100 officials led chants of “Kathy! Kathy!” at a rally, as officials waved “Labor for Kathy” signs.
At a recent rally, TWU officials held a banner declaring, “Will strike, if provoked.” But the TWU bureaucracy has made no plans for such a strike and is scurrying to sign a last-minute deal.
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Transit workers should hold their own meetings to decide on their demands in the contract. These should include:
Immediate, substantial wage increases to offset years of inflation and concession contracts, with a full cost-of-living allowance (COLA) pegged to the real cost of living
Rejection of all work rule concessions
Elimination of all inferior pension tiers (Tier 2 through Tier 6) and fully paid retiree medical benefits—no Medicare Advantage
Two-person crews on all passenger trains
No fare hikes—Mass transit must be funded by taxing the oligarchs, not the riders.
Rank-and-file committees should insist that if LIRR workers walk out on May 16, TWU members honor their picket lines and organize to refuse any attempt by the government or the union bureaucracy to force them to scab.
They should also demand that the MTA’s $49 billion bond debt be canceled, with the funds currently consumed by debt service redirected to pay good wages, establish free bus fares, and fund needed maintenance and infrastructure. The Taylor Law must be repealed, and workers should demand that the TWU repudiate its no-strike affidavit, while preparing themselves to act independently of the apparatus.
The rank-and-file committees that transit workers build now are the organizational embryo of a broader movement, one that breaks politically from the Democratic Party, rejects every attempt to subordinate workers to Wall Street’s “budget realism,” and takes aim at the wealth and power of the financial oligarchy itself. This means fighting for a socialist program: expropriating the banks, major investors and corporate monopolies that bleed the transit system through debt service and austerity, and placing the MTA and essential infrastructure under democratic working class control.
2. Pistorius in Kiev: Germany arms for war against Russia
Almost 85 years after the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, Germany’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, Germany is de facto once again at war with Russia. This was underscored by the visit of Defense Minister Boris Pistorius to Kiev at the beginning of the week. At the centre of the visit was the further integration of the German and Ukrainian arms industries and the joint development of long-range weapons systems with which Russia is to be attacked deep in its rear.
At his meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, Pistorius announced a new stage of military-industrial cooperation. Germany and Ukraine intend jointly to develop and produce drones and other unmanned weapons systems with ranges of up to 1,500 kilometers. Zelensky declared that there were already six joint armaments projects with Germany, but that this was “only the beginning.” According to media reports, Zelensky also thanked Germany for further assistance with air defence, the details of which are to remain “a surprise” for Russia.
Pistorius made no secret of the fact that Berlin views Ukraine not only as a recipient of German weapons, but as a laboratory and partner for the development of future German and European warfare. Germany could “benefit from Ukraine’s experience on the battlefield,” he declared in Kiev. This applied in particular to the development of long-range drones. At the same time, he pointed out that the European NATO states had “capability gaps,” especially in the area of long-range weapons systems.
The political significance of this statement can hardly be overstated. In recent years, Ukraine has become the testing ground for a highly technologized positional war in which drones, missiles, data integration, satellite reconnaissance and automated battle management play a central role. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers have already been killed or wounded in this war. Now the German defense minister is openly declaring that the Bundeswehr wants to learn from this bloody experience.
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German-Ukrainian cooperation has long since ceased to be limited to arms deliveries. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion in February 2022, tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers have been trained in Germany and other NATO states. The Bundeswehr provides training, logistics, maintenance, reconnaissance and command infrastructure. German officers and military planners are deeply integrated into Ukraine’s war effort. The new “strategic partnership” institutionalizes this cooperation through regular security and defense policy consultations, high-level meetings on the arms industry and a joint German-Ukrainian working group on arms production.
At the same time, German corporations and state agencies are securing access to key areas of the Ukrainian economy. The strategic partnership explicitly provides for an agreement between the State Service of Geology and Subsoil of Ukraine and Germany’s Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources on the development of critical minerals, geoscientific research and advice for government and industry. Ukraine is not only a military bridgehead against Russia, but also an object of imperialist exploitation and redivision.
This has nothing to do with the defense of “freedom” and “democracy” against a “Russian aggressor.” The war is the result of a long-term strategy by the NATO powers and, in particular, German imperialism, which is pursuing its interests toward Moscow with growing aggressiveness.
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Today, Ukraine once again functions as a geostrategic bridgehead of German imperialism. Similar to Israel in the Middle East, it serves as an outpost for the enforcement of imperialist interests across an entire region—from Eastern Europe deep into the Eurasian landmass. At the same time, it plays a central role in the transformation of the European Union into an independent military great power under German leadership.
How far these plans go is shown by a strategy paper published at the beginning of May under the telling title, “The Road to European Defense Autonomy: A Guide to Overcoming Critical Dependencies,” which is being discussed in media and political circles under the name “Sparta 2.0.” The authors include Jeannette zu Fürstenberg, Moritz Schularick, Nico Lange, René Obermann and Thomas Enders—representatives of finance capital, think tanks, academia and the arms industry. The Kiel Institute published the paper with the message that European defense autonomy is “technologically feasible, fiscally affordable and politically achievable.”
The paper calls for nothing less than the construction of a European military power capable of waging war independently of the United States. Right at the beginning it states that Germany and Europe are “strategically dependent across the entire military effects chain”—from military cloud systems, air defense, command systems, communications and satellite reconnaissance to conventional and nuclear deterrence. These dependencies must be “substantially reduced” in order to achieve “European sovereignty in the area of security and defense.”
The authors put the cost of the European “sovereignty agenda” at €150 to €200 billion by 2030 and a total of about €500 billion over the coming decade. They describe the decisive factors not as money or technology, but as “political prioritization and leadership,” industrial coordination and the willingness to overcome the previous fragmentation of European armaments. Ukraine is explicitly cited as a model: “The experiences and successes of Ukraine in recent years in particular show what is possible when clear objectives and technological priorities are defined.”
The paper’s central fields of action read like a programme for the preparation of a major European war. It calls for a sovereign European command and battle management system, the construction of Europe’s own military cloud and data structures, massive investments in drones and autonomous systems, air defense, satellite reconnaissance, long-range weapons, ammunition production, cyberwarfare and nuclear deterrence. In the section on “scaled autonomous systems,” it states that Ukraine has carried out the “paradigm shift to drone-dominated warfare,” while Europe has “so far largely missed” this shift. The systems named include Shahed-class drones, loitering munitions, FPV drones, unmanned ground vehicles and maritime autonomous systems.
Particularly revealing is the role that the paper assigns to the Ukrainian battle management software Delta. This links situational awareness, data integration, UAV coordination and interoperability with NATO systems and is to serve as a reference for a European solution. Germany’s access to Delta data since April 2026 is described as “a valid starting point.” What is formulated here in technocratic language means concretely: The experiences and data from the Ukraine war are to flow in real time into the construction of an independent European war machine.
The paper is not the fantasy of a few think tank ideologues. It corresponds to the plans in Brussels and Berlin. The new military strategy of the German government, presented in April by Pistorius and Bundeswehr Inspector General Carsten Breuer, openly declares that the Bundeswehr is to be built up into the “strongest conventional army in Europe” by 2039. With Russia defined as the central threat. The state, economy and society are to be comprehensively aligned with war readiness under the framework of so-called “total defense.”
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Enormous financial resources are being made available to implement these renewed German war and world-power plans. On April 29, the federal cabinet adopted the key parameters for the 2027 federal budget and financial planning up to 2030. According to these, the defence budget in the core federal budget is to rise to €105.8 billion in 2027 and to about €180 billion by 2030. This is in addition to special funds and further military expenditures, including war support for Ukraine.
This gigantic militarisation, comparable only to German rearmament before the two world wars, is being financed through massive social cuts that are cynically sold as “reforms.” The social logic of militarism is inexorable. Every billion for tanks, drones, missiles, barracks and war credits is cut from the working class. Hospitals, schools, universities, pensions, social benefits, housing construction and public infrastructure are being slashed, while the profits of the arms corporations explode. Nothing will remain of the social gains historically won by the working class at the end of this orgy of rearmament if the ruling class is not stopped.
All the capitalist parties stand in the camp of German imperialism. The policy of war and rearmament is being driven forward under a government of the CDU/CSU and SPD and corresponds in essence to the demands of the fascist AfD, while the Greens, the Left Party and the trade unions also support it in one form or another. The Greens have long been among the most aggressive warmongers. The Left Party helped pass the war credits in the Bundesrat and functions as an extended arm of the Merz government, and the trade unions also work closely with the government and corporations to impose the war economy and suppress resistance in the workplaces.
The working class faces the task of counterposing its own independent political strategy to this development. The struggle against war cannot be conducted through appeals to the capitalist establishment, but must be directed against it. It must expose the connection between war, rearmament, social cuts and the strengthening of the extreme right, and establish the international unity of the working class against capitalism.
The warning arising from history could not be more urgent. Almost 85 years after the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Berlin is once again preparing a war against Russia. German militarism has not been tamed; it is returning with full force. This madness can be stopped only through the building of an international socialist anti-war movement of the working class.
3. Socialism AI and the political education of the working class
This speech was delivered by Evan Blake, a Socialist Equality Party (US) National Committee member, at the 2026 May Day Online Rally, organized by the WSWS and the ICFI.
4. The Crisis of the Putin Regime and the Struggle for Historical Truth
This speech was delivered by Andrei Ritsky, a representative of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), at the 2026 May Day Online Rally, organized by the WSWS and the ICFI.
5. Trump threatens Iran will be “decimated” if it does not accept US dictated deal
Speaking to reporters before departing for China on Tuesday, President Trump said the US would only accept a “good deal” to end the war against Iran or the country “would be decimated,” adding, “one way or another, we win.”
6. Rising fertilizer prices, shortages threaten Sri Lankan farmers with disaster
The problems facing the peasantry can only be solved through a struggle against capitalism in unity with the working class.
On May 14, 42,000 University of California workers are set to strike in a major confrontation with the state's Democratic Party establishment.
The deaths in Texas are the latest social crime produced by the bipartisan anti-immigrant policies of the US government.
The claim by the local UAW to be waging a determined fight to defend jobs was exposed within a few days, when the UAW suddenly called off the vote and announced a settlement that does not guarantee a single job.
10. South Korea moves towards joining war against Iran
An attack involving two “unidentified airborne objects” on a South Korean-operated ship in the Strait of Hormuz last week is being seized upon by Seoul as a possible pretext to join the US-led war against Iran.
11. Three Rivers American Axle workers vote 98 percent to authorize strike
American Axle parts workers overwhelmingly authorized a strike, joining Nexteer employees in a rank-and-file rebellion against decades of wage cuts and UAW sellouts.
12. German government launches multiple attack on basic rights
The German government is implementing the most extensive rearmament program since Hitler - all to be financed by massive cuts to social services.
13. Australia, Fiji sign new security agreement aimed against China
The upgraded Vuvale Union is part of an expanding web of alliances and arrangements escalating Pacific involvement in the US-led preparations for war against China.
14. Ash Field Teaching assistants in Leicester, UK continue strike in defense of union rep, Tom Barker
The World Socialist Web Site spoke with staff on the picket on the first day of strike action.
15. 90 years of Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times
Modern Times is remarkable for its … “modernity.” The themes it addresses—the relationship of the working class to advanced technology, workers’ protests and socialist intervention, exploitation in the industrial slaughterhouse, police repression, unemployment and poverty—all remain unresolved questions.
Presently, a fascist gangster in the White House wages criminal imperialist wars abroad and advances efforts to establish a dictatorship in the interests of the corporate-financial oligarchy at home. Mass layoffs, wage cuts, slashing of critical social programs and spending constitute a brutal war on the working-class sending millions deeper into poverty.
Modern Times continues to be a film very much of “modern times.”
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The genesis of Modern Times came out of Chaplin’s 16-month world tour following the premier of City Lights in 1931. During his trip, Chaplin witnessed firsthand the economic and political consequences of the Great Depression.
Hundreds of millions of people across the globe were unemployed and thrown into poverty while capitalist governments bailed out the corporations and banks. Those employed were mercilessly exploited. Fascism was on the rise in Europe. Military rearmament was underway and a new war was on the horizon.
Conversely, the gains of the 1917 Russian Revolution still had a tremendous impact on masses of workers despite the betrayals of the Stalinist bureaucracy. In the United States, millions of radicalized workers, often led by socialists and left-wingers, struck and protested between 1931 and 1936 across critical industries. The situation was no less explosive in all the other major imperialist centers.
Chaplin observed these events and sought to address the overwhelming social and political problems. It is reported that during a conversation with Mahatma Gandhi, in which they discussed modern technology, Chaplin, opposed to Gandhi’s condemnation of all modern technology, commented that “machinery with only consideration of profit” had put people out of work and ruined lives.
Modern Times marked a significant development in Chaplin’s work. More directly than ever before, Chaplin confronted the glaring social and, for the first time, political issues of contemporary life. The Tramp character was transformed into the “Factory Worker” at war with industrial capitalism.
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Significantly, a sequence cut from the released print of Modern Times depicted Chaplin’s worker drafted into the army to fight a war oversees. In 1937, Japan invaded China marking the opening stages of the Second World War which would erupt two years later.
On the technical level, Modern Times was Chaplin’s first foray into sound filmmaking. The movie employed sound technology, but to a much more limited extent than every other major Hollywood production at the time. Chaplin understood that addressing the changing social, economic and political period required embracing and mastering new technology. However, he refused to give the factory worker-tramp character a voice, understanding that this would ruin the characters’ appeal and connection to working people all over the world.
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In some quarters, Chaplin’s movie was denounced for its unflattering portrayal of capitalist society. Most notoriously, Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels banned the movie from exhibition in Germany because of its “advocacy of communism.”
The film’s success placed Chaplin higher up on Federal Bureau of Investigation director J. Edgar Hoover’s watchlist. He had been a person of interest since 1922 for allegations that he associated with radicals, made contributions to left-wing labor organizations and intended to insert radical ideas into his films. Chaplin’s generally left-wing views, sympathies with the Russian Revolution and status as a “friend of the Soviet Union” put a target on his back.
Modern Times was followed by two remarkable works, The Great Dictator (1940) and Monsieur Verdoux (1947), which addressed political questions head on, the former satirizing and condemning fascist gangsterism and the latter speaking forcefully against the brutalities of capitalism in its own unique manner. These movies sealed Chaplin’s fate with the American state apparatus. He was hounded by the FBI and its hired press at the beginning of the McCarthyite purges. The witch hunt focused on a manufactured sex scandal, utilized to tarnish the beloved comedian’s image and, eventually, bar Chaplin from reentering the country in 1952 after a tour to promote his new movie Limelight.
However, the witch-hunt ultimately failed to turn masses of workers and youth away from the great filmmaker. Chaplin was one of an unmatched collection of filmmakers, writers, painters, musicians and more who, to quote David Walsh in the recently published Art and the Influence of Revolution, “shared a commitment to realism, not as an artistic school, but as a philosophy of life; a deep feeling for the world ‘of three dimensions’ as it is and a determination to bring out its most essential characteristics.”
In the present period of tremendous inequality and social struggles, Chaplin’s defiance, optimism and humanity retain enormous relevance. To laugh in the face of adversity, not to shy away and ignore the immense problems of life, was Chaplin’s message and it has not lost an ounce of significance.
16. Australia: Labor government’s pro-business budget targets the disabled and poor
Amid a cost-of-living crisis, the government is carrying out an onslaught against the most vulnerable sections of the working class, including the disabled and the poor.
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.
