Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Capitalist crisis, war and the international class struggle
Opposition to imperialist war, the unyielding defense of democratic rights and the fight against all forms of class oppression animate our celebration of May Day. This is the spirit in which we open today’s rally.
However, the celebration of May Day must not be limited to declarations of international solidarity. It must also be the occasion for an objective analysis of the present world situation, for it is on the basis of such an analysis that the strategy of the working class is formulated. This task acquires the greatest urgency today, as this May Day is being held in the midst of a critical stage in the crisis of the world capitalist system.
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The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 was proclaimed by the American ruling class as a historic triumph of capitalism. The so-called “failure of socialism,” it claimed, cleared the way for the restoration of the capitalist world as it was before the socialist October Revolution. All that had occurred in the aftermath of the revolution—the upsurge of the international working class, the monumental global movement of the oppressed masses against imperialism, and the social advances that were won in the aftermath of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949—was to be reversed.
However, this nightmarish perspective was based on a false appraisal of the causes of the dissolution of the USSR and its global significance. What had failed in the Soviet Union was not socialism but the Stalinist regime of anti-socialist nationalism, which was a repudiation of the Marxian internationalism that had inspired the October Revolution. The Stalinist program of “socialism in one country,” which detached the building of socialism in the USSR from the international struggle of the working class against global capitalism, had proven economically and politically bankrupt.
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Gorbachev took the first road. The dissolution of the USSR in December 1991 was the consummation of that betrayal: The Stalinist bureaucracy, having begun as the gravediggers of the October Revolution, ended as the most venal and rapacious faction of the new Russian oligarchy, led today by Putin.
For American imperialism, the same underlying contradiction produced a different response, but one no more a matter of free choice than the Stalinist collapse had been. Confronted with the irreversible erosion of its economic supremacy—the rise of Japanese and German industrial competitors, the emergence of China as a powerful economic and industrial force, the hollowing out of domestic manufacturing, the mounting burden of trade and budget deficits—American capitalism could not recover its position through economic means. The only instrument it still possessed in overwhelming preponderance was military force.
The following three decades of militarism shattered Iraq, Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and other countries. While costing millions of lives, destroying entire societies and creating the greatest refugee crisis since World War II, these wars ended in debacles and failed to reverse US imperialism’s fortunes.
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The most visible and ominous manifestation of the US-centered global crisis is the staggering growth of the national debt. It stood at roughly $5.8 trillion in 2001. It is now approaching $40 trillion. An even more historically and economically significant manifestation of the crisis of US capitalism is the price of gold. At the Bretton Woods conference of 1944, which established the status of the dollar as the world reserve currency, the value of an ounce of gold was set at $35.
That price prevailed until the Nixon administration repudiated the Bretton Woods system in 1971. This set into motion a relentless rise in the price of gold, which during the last year has assumed an explosive character. The price of an ounce of gold now stands at approximately $4,600. In other words, the value of the dollar relative to gold, which has functioned for several thousand years as a measure of value, has declined by more than 99 percent in just over a half century.
This is the framework within which the 35 years from 1991 to 2026 must be understood. They constitute a single historical process: the attempt by American capitalism to overcome, through the application of military violence, a contradiction that it could not overcome by economic means. The wars are component parts of a continuous trajectory, driven by the same unresolved contradiction between the world economy and the nation-state system that produced the two world wars of the 20th century.
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The war against Iran has exposed not only the predatory aims of American imperialism abroad but the social and political reality of the regime that prosecutes it at home. Trump is the product, personification and culmination of a protracted process—economic, social and political—rooted in the breakdown of American capitalism and the putrefaction of its ruling class.
The political structure of the United States is being brought into alignment with its social foundation: the domination of society by a tiny oligarchy that controls staggering wealth and regards all legal, democratic and moral restraints as intolerable impediments to its interests. The rise of Trump is the expression of this reality.
The war against Iran is being financed through a frontal assault on the social rights of the working class. Trump’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget requests roughly $1.5 trillion for “defense”—the highest military spending level in modern American history and a massive escalation of preparations not only for the war against Iran but for global war against China and Russia. This is, in the most direct sense, a budget for world war.
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What is taking place in the United States is not simply a national political crisis. It is a convulsion of world-historical significance. The United States, the former stabilizer of world capitalism, has become the greatest source of global instability. The breakdown of democratic forms in the United States, the turn to open gangsterism in politics, the subordination of all social life to the interests of the oligarchy, and the drive to redivide the world through military violence express the crisis of the entire capitalist order in its most concentrated and explosive form.
The same underlying processes are evident in every major capitalist country. The crisis of capitalism is international, and so, too, is the turn toward dictatorship and war. The European ruling class is rapidly and shamelessly shedding its hypocritical pacifist phrase-mongering, reviving its long traditions of imperialist militarism, and proclaiming that the working class and youth must be prepared to fight and die as their grandfathers and great-grandfathers did in the two world wars of the last century. This is not mere rhetoric. The European NATO powers are already engaged in a de facto war against Russia. Ukraine has been transformed into NATO’s East European equivalent of Israel.
In its analysis of the historical experiences of the last century, the International Committee has stressed that the same contradictions that produced World War I in 1914 resulted in socialist revolution in Russia in 1917. The same historical dynamic is at work today. The global crisis of capitalism that underlies the eruption of imperialist violence is also preparing the explosion of revolutionary struggle by the international working class.
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The second half of the decade is being increasingly characterized by the eruption of the countervailing tendency of social struggle on an international scale. In 1845, Marx wrote: “With the thoroughness of the historical action, the size of the mass whose action it is will therefore increase.” In an initial confirmation of this insight, masses of working people are being drawn into social and political struggle.
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There have been 458 strikes across just eight European countries in the first quarter of 2026 alone, including five general strikes at the national or regional level. This represents a measurable acceleration over comparable periods in 2025. The first quarter of 2026 has already produced national general strikes in Belgium (March 12) and Italy (March 9), regional general strikes in Spain’s Andalusia and Basque Country (March 8 and 17), a general strike in Northern Cyprus, and a national general strike in Argentina in February—a density of general strike actions in a single quarter that exceeds 2025’s already considerable pace. Approximately 1.7 million state employees went on strike in the Indian state of Maharashtra.
On objective indices—number of strikes, size of mobilizations, geographic distribution, sectoral spread, duration, strike authorization margins and frequency of confrontation with state forces—the early months of 2026 represent a clear and measurable escalation of class conflict beyond 2025 levels.
There have been mass anti-ICE demonstrations drawing millions in the United States, including 8 million in the March 28 “No Kings” mobilization. There have been strikes by 42,000 University of California workers and 31,000 Kaiser healthcare workers.
These struggles are an objective expression of an international working class entering into struggle against the conditions imposed by the same crisis that drives the oligarchy toward fascism and war. These struggles are unfolding across every continent and every major sector of the economy, simultaneously and increasingly in direct conflict not only with employers and governments but with the trade union bureaucracies that function as an anti-strike corporate police force.
The decisive question of the present period is which of these two tendencies will prevail. The ruling class has answered the deepening crisis of its system with fascism and war, the militarization of society, the abrogation of democratic rights, the assault on immigrants and political dissidents, and the preparation of conflicts that carry within them the threat of nuclear catastrophe. The working class is answering with the only force capable of stopping this trajectory toward disaster—the mobilization of its own collective social power. The outcome is not predetermined. It will be settled by the struggles now underway and by the political consciousness, organization and leadership that the working class develops in the course of these struggles.
What can be stated with certainty is that the period of relative social equilibrium has ended. The objective conditions identified at the start of the decade—the breakdown of the post-war capitalist order, the impossibility of continuing the old methods of rule, the necessity of either revolutionary transformation or descent into barbarism—have not only been confirmed but have intensified. The first months of 2026 mark the point at which the resistance of the working class has emerged as a global force, contending against the offensive of the oligarchy on a scale that places the fundamental questions of the epoch—war or peace, dictatorship or democracy, socialism or barbarism—directly on the historical agenda.
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The demoralized cynics and skeptics of the middle class pseudo-left will dismiss this perspective as fantasy. Groveling before the ruling class, they are staunch believers in the invincibility and permanence of capitalism. Their attitude to the working class is a mixture of fear and contempt.
But the revolutionary perspective of the Trotskyist movement, led by the International Committee of the Fourth International, is grounded in the most realistic appraisal of objective economic and social processes operating on a global scale.
The same globalization of production that has driven the contradictions of the existing order has produced—as an objective, structural fact—the largest international working class in human history. The figure must be grasped concretely. Since 1980, the development of the world’s productive forces has increased the size of the working class by over 2 billion people. For the first time in human history, a majority of the world’s population lives in cities, a figure that rises by the millions every week.
More than 500 cities now have populations exceeding 1 million, accounting for roughly a quarter of humanity; at least 31 of them are megacities of more than 10 million people, and an estimated 90 percent of world trade flows through a few dozen of these centers. An estimated 1 billion African workers are expected to enter the global labor force in the decades ahead. The billions of workers who have moved from the backward countryside of India, China, Latin America and Africa into the globalized circuits of production have, as the WSWS has characterized it, “leapt forward centuries in a single lifetime.”
Objective social and economic processes are generating revolutionary struggles. The daily deterioration of living standards, the staggering scale of social inequality, the grotesque corruption and crimes of the ruling class are provoking the indignation and anger of the masses. But this anger must be developed into a politically conscious and internationally unified struggle against capitalism.
And this brings to the fore the central problem of this historical epoch: the resolution of the crisis of revolutionary leadership in the working class. The grip of the old and reactionary instruments of capitalist rule—the existing capitalist parties, the trade union bureaucracies, the bourgeois nationalist organizations, the innumerable petty-bourgeois groupings—must be broken. The political independence of the working class from all the agencies of the ruling class must be established.
This requires the building of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement led by the International Committee. Concentrated in its program is a vast body of revolutionary experience spanning a century of struggle.
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In May 1940, in the Manifesto of the Fourth International written by Trotsky just three months before his assassination by a Stalinist agent, the incomparable strategist of world socialist revolution explained:
In history, war has not infrequently been the mother of revolution precisely because it rocks superannuated regimes to their foundation, weakens the ruling class, and hastens the growth of revolutionary indignation among the oppressed masses.
Such a situation is emerging. The very fact that the American ruling class has placed a gangster in the White House and entrusted the management of its affairs to the underworld is irrefutable proof of its historical bankruptcy.
In the face of the greatest obstacles, the International Committee of the Fourth International has worked tirelessly to prepare the advanced sections of the working class for the present crisis. We have created the World Socialist Web Site, which has for the last 28 years served as an incomparable instrument of political analysis and strategic orientation. It has waged an unrelenting struggle to preserve the heritage of Marxism and the historical continuity of the struggle for socialism.
The parties affiliated with the International Committee have spearheaded the fight against the pro-imperialist and corporatist labor bureaucracies through the development of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). Its purpose is not to influence the existing trade union bureaucracies but to organize a rank-and-file insurrection against them and to transfer power to the factory, shop floor and workplace committees.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), guided by the ICFI, educates the younger generation as Marxists, provides a revolutionary alternative to the demoralizing policies of protest politics and directs their energies toward the struggles of the working class.
The ICFI has developed Socialism AI, which was launched on the World Socialist Web Site in December 2025. While the ruling class utilizes AI for the purpose of enriching itself, impoverishing workers and intensifying exploitation, the International Committee is utilizing the vast potential of this technology to advance and accelerate the struggle for socialism.
All the different elements of the work of the International Committee are directed to the goal of building the Fourth International as the World Party of Socialist Revolution that will defeat capitalist barbarism and secure the future of humanity. This party will be built by the workers, the youth and the socialist intellectuals who draw the necessary conclusions from the experiences of this epoch and take their place in its ranks. To the workers fighting ICE, to the strikers on the picket lines, to the students opposing genocide on the campuses, to the millions in the streets of every continent: The question now posed is not whether to fight but how to fight and under what banner.
Our answer to these questions is this: The road forward is the conscious and organized struggle of the international working class for power. The banner is that of the Fourth International. We say: Build sections of the International Committee of the Fourth International in every country. Take up the fight for socialism. Forward to the world socialist revolution!
2. Democrats pave way for $70 billion infusion to ICE and Border Patrol
Congressional Democrats joined Republicans in ending the longest Homeland Security shutdown in US history while clearing the way for Trump’s immigration Gestapo to receive tens of billions of dollars, without any reforms, through a fast-track budget process requiring no Democratic votes.
3. Inside Amir: Tehran, before US and Israeli bombs rained down...
One can’t help but wondering after two months of war and countless waves of bombing, and thousands of civilian deaths: Does that neighborhood still look like this?
This is a first report from this year's San Francisco International Film Festival.
The US national debt has crossed 100 percent of gross domestic product for the first peacetime year since 1946, according to data released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA)—a milestone that arrives as the Trump administration is demanding a $1.535 trillion Pentagon budget and preparing for conflict with nuclear-armed China and Russia.
5. World Bank details Iran war global commodity shock
The bank’s chief economist has warned that the war is hitting the global economy in a series of cumulative waves.
Over the past two months, the Swedish political establishment has moved to consolidate the Sweden Democrats—the far-right party that emerged from the neo-Nazi milieu of the 1980s—as the dominant force in official politics.
7. United States: UIC graduate workers launch third strike in seven years against poverty wages
The more than 1,500 graduate workers who have walked out teach courses, run laboratories, and generate the research revenue that makes the the University of Illinois Chicago function.
8. Vote “no” on the SEIU sellout agreement for Los Angeles school workers!
The central fraud of this contract is that it conceals massive cuts just over the horizon. A new budget proposal for the next school year is expected in mid-May—days after the ratification vote closes.
9. Australia: Victorian Labor leaks pay offer while teacher union prepares another sellout
The reported 28 percent pay rise offer reflects the fears of state and federal Labor governments that strikes in Victoria could become the starting point of broader action by teachers and others nationally.
10. Australian inflation soars as economic effects of Iran war bite
The official cost-of-living index rose 4.6 percent in the 12 months to March, up sharply from 3.7 percent in February.
11. Homelessness among young people in Germany has almost tripled since 2022
The housing crisis is destroying the lives of tens of thousands of children and young people: The number of homeless minors has almost tripled nationwide.
12. Stop the war against Iran!
The editor of the World Socialist Web Site German site explained the social, political and historical basis of the struggle against imperialist war.
The case is a politically motivated fabrication and an assault on the political conscience of millions of workers and young people in Brazil and around the world.
14. Disney announces full deployment of facial recognition at Disneyland Resort
Expansion of biometric surveillance raises concerns over privacy loss, data sharing with authorities and erosion of anonymity in public life.
15. Executions in Florida and Texas: Condemned prisoners maintain their innocence
The twin executions of James Ernest Hitchcock, 70, and James Broadnax, 37, took place as the US death penalty machinery continues its accelerating pace in 2026.
16. South Africa’s ruling class incites pogroms against migrants
This scapegoating must be understood in the context of the social order the ANC has presided over since 1994. While the legal framework of apartheid was dismantled, the underlying class structures have been preserved.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded by holding those who have protested the Gaza genocide responsible, and promising draconian attacks on demonstrations.
18. Campaign begins for meetings on 100 years since British General Strike
Reports from SEP branches in London, Sheffield and Inverness are featured.
19. Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia
Australia:
Bangladesh:
India:
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.
