Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire: The SpaceX IPO and the social physiognomy of oligarchy
Based on the stock valuation at the close of Friday, Musk’s personal fortune stands at around $1.1 trillion. It was about $810 billion before the offering; the pricing and debut swelled it by more than $300 billion in two days, and some $188 billion on Thursday’s pricing alone, in the greatest upward transfer of wealth, conjured out of nothing.
The corporate media greeted the event with euphoria, relaying the oligarchy’s celebrations in tones of breathless admiration. Above the Nasdaq’s perch in Times Square, where SpaceX staff gathered in astronaut costumes, the New Year’s Eve ball—remade as a red-and-orange Mars—was raised to mark the closing bell. In the evening, JPMorgan Chase, a lead underwriter, hosted what the New York Times described as an “intergalactic” gala at its Park Avenue tower.
The $2.1 trillion valuation for SpaceX bears no relationship to any actual process of production. SpaceX lost $4.9 billion in 2025, on $18.7 billion of revenue. SpaceX is valued at roughly 95 times its annual revenue, while the average company in the S&P 500, itself in the grip of a historic bubble, trades at less than four times annual revenue.
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In its own prospectus, SpaceX justifies the valuation by its monopoly control, what it repeatedly refers to as “vertical integration.” It boasts of launching more than 80 percent of all mass to orbit each year since 2023; its Starlink network holds a chokehold over satellite communication; and it is positioning to seize the next frontier, artificial-intelligence computing in orbit. Wall Street’s wager is that SpaceX will monopolize launch, communications and computing infrastructure, and that the AI revolution it promises to power will let capital enormously intensify the exploitation of the working class.
But monopoly in and of itself, however real SpaceX’s grip, conjures no value; it can only capture a larger share of the surplus value wrung from labor elsewhere. No domination of rockets and satellites yields a flow of profit within sight of $2.1 trillion.
SpaceX is not an aberration, but the most extreme expression of a broader process. Total US stock-market capitalization now stands at some 232 percent of GDP—the American markets are worth more than twice everything the country produces in a year, a level exceeding even the peak of the dot-com bubble.
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The endless rise in share values is the deliberate product of state policy. The Federal Reserve has pumped trillions of dollars into Wall Street through bailout after bailout over the past quarter century, under both Democrats and Republicans, driving asset prices to the stratosphere while wages stagnated and social spending was starved. The oligarchy knows that in the event of a renewed crash, another massive bailout is guaranteed, and that the bill will be presented to the working class.
The most direct beneficiary of this speculative mania is Musk, but more is involved than the extreme wealth of one man.
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An oligarchy that has built its fortune on speculation and parasitism conducts a foreign policy of criminality and gangsterism. As SpaceX was being floated on the Nasdaq this week, US bombs were falling on Iran—Trump, who earlier threatened that “a whole civilization will die,” proposing to seize the country’s oil fields and refineries and raising the prospect of using nuclear weapons. More than three decades of unending American war are passing over into the opening stages of global war.
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Every dollar handed to Musk and his fellow oligarchs is a charge laid against the working class, to be collected through a ferocious assault on its conditions of life—wage-cutting and mass layoffs, the gutting of healthcare, pensions and public education, the destruction of every social protection that stands between profit and the labor that produces it.
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The fight against the oligarchy must be waged through the development of the class struggle, armed with a socialist and revolutionary program. From Bernie Sanders, forever pleading with the oligarchs to “pay their fair share,” to Lula’s proposed “billionaire tax” of two cents on the dollar, to New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who greeted Musk’s new fortune on Friday with a call to “tax the rich”—all propose tinkering around the edges, minor reforms that they know will never be implemented.
The issue is the oligarchy itself, and its stranglehold over economic life. The banks and major corporations, and with them the immense productive forces the working class has created, must be expropriated, taken into public ownership and placed under the democratic control of the working class, to be developed not for the profit of a handful of parasites but to meet the needs of humanity. This is the only rational answer to a social order that heaps up trillions for a few while condemning billions to poverty and plunging the world toward dictatorship and war. The SpaceX IPO is the case for socialism.
2. UNITE HERE Local 11 cancels strike by 2,000 hospitality workers days before 2026 FIFA World Cup
A planned strike by 2,000 hospitality workers was called off by UNITE HERE Local 11 after the announcement of a tentative agreement. Ninety-six percent of members voted overwhelmingly for strike action.
3. Bernie Sanders’ AI “sovereign wealth fund”: a public-private partnership to bail out the tech giants
Sanders’ scheme amounts to a state bailout of the AI monopolies, giving Washington a direct stake in propping up their speculative valuations while binding them to the US imperialist war machine.
4. Democrats counter Trump’s White House UFC spectacle with nationalist “No Kings” concert
The June 14 No Kings event aims to dissipate mass opposition to Trump by subordinating workers and youth to the Democratic Party and American nationalism.
5. San Diego County schools gutted by cuts in 2025-26, as budget deficits deepen
Every major school district in San Diego County is in deficit. The 2025-26 school year has brought mass layoffs, pay cuts and campus closures, with deeper austerity projected for years to come.
6. India’s Cockroach Janata Party: A political safety valve aimed at diverting India’s deprived youth
While the popularity of the viral sensation and now newly-founded political movement known as the Cockroach Janata Party reflects the deep anger and frustration of India’s unemployed and student youth, the CJP will only them into a political dead-end.
7. Oligarchy: Trump and the Breakdown of American Democracy
Spanning 2015 to 2026, this volume traces Trump’s rise to power, his coup of January 6 and his second term to their source in the corporate-financial oligarchy, and advances the socialist strategy required to stop the threat of fascism.
8. Preventable deaths of almost 16,000 patients last year in A&E in England
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine identifies the cause as hospitals being under resourced and pushed to the brink of collapse.
9. Britain’s defence secretary resigns, demanding massive increase in military spending
The military and the media is demanding that Labour utilize its existing parliamentary majority to push through a vast increase in military spending, while slashing welfare and social services to pay for it.
Worsley’s narratives—whether on the Romanovs, the Peasants’ Revolt, or the English Civil War—consistently displace class antagonism, economic crisis, and mass political struggle, fixating on monarchs, courtiers, domestic interiors and historical cosplay.
11. Teachers in Türkiye to launch an indefinite protest in Ankara
Private-sector teachers in Türkiye will launch an indefinite protest in Ankara—where the NATO summit will be held in early July—to demand their social rights.
12. European Central Bank lifts interest rate amid rising inflation
The rate rise was the first since 2023 and sets the stage for other central banks to possibly follow suit.
Antwiane Sanders, a Nexteer worker with more than 10 years on the job, was fired after speaking out against the fourth tentative agreement at a UAW Local 699 roll-out meeting held on company premises.
Despite the populist guise of Morena, President Sheinbaum has cited “budgetary constraints” in prioritizing financial elites over teachers’ demands.
15. Australia: Union offers no way forward for striking ACT teachers
The strike showed strong opposition among educators to the deepening attack on public schools, where conditions are already close to impossible. But the union speakers sought to channel this anger behind plaintive appeals to the same Labor government carrying out the attack.
16. Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia
Australia:
Bangladesh:
India:
South Korea:
Sri Lanka:
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.
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