Headlines at the World Socialist Web Site today:
1. This week in history: July 27- August 2
- 25 years ago:
50 years ago:
75 years ago:
UN convention on refugees includes loopholes for imperialist powers
100 years ago:
Philippine legislature calls for plebiscite on independence
On Sunday, the New York Times published a news analysis by David Sanger, its veteran White House and national security correspondent, under the headline “Trump Seems Trapped by Iran War, Even as He Wields the World’s Biggest Hammer.” Trump, Sanger writes, “has seemed trapped, his presidency gradually consumed by a war he cannot find his way out of.”
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Over four decades at the Times, Sanger has functioned as the newspaper’s chief liaison with the US military-intelligence apparatus. His analysis is significant as a statement of how the war is seen and discussed within the state itself.
What is most significant, however, is what is left out. The analysis simply ignores the question of the war’s legality. The war is presented as a policy that has failed, not a crime that has been committed. In this, the piece is representative of the entire discussion of the war within the American political establishment and its media.
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The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, in the judgment under which the leaders of the Third Reich were hanged, defined the initiation of a war of aggression as “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
By this standard—the standard the United States itself wrote into international law—the war on Iran is a criminal enterprise, and every official who ordered, planned and executed it is a war criminal.
If the issue of legality is ever broached, it is quickly passed on as if it is a minor question. On Friday in the Oval Office, a reporter asked Trump: “You’re talking about blowing up civilian power plants and bridges, much of the civilized world would consider that a war crime. Do you?” Trump replied, “I won’t respond to that question.”
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To raise the question of legality is to indict not just Trump but the entire political establishment. American imperialism is dripping from head to toe in criminality, presided over by a gangster-president who represents the criminal underworld in power. But Trump is not an individual, he is the representative of a social class and a state apparatus.
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Veteran reporter Seymour Hersh reported on June 10 that Trump had asked whether striking Iran’s underground missile plants with nuclear weapons “was doable.” Trump has declared that the United States is planning an attack on Iran’s Pickaxe Mountain, and the Economist noted Sunday that Iran’s deep underground facilities “are essentially invulnerable to non-nuclear weapons.”
The escalation of the Iran war—as part of the global eruption of US imperialism—confronts all of humanity with disaster. The global war being waged by the Trump administration faces no meaningful opposition from the political establishment, which fundamentally supports the aim of subjugating the Middle East in order to subdue US imperialism’s main global rivals, Russia and China.
Despite the best efforts of the media and political establishment, the question of legality will not disappear. The war against Iran is a crime, but no institution of the existing order will hold the criminals to account, because all of them belong to and defend the same system that produced it.
That task falls to the international working class, the one social force with no stake in the system of imperialist plunder and the only force capable of bringing the war to an end. The struggle against war must be united with the defense of the social and economic rights of the working class and with the fight against the capitalist system that is the source of inequality, dictatorship and war.
3. Democrats reject any appeal to popular opposition to subversion of midterm elections
Given the scale and nakedness of the plans to subvert the November midterm elections, outlined by Trump in his July 16 prime time speech, what is most significant is the absence of any serious response. The lurch to dictatorship is not the work of one individual, but rather the response of a crisis-ridden ruling oligarchy, which installed the criminal product of the New York real estate and gambling mafia in the White House, to unprecedented levels of social polarization and growing opposition in the working class.
The contradictions of American capitalism, both internationally and at home, have reached the point where the old constitutional order can no longer be maintained.
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In his speech on July 16, Trump spouted one obvious lie after another to lay down the justification for manipulating the elections, suppressing them, or overturning the results if, as widely predicted, the Republicans lose. He demanded that states turn over their voter registration rolls so that the federal government could “scrub” them. He ordered state officials to allow his minions to “secure” voting machines. He demanded congressional passage of his SAVE America Act, imposing proof of citizenship and photo ID requirements that would prevent millions of workers from voting and would all but ban mail-in voting.
He announced that he was ordering the Department of Justice (DOJ) to fire and prosecute officials accused of concealing the alleged voting fraud. The following day, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said the government would prosecute state officials who refused to go along with Trump’s demands for federal control of the elections.
Administration officials have repeatedly refused to rule out deploying the National Guard and/or ICE to polling stations on Election Day. Trump has purged the DOJ and other federal agencies and stacked them with loyalists who echo his claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
In response to the July 16 speech, House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries said, “We will not let Donald Trump and Republican extremists steal this election,” but went on to minimize the threat, calling Trump “feeble” and “pathetic.” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed Trump as “weak and failing.”
Since then, the Democrats and the media have said next to nothing about the erection of the machinery to subvert the elections. Appearing Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” program, Jeffries did not mention Trump’s attacks on the elections. Bernie Sanders, appearing on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” was likewise silent. Jacobin magazine, the unofficial organ of the Democratic Socialists of America, has not published a single article on Trump’s July 16 address.
An exception to the rule is Michigan Senator Elizabeth Slotkin, a former CIA analyst, who appeared July 22 on the Bulwark podcast. She said: “If he loses, he’s built a case that the elections were rigged. He’s telling us he’s doing it… The big problem is the potential use of uniformed military or federal law enforcement in and around our polls.” She acknowledged that her “Protect Our Polls Act,” requiring congressional approval for the deployment of troops to the polls, had no chance of being enacted.
Even as they downplay the threat to the elections in public, the Democrats are holding closed-door strategy meetings to review different scenarios and map out their response. There have been only scattered reports of these so-called “table top” meetings, but they reveal the stark difference between what is discussed in official political and media circles, and what is being transmitted to the population.*****
The central concern of the Democratic Party is not to defend democratic rights, but to politically disarm the working class in the face of the movement to dictatorship. It responded to the record numbers who marched in the multi-million-strong “No Kings” demonstrations with fear and hostility, and even more so to the mass anti-ICE protests in Minnesota.
In all of their planning, the Democrats rule out anything that would alert the masses of working people and mobilize them to stop the attack on democratic rights. All opposition is to be limited to appeals to the courts and local police, under conditions where the US Supreme Court, stacked with far-right justices, has granted Trump immunity from criminal prosecution and vastly expanded his executive powers.
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Were Trump to drop dead tomorrow, the assault on democratic rights and movement to dictatorship would continue, whether under a Democratic or Republican administration. It is rooted in the insoluble crisis of the capitalist system, and can be stopped only by the independent mobilization of the working class on the basis of a socialist program.
The World Socialist Web Site spoke with historian Matthew Stewart about the American Revolution, slavery, abolition, radical philosophy and the democratic and egalitarian traditions in American history.
5. Trump berates the press, with little response
The number one enemy of the First Amendment spewed bitterness and insults against the media and his political opponents Friday night, drawing little or no response from 700 journalists in attendance at a second iteration of the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) annual dinner.
The dinner was originally set for April but was called off abruptly after a gunman broke through a security barrier and rushed towards the ballroom before being overpowered by police and Secret Service agents. The rescheduled dinner was moved to a much smaller location, with an attendance of only one-quarter of the 3,000 who turned out two months before.
The ceremonial function of the WHCA dinner is to give awards to selected print and broadcast journalists, supposedly celebrating the oppositional role of the “Fourth Estate.” But over the decades, the real relationship of the corporate media to the American government—as dutiful stenographer and peddler of imperialist propaganda—has become more and more pronounced.
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Outgoing WHCA President Weijia Jiang of CBS made only a passing reference to this sordid record in introducing Trump, saying, “There is an existential difference between criticizing the press and trying to undermine it.” But she extended an olive branch to the fascist president, saying, “I’ve covered you for a long time and so have many reporters in this room. We ask questions and you push back. Then we push back. You’ve always been a deal guy. Well, the First Amendment is a done deal.”
Trump’s remarks were a noxious mixture of crude insults, some disguised as badly scripted jokes, entire paragraphs lifted from his speeches at MAGA rallies and asides that appeared to be expressions of senile dementia. He rehashed attacks on Joe Biden, Adam Schiff, Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker and Ilhan Omar, as well as journalists like Kaitlan Collins and Jake Tapper of CNN.
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Trump’s meandering address extended for an excruciating hour and 15 minutes, with the only saving grace that the performance was delivered so poorly that long stretches were simply incomprehensible.
The audience reaction was largely one of silence, punctuated by a few groans and raucous applause from a handful of tables populated by Trump lackeys like White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and acting Attorney General Todd Blanche.
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No matter how brazen the lies or how disgusting the insults Trump delivered, no one in the audience had the political principle or simple self-respect to get up and walk out, or to denounce the speech as a diatribe against press freedom. This only demonstrates that the corporate media is not Trump’s enemy but rather his facilitator. Or to put it more precisely, whatever their opinion of the present occupant of the White House may be, it is not allowed to disrupt the relationship of the corporate media to the capitalist state as a whole.
6. Wholesale corruption of “the beautiful game”: FIFA’s World Cup 2026
The 2026 World Cup marked a qualitative escalation in the degradation of sport by capitalism. Five-minute hydration breaks were mandated each half—not for player safety, but to sell commercials. FIFA expanded the tournament from 64 to 104 matches, a 62.5 percent increase, wringing more television slots and more advertising revenue out of players’ bodies.
In keeping with American capital’s individualist mentality, this World Cup was about Messi, not Argentina; Mbappé, not France; Cristiano Ronaldo, not Portugal; Haaland, not Norway. The motive was marketing—billions in advertising revenue. Teams now change jerseys annually, attempting to lure working class children into buying endlessly. A sport born in streets and factories has been priced beyond the reach of the working class that loves it.
The trophy itself arrived inside a trunk made by Louis Vuitton, the luxury fashion house whose handbags fill the windows of Fifth Avenue in New York and the Champs-Élysées in Paris. The sport of the world’s poor was delivered in the packaging of the super-rich.
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Dynamic pricing, imposed by American capital, proved a crucial tool for wresting maximum profits from the tournament, while pricing the vast majority of fans out of the stadiums. For South Africa 2010, FIFA set the cheapest final ticket at $100 for nationals. For Qatar 2022, the minimum rose to $200. For the tournament just concluded, it jumped 900 percent, to $2,030. Yet even this figure pales against resale prices: the cheapest between $7,000 and $10,000, the most expensive between $35,000 and $39,000. “Official hospitality packages exceeded $57,000. In extreme cases, offers reached $575,000 and even millions for premium seats,” reports CNN en Español.
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The majority of football’s geniuses were forged in poverty. Maradona shared a 4x4-meter room with seven siblings. Di María’s father sold charcoal to survive. Pelé played barefoot with a ball of rags and socks. Ronaldo Nazário hit Rio’s streets at 13 when his father abandoned the family. Cristiano Ronaldo’s mother was a cook, his father a gardener in Madeira. Mohamed Salah emerged from a humble Nile Delta village. Samuel Eto’o kicked a coconut for years in Cameroon. The list is endless. Capitalism plunders the talent the oppressed masses produce, then sells it back to them at a massive markup.
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The conclusion is not that footballers are exceptional freaks of nature. It is that capitalism suppresses the creative and intellectual potential of every human being and permits a handful to develop only what can be monetized. The $15 billion and the Louis Vuitton trunk are not, as FIFA claims, the means by which the people’s passion is “financed.” They are the mechanism by which the sport is taken hostage from those who created it, and through which society is prevented from raising it—and art and science—to the level humanity is capable of.
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The same oligarchy that has managed to turn football into a source of mega-profits is driving humanity into a world war. In this sphere, it will not be a question of billions of dollars, but billions of dead.
It is not football that will unite the world, as the organizers cynically claim. What is required is the abolition of capitalism and its replacement with world socialism—production to satisfy human needs, where education, healthcare, housing, nutrition and recreation become inalienable rights, and every human being may flourish in sport, the arts and science.
Something of that future was glimpsed on the field. The most wonderful revelation of the tournament came from Africa: a true pleasure to see Ghana, Cape Verde, Ivory Coast, Morocco and Egypt fighting on equal terms with the giants of Europe and South America. Talent is distributed everywhere; only the means of developing it are hoarded. Under socialism this will not be a revelation. It will be the norm.
7. Frank Gehry (1929–2025) and his search for a “sliver of space”
Frank Gehry, who worked up to the end of his life, profoundly changed the very nature of architecture. Gehry essentially catapulted architectural form into the realm of sculpture, creating many unprecedented and beautiful buildings. His life embodied the paradoxes of art under late capitalism.
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Gehry has been categorized incorrectly as a post-modernist which, as an architectural style, had proponents in the US like Charles Moore and Robert Venturi. While their responses reflected a reaction against the modernist movement’s shunning of decoration and striving for simplicity and economy of construction, they also dispensed with the core modernist conception that good design could change social conditions as evinced by the Bauhaus movement.
Founded in Germany in 1919, the Bauhaus was inspired by and intertwined with the explosion of creative work—including in design and architecture—made possible by Russian Revolution of 1917 and a mutual desire to merge art with industry to forge a new, egalitarian society.
Perhaps the most apt description of Gehry is a contemporary cubist. Gehry said, “I grew up a modernist. Decoration is a sin. That’s the mantra of modernism. So, if you can’t use decoration then how do you humanize a building? Materials could be expressive.”
Gehry rejected the classical stylistic references adopted by the post-modernists and strove for beauty in the choice of materials and form. His work is more that of a sculptor whose creations are inhabitable by people. Gehry’s long standing collaboration with, and respect for artists and sculptors like Richard Serra, Claes Oldenburg, Carl Andre, Donald Judd and many others was critical to his architecture.
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Gehry’s signature building, the 1997 Guggenheim franchise in Bilbao in the Basque region of Spain became the paradigmatic example of buildings transforming the fate of cities. In the case of Bilbao, the destruction of its ship building industry rendered it a post-industrial city with high unemployment and social devastation. In the year it first opened the Guggenheim in Bilbao, a city of 350,000 people, attracted 700,000 visitors. Many city administrations have since attempted to emulate this strategy.
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At the heart of Gehry’s architecture was a belief in imperfection, energy, and humanism. His buildings appear chaotic, yet they were always rigorously constructed. He often likened architecture to musical composition. He once joked that he derived inspiration from his lifelong fascination with fish. He related how his grandmother brought live carp to his childhood home. The fish had a temporary reprieve from being turned into gefilte fish in the family’s bathtub where young Frank would observe them turning and swimming for hours. For Gehry fish represented movement and grace long before computers made such forms feasible. Indeed, the fish motif swims throughout his career.
Gehry’s process was tactile and experimental. Before any digital modelling, he would build countless small paper and cardboard models. “That’s how I think,” he said in a 2017 MasterClass lecture. “I need to make it, see it, and feel it.” His vast team of architects and engineers would then translate the physical models into digital form, merging handcraft and high technology.
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In his later years, Gehry often resisted the label of “genius,” preferring instead the idea of perseverance. “I’m a 90-year-old who still gets scared every time I start a new building… Fear is part of the process. You have to go through it to find something honest.”
For Gehry, architecture was never about perfection—it was about curiosity, risk, and empathy. His structures breathe, twist, shimmer and laugh. They invite human habitation but also human wonder. In this, Gehry achieved what few architects ever do. He made buildings that people feel as much as they see.
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Leon Trotsky wrote in Literature and Revolution in 1924: “There is no doubt that, in the future—and the further we go, the more true it will be—such monumental tasks as the planning of city gardens, of model houses, of railroads, and of ports, will interest vitally, not only engineering architects, participators in competitions, but the large popular masses as well…
“In this struggle, architecture will again be filled with the spirit of mass feelings and moods, only on a much higher plane, and mankind will educate itself plastically, it will become accustomed to look at the world as submissive clay for sculpting the most perfect forms of life. The wall between art and industry will come down. The great style of the future will be formative, not ornamental.”
The architecture that Gehry produced is just a suggestion of the future that Trotsky foresaw.
8. US measles hits a 35-year high: One front in a global unraveling of public health
On July 23, 2026, the CDC reported that the number of measles cases in the US surpassed the total for the whole of 2025.
9. Protests continue against police and ICE killings in Wisconsin, Texas
While hundreds demanded justice for Corey Ruiz and Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, the officers responsible for their deaths remain unidentified, uncharged and protected by the state.
10. Workers in Mexico, US voice support for Will Lehman after death threat by UAW official
Support continues to grow among workers in the US, Mexico and internationally for Will Lehman, the Mack Trucks worker and socialist candidate for United Auto Workers (UAW) president, following the death threat made against him by an UAW International staff member. UAW Region 9 Organizer Raymond Jensen Jr. posted an AI-generated image depicting Lehman bloodied and menaced by a masked gunman on the candidate’s public Facebook page. Neither UAW President Shawn Fain nor any other UAW International Executive Board members have repudiated Jensen’s threat.
But the attempt at intimidation has backfired, provoking an outpouring of solidarity from workers who see in Lehman’s campaign their own struggle against the pro-corporate UAW bureaucracy. Particularly significant are the statements from Mexico, where workers labor for the same global corporations that exploit workers north of the border....
11. After Supreme Court setback, Trump back on trade war path
US president Trump has returned to the trade war battlefield with the imposition of tariffs of between 10 and 12.5 percent on around 60 countries, comprising the major trading partners of the US, with the threat of more to come.
*****This decision followed the basic modus operandi of the Trump administration which is to act first and then concoct pseudo legal arguments to try to justify its measures.
The decision to invoke Section 301 was taken after the Supreme Court in February struck down the legality of the sweeping “reciprocal tariffs” imposed by Trump in April 2025. It determined in a 6-3 vote that he had exceeded his powers under the International Emergency Powers Act of 1977 which he had sought to employ.
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The sweeping use of Section 301 may also come under legal challenge because while it has been invoked against specific countries, it has never been used to impose tariffs over a range of countries as in this case.
But whatever the legal issues—and the invoking of failure to deal with slave and forced labor as a justification is an obvious sham—the administration is determined to proceed.
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In his State of the Union address delivered in February, Trump advanced the economic Big Lie which is constantly wheeled out that the tariffs would be “paid for by foreign countries” and may even come to replace the income tax system.
The amount raised by income taxes is at least six times that obtained by customs duties and studies by the New York Federal Reserve and Germany’s Kiel Institute have shown that more than 90 percent of the tariff imposts are paid for by US companies and consumers.
The tariff measures are not aimed at lifting living standards or wages but are part of the desperate drive by American imperialism to overcome its economic decline at the expense of its rivals and competitors, particularly China, by all measures considered necessary. And as in the 1930s, they are an integral component of the unfolding of a new world war.
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A new clash with Europe is in the making on top of the tariffs already imposed as a result of the European Union imposing an €890 million fine on Google for breaching its rules.
Trump responded immediately on his Truth Social Platform saying his administration would start a new tariff investigation against the EU for “robbing” American companies and the American taxpayer.
“The European Union will pay a very big price for this illegal and highly unethical conduct, which I have consistently warned them about. The penalties will be entirely reversed and, we anticipate, a substantial TARIFF to be placed on them as the earliest possible moment.”
There may also be conflicts in areas that were previously considered to have been settled.
The Financial Times (FT) reported last week that a clash had arisen with Japan over a $40 billion nuclear power plant in the US. Japan agreed to finance it as part of the commitment it made, under the threat of having sweeping, now declared illegal, “reciprocal tariffs” imposed on it, to make $550 billion worth of investments in the US.
The Japanese side apparently raised concerns that it would be liable in the event of a nuclear accident. The US commerce department was reported to have given an assurance this would not be the case, but this has not been put in writing—a process that could take months.
Under the investment “deal” agreed to by Japan—more like a protection payment to the US—investments are decided on by the US and are American-owned.
On July 24, 2026, 230 public defenders, members of Neighborhood Defender Service Union (NDSU)—Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys struck after failed contract negotiations with their employer, the Neighborhood Defense Service (NDS). The union is affiliated with United Auto Workers Local 2325 and the strike includes attorneys in Detroit, Michigan; Harlem and Bronx, New York; and San Marcos, Texas.
NDS attorneys and social workers represent working-class clients who cannot otherwise afford private counsel in a wide range of legal matters from criminal defense, immigration and housing. More than 80 public defenders are striking in Detroit alone. The strike has stopped work completely at the NDS offices in Michigan, New York and Texas.
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That NDS management pleads poverty is itself an indictment of capitalism. NDS and similar organizations overwhelmingly depend on public funding; their budgets are not determined by the needs of the communities they serve or the workers they employ, but by the fiscal priorities of the capitalist state which finds unlimited resources for police, prisons, imperialist war and bailouts for the financial aristocracy. In the Detroit metro area, billions have been squandered on corporate tax breaks for the Big Three automakers and subsidies for sports stadiums and billionaire real estate tycoons like Dan Gilbert and the Illytch family.
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The legal profession has undergone a growing proletarianization in recent decades. The “independent legal professional” has increasingly given way to the current reality of legal workers, employed by the state, by a firm, or by a non-profit. They are all subject to the same pressures of cost-cutting, speed-up and job insecurity which defines work across capitalism.
The class character of the strike is not only defined by the positions of the attorneys as workers, but by the populations they serve, which are some of the poorest in the United States. Wayne County has a poverty rate of approximately 22.1%, which surges to 34.5% in Detroit. The Bronx and Harlem have poverty rates of 28.7% and 26.7% respectively. San Marcos, while being a mid-sized city of roughly 70,000 people, has a poverty rate of 26.9%. These areas also have significant immigrant populations and NDS defenders often represent working-class clients in immigration matters directly.
The NDS strike is part of a wider strike action by public defenders. Approximately 500 Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS) workers, along with members of the Association of Legal Advocates and Attorneys—another chapter of UAW Local 2325—also struck on July 16. Last year, workers at the Bronx Defenders, the Goddard Riverside Law Project, CAMBRA Legal Services and the Urban Justice Center also struck.
The UAW bureaucracy quickly shut down the BDS strike after reaching a tentative agreement on July 22, claiming the New York City government has allocated more resources to public defenders.
The UAW apparatus acts not as the representative of workers but as a tool of corporate management and the Democratic Party. It is no accident that UAW Local 2325 resolved the BDS strike two days before the NDS strike was called. UAW officials prevented a similar united strike in New York City last year by pushing through a grossly inadequate contract.
The UAW also endorsed and campaigned for Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic Socialists of America member who was elected mayor based on promises he would address the “affordability crisis” and social inequality in New York City, along with his opposition to the US-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza. While his election was an expression of the growing radicalization among workers and youth, Mamdani’s chief role has been to contain opposition to the capitalism and smother it within the Democratic Party.
The way forward for public defenders lies in the political independence of the working class from both corporate-controlled parties of austerity, war and repression.
As Will Lehman, the socialist candidate for UAW president and Mack Trucks worker, stated in support of the Brooklyn Defender Services strike:
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"The power to win this fight lies with the workers themselves, not with union officials negotiating behind closed doors or with politicians. I urge legal service workers to fight to expand the strike to every Local 2325 shop and beyond, including appealing to the tens of thousands of transit workers, healthcare workers and municipal employees who are now or will soon be staring down expired contracts. A unified walkout across the entire sector is the only way to break the isolation that management and the UAW apparatus depend on to wear workers down. To seize the initiative, what is required is to build rank-and-file committees—democratically elected, accountable only to the membership, with full transparency over negotiations and the power to reject any deal that doesn’t meet workers’ needs. That is how we win."
13. The contemporary relevance of Felix Morrow’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain
Felix Morrow’s Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Spain is one of the oldest, yet also one of the most relevant books on the Spanish Civil War, stated Peter Schwarz, a member of the World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board, at a symposium in Berlin.
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Mehring Verlag, which republished a German-language edition of Morrow’s book in 2020, was invited to present it at a two-day symposium on 18–19 July, organized in Berlin by the Münzenbergforum, the association “Fighters and Friends of the Spanish Republic 1936–1939” and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation to mark the 90th anniversary of the outbreak of the war. [The World Socialist Web Site is] reproducing Schwarz’s full talk here as a video.
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“Marx regarded history as the history of class struggles,” said Schwarz. “Morrow takes the same approach. He is not blinded by empty labels—‘Republic,’ ‘Democracy’, ‘Popular Front.’ He does not judge the actors by what they claim about themselves. He looks beyond the labels and examines the social classes and interests that clash in irreconcilable conflict.
“Fascism—embodied in Spain by General Franco—was no accident,” emphasized Schwarz. “It was the result of the irresolvable crisis of capitalism, in which the bourgeoisie could no longer make any social concessions and could only maintain its rule by crushing the workers’ movement.” He quoted from the chapter “Why the Fascists Revolted”:
Franco’s program is identical in fundamentals with that of Mussolini and Hitler.
Fascism is that special form of capitalist domination which the bourgeoisie finally resorts to when the continued existence of capitalism is incompatible with the existence of organized workers. Fascism is resorted to when the concessions, which are a product of the activities of trade unions and political parties of labor, become an intolerable burden on the capitalist rulers, hence intolerable to the further existence of capitalism. For the working class, at this point, the issue is inexorably posed for immediate solution: either fascism or socialism.
Spanish capitalism had arrived at this point when Franco revolted.
Franco’s fascist uprising on 17 July 1936 had been preceded by five years of bitter class struggle, which had led to the overthrow of the monarchy, repeated uprisings and bloody massacres of workers and peasants. The global economic crisis had further exacerbated social tensions. In April 1936, following the electoral victory of the Popular Front in Spain and France, a powerful wave of strikes developed, starting in Madrid and sweeping across the whole country. At this point, the Spanish capitalists came to the conclusion that democracy was untenable: “Franco staged a coup—and the capitalists, the large landowners and the Catholic Church rallied behind him almost unanimously,” said Schwarz.
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The revolution, Schwarz emphasized, did not fail due to a lack of fighting spirit among the Spanish workers. They demonstrated an immense willingness to make sacrifices. Around 60,000 volunteers from all over the world rushed to their aid. “If Franco triumphed nonetheless, it was not because of a lack of fighting spirit among the workers, but because of the failure and betrayal of their leaders. The decisive factor in this was the Popular Front.”
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Schwarz briefly summarized how, in the 1920s, the Stalin regime, acting as the representative of a privileged bureaucracy, usurped power, rejected the prospect of world socialist revolution and suppressed the Left Opposition, and how it ultimately perpetrated a “political genocide” that wiped out an entire generation of Marxist revolutionaries, devoted socialists, capable engineers, scientists and Red Army officers. The number of victims of the Great Terror of 1937 and 1938 is estimated at over one million.
“One cannot separate the Popular Front policy from the Great Terror,” emphasized Schwarz. “They are two sides of one and the same coin. The Stalinist rulers had come to the conclusion that any revolutionary uprising anywhere in the world would shake their own privileged rule, and sought their salvation in alliances with the ‘democratic’ imperialist powers and, when this illusion was shattered by the Munich Agreement, in an alliance with Hitler.”
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Schwarz also addressed the role of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT and the POUM, without an understanding of which one cannot draw the lessons from Spain: “By joining the Popular Front, they played a central role in suppressing the revolution.”
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Concluding his speech, Schwarz addressed the contemporary relevance of the lessons from Spain. He said that the international crisis of capitalism had reached such proportions that it was driving the capitalists back towards fascism, citing Trump, Meloni, Le Pen and the rise of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) as evidence.
Admittedly, much has changed since the Spanish Civil War. “There are no longer any workers’ parties worthy of the name. Stalinism has collapsed; social democracy is a right-wing, bourgeois party; and the trade unions have definitively turned their backs on the class struggle. They are committed to social partnership and organise mass redundancies throughout industry and cuts to social services.”
But the working class, too, has changed: “It is a powerful social force, more international, extensive and closely networked than ever before. On a global scale, it numbers in the billions. Over half of humanity now lives in cities.” Workers are being confronted ever more openly with the fact that they have no future under capitalism, as it has nothing to offer them apart from war, oppression, poverty and unemployment.
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A lively discussion ensued following the lecture. In particular, participants in the symposium who were close to the Left Party or anarchism were clearly annoyed that Schwarz had denounced the betrayal of Stalinism and the role of anarchism, and had drawn lessons for today from historical experience.
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Regarding the accusation of being a “hardcore Trotskyist,” Schwarz said he regarded it as a compliment. Marx and Engels, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin and Trotsky had also had to put up with similar accusations; they were repeatedly denounced as completely unrealistic and as sectarians because they did not compromise on their principles.
“I adhere to the principle put forward by Karl Liebknecht, who said: ‘First clarity, then unity’,” explained Schwarz. “Without a clear political perspective, the working class cannot fight; above all, it cannot win. To develop this perspective, one must learn from history.”
In response to the call to join forces with all other parties to prevent an AfD election victory, Schwarz replied: “I just want to ask one question about that. How can one explain that in Thuringia, where the Left Party held the Minister-President for ten years, the AfD now stands at 40 per cent? And who privatized the flats here in Berlin? Wasn’t it perhaps the PDS [the Left Party’s predecessor] in the Wowereit Senate? In reality, it is precisely this mixture of left-wing rhetoric and right-wing policies that breeds the frustration which the AfD exploits.”
He repeated: “The fight against the AfD is not a question of parliamentary arithmetic, but of the dynamics of the class struggle.” When he and others of his generation entered politics in the 1970s, they were electrified and inspired by the major strikes in the steel industry and the public sector. “Today, every conflict—even when, as in the case of VW, 100,000 jobs are at stake—is immediately buried and resolved behind closed doors. Then a redundancy plan is negotiated, preventing any spontaneous resistance from arising. That strengthens the AfD.”
In response to an interjection from the audience that it was the workers themselves who did not want to fight, Schwarz replied: “That is an insult to the workers. You cannot hold them responsible for the betrayal of their leaders.”
14. Islamist attack on Berlin CSD: Government intensifies police state offensive
The Islamist attack on Christopher Street Day (CSD) in Berlin on Saturday evening, in which a woman was killed and 29 other people were injured, in some cases seriously, is a vile, reactionary crime. It was directed specifically against queer people and against the right of every individual to live free from discrimination and violence.
Islamist hatred of homosexuals and trans people must be condemned without reservation. It is no more an answer to racism or imperialist crimes than fascism is an answer to social misery. Both tendencies direct the despair and anger produced by capitalism against particularly vulnerable sections of the population and defend authoritarian social relations. At the same time, such acts are systematically instrumentalized by politicians and the media to intensify agitation against Muslims and refugees and to expand the state apparatus of repression, which in turn strengthens the far right.
What is known about the attack? On July 25, at around 10:00 p.m., a white delivery van coming from Potsdamer Platz raced through Ahornsteig in the Tiergarten and drove into or knocked over numerous people before crashing into a tree. According to the investigations so far, the perpetrator is then said to have attacked other passersby with a cutting and stabbing weapon, presumably a machete. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office has taken over the investigation. All the injured are now out of danger.
The suspected attacker, 21-year-old Abdul B., was shot dead on Sunday evening during a police operation in an allotment garden in Spandau. According to the police, he attacked special forces with a stabbing weapon. Whether other persons were involved in the attack is the subject of the investigation. Police initially stated that a passenger may have fled from the vehicle used in the attack.
It is already clear that the perpetrator had been known to the security authorities for years. B., a German citizen born in Germany, was classified as an Islamist Gefährder, a person deemed a potential security threat. He had repeatedly attempted to travel to Syria and join the “Islamic State.” He was arrested in Lebanon and, after his return to Germany, again remanded in custody. On May 12, he was sentenced to one year and 10 months in juvenile detention for preparing a serious act of violence endangering the state and for violations of the Associations Act. Although the Office of the Prosecutor General had requested a higher sentence and the continuation of detention, he was released pending an appeal.
This raises urgent questions: What did the police and intelligence agencies know about his concrete plans? What surveillance measures were in place? With whom was he in contact? How was a person classified as radicalized and willing to use violence and convicted of preparing a serious act of violence able to carry out such an attack?
Instead of answering these questions, government politicians immediately called for a further build-up of the state apparatus. Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared at a memorial event that the attack was intended to rob society of “our openness and our freedom.” Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier spoke of an attack on the “open society,” while CSU leader Markus Söder demanded action “with the utmost severity.” Leading politicians are calling for the intelligence service reform to be completed quickly. The chairman of the German Police Union is demanding online searches and source telecommunications surveillance. Green Party domestic policy spokesman Konstantin von Notz has also called for expanded powers for the security authorities.
The talk of “freedom” and the protection of queer people from the mouths of these politicians is hard to surpass in its hypocrisy. In reality, video footage shows police attacking peaceful participants in the Internationalist Queer Pride in Berlin because they were protesting against Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, which is supported by the government and all parties in the Bundestag.
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Whatever details emerge about the latest attack, it is already clear that it plays politically into the government’s hands. It is being used to stoke fear, strengthen racist and right-wing forces, and expand a repressive apparatus that is ultimately directed against the entire working population. The struggle against this reactionary offensive requires the independent mobilization of the working class on the basis of an international socialist program.
15. Australian Labor Party conference: Right-wing apparatus suppresses any debate
There was a close connection between the form of the conference, which suppressed any discussion, and Labor’s commitment to a program of war, austerity and attacks on democratic rights.
16. Almost 400,000 flee as heatwave wildfires rip through Europe
According to interior minister Laurent Nuñez, France saw what was "probably" the biggest peacetime civilian evacuation it has ever seen.
17. Australia: Victorian educators speak out at strike rally in Melbourne
“The lack of resources is making staff leave and the wages are not enough. That is the situation for a lot of us. To survive I have a second job.”
18. Free Ukrainian socialist and anti-war activist, Bogdan Syrotiuk!
"Peace for the world! Down with war!"
