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.
*****
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.
*****
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.”
*****
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.
*****
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.
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.
*****
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.
*****
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.”
*****
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.
Evan Blake's speech begins at approximately one hour and 39 minutes into the video.
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.
Andrei Ritsky's speech begins at approximately one hour and 33 minutes into the video; subtitle translations are available.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
*****
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.
*****
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.
*****
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.
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.
In the six months since their meeting on the margins of the APEC
summit in South Korea, the United States has kidnapped the president of
Venezuela, launched a war against Iran and blockaded the Strait of
Hormuz, triggering a global energy and food crisis. China is the largest
destination for oil exports from both Iran and Venezuela, and the wars
Trump has launched against these countries are the opening clashes of a
global conflict targeting China itself.
Amid the worldwide conflagration launched by Trump, the New York Times led its Monday edition with an article titled, “As Trump Heads to Beijing, China Is ‘Locked and Loaded’ for a Fight.”
In
fact, it is Trump’s White House that is “locked and loaded.” For
months, the US military has been blowing boats out of the water in the
Caribbean and Pacific, massacring civilians on the claim that they were
smuggling drugs, and seizing tankers in international waters on the
pretext that they were carrying “sanctioned” oil. American forces have
killed more than 3,000 Iranians, and on April 7 Trump threatened that “a
whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
*****
In traveling to Beijing, Trump will bring with him a variety of carrots
and sticks. On the carrot side, he has in tow a retinue of top CEOs and
finance chiefs, including Tim Cook (Apple), Elon Musk (Tesla), Larry
Fink (BlackRock), Stephen Schwarzman (Blackstone), David Solomon
(Goldman Sachs), Jane Fraser (Citi), and executives from Boeing,
Cargill, Meta, Micron, Qualcomm, Visa and Mastercard. Various deals will
be proffered, beneficial to both sides.
Underlying everything, however, is the constant threat of a major escalation of economic and military action against Beijing.
*****
The Trump–Xi summit takes place amid the basic strategic dilemma
confronting the US ruling class: The protracted erosion of American
economic supremacy, which Washington has sought to offset through ever
more aggressive military force, has coincided with—and been intensified
by—the continued growth of China.
The corporate media plays a
central role in this turn, presenting China’s economic and technological
development, carried out through trade, investment and industrial
expansion, and within the formal framework of the “free trade” rules the
United States itself promoted for decades, as a physical threat that
allegedly “justifies” coercion, blockade and war.
Years of
escalating tariffs and technology bans have not strangled Chinese
industry. They have instead imposed vast costs on American workers
through higher prices and economic dislocation, while failing to alter
the underlying trajectory. China’s industrial position is demonstrated
in the most concrete figures: The automaker BYD outsold Tesla globally
in 2025 by more than 600,000 vehicles, shipping 2.26 million fully
electric cars—kept out of the American market only through an
extraordinary 247.5 percent tariff.
Chinese firms now ship
roughly four out of every five humanoid robots produced worldwide, with
Unitree alone aiming for 20,000 units this year after shipping 5,500 in
2025. The drone manufacturer DJI dominates the American consumer drone
market and holds a commanding share of commercial drones
internationally. In AI, open-source Chinese large language models have
closed to within a benchmark point of America’s “flagship” systems at a
fraction of the cost.
But the publications of American imperialism
never ask the obvious question: Why is China so rapidly approaching,
and in some areas overtaking, the US economy? After all, the United
States had a massive head start. In 1980, it accounted for about 25
percent of world GDP, while China’s share was 2 percent.
For
decades, American policy has been driven by one purpose: The engorgement
of the ruling elite at any cost. American imperialism pursued a policy
of financialization that enriched that class, presided over the
destruction of US industry and waged wars across the world. The federal
debt now approaches $40 trillion, fueled by American wars, militarism
and the endless bailouts of the rich.
*****
The American oligarchy will not accept a diminished position in the
world. Whatever the specific outcome of the summit, US imperialism is
preparing for what Trump’s actions this year have pointed toward—a war
against China itself, for which the conflicts in Iran, Lebanon, Ukraine,
Venezuela and the Caribbean are the laboratory, the rehearsal and the
opening clashes.
The Democratic Party has criticized the Trump
administration for being insufficiently concentrated on the
confrontation with Beijing. Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode
Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee,
told Fox News Sunday that “President Trump is going into this meeting
terribly weakened,” adding: “There’s a stalemate now. The Iranians are
holding 20 percent of the world’s oil at risk.”
The Democrats’
concern is not the criminality of the war, but that the debacle in the
Middle East diverts resources and credibility from the central
objective: escalating the conflict with China.
The Chinese bureaucracy offers no progressive way out. It is bound to
the world capitalist market and to the defense of national state
interests, and it has repeatedly sought an accommodation with
imperialism—an accommodation that Washington is increasingly unwilling
and unable to grant.
The crisis can be resolved only through the
independent intervention of the international working class, uniting
workers in the United States, China and throughout the world in a common
struggle against war, dictatorship and the capitalist system that
produces both.
Community members in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York,
spontaneously protested the presence of Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) officers at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center last week.
In
response, the New York Police Department (NYPD), overseen by police
commissioner and billionaire heiress Jessica Tisch, attacked and
arrested protesters, clearing the path for ICE operations. This
collaboration between NYPD and ICE directly violates New York City’s
sanctuary laws and has led to a wave of denunciations of Mayor Zohran
Mamdani.
According to reports, federal immigration agents brought
Nigerian immigrant Chidozie Wilson Okeke to Wyckoff hospital for medical
assistance for injuries sustained during ICE’s violent arrest. In a
video of the arrest that has circulated on social media, Okeke is
tasered in his car and screams, “Somebody help me! They are killing me!”
Hundreds of residents gathered outside the hospital late Saturday night
as word spread that ICE was preparing to remove Okeke. NYPD officers
arrived in force, issued dispersal orders and moved against the crowd.
Videos show a masked agent pepper-spraying protesters and police
officers shoving demonstrators, throwing them to the ground, restraining
them and clearing a path for federal agents to leave while dragging
Okeke away in restraints. Nine protesters were arrested.
The hospital reportedly barred Alex Franco, an immigration and human
rights lawyer contacted by Okeke’s family, from entering the emergency
room and speaking with their client. Franco told the New York Times,
“They basically said that they had to medically clear the person, the
detainee, before I was allowed access. And I explained to them, ‘Look,
I’ve done this before, show me where that policy is. Because as soon as
he’s discharged, ICE is going to take him away. So, you are essentially
denying them the right to counsel.’”
In response to these events, Mamdani, a member of the Democratic
Socialists of America (DSA), told a press conference that there was no
prior coordination between the NYPD and ICE and framed the incident as
merely a matter of public order. He said the NYPD was simply “responding
to 911 calls regarding a protest outside the hospital” and that “our
laws leave no room for interpretation about the fact that our NYPD will
not participate in civil immigration enforcement.” Mamdani thus denied
the facts: The NYPD had actively facilitated the removal of an ICE
detainee. Following Mamdani’s logic, ICE only has to call 911 whenever
they need the NYPD to secure an area to carry out ICE raids.
City Council member Sandy Nurse, who was at the protest, wrote on X
that she witnessed “direct coordination between ICE and the NYPD, with
officers cordoning off the ambulance bay to allow ICE to move the
individual into their vehicles and leave.” Brooklyn Borough President
Antonio Reynoso also accused the police department of supporting a
deportation operation: “escorting and supporting ICE as they brought the
detainee into the car, helping them close the door to the car.”
A
group of “progressive” Democratic supporters of Mamdani, including
Nurse, Reynoso, US Representative Nydia Velázquez, New York State
Senator and DSA member Julia Salazar and City Council member Jennifer
Gutiérrez issued a letter to the mayor stating that police “coordinated
on the ground with ICE agents” and called for NYPD reforms. But rather
than demanding that the mayor resist ICE raids in New York City, they
wrote, “Officers arriving at a scene where federal agents are already
operating cannot be left to improvise. They need a bright-line rule,
communicated up and down the chain of command, that informs them when to
disengage, when to step back, when to refuse a request for assistance
and how to document what they observed.”
It is noteworthy that Politico wrote
the following about the letter: “The fact that Mamdani’s elected
supporters opted to call him out in such a direct way is a strong
indication elements of his base are growing frustrated with his handling
of public safety issues—and his perceived drift to the political center
since entering City Hall.”
Contrary to the Democrats’ claims, however, the NYPD under Tisch is
not improvising. The police officers’ actions in Bushwick were not
mistakes but the state policy of the ruling class. In December 2025,
the NYPD deployed the
notorious Strategic Response Group (Mamdani campaigned on the promise
to disband the Strategic Response Group but did not) against a similar
anti-ICE confrontation in Lower Manhattan. Police used force to clear a
path for agents, violently assaulted and pepper-sprayed demonstrators
and arrested 12 protesters before ICE retreated due to the protesters’
effective human chains.
Following this episode, Mamdani released a
video in which he feigned opposition to the ICE attack but told viewers
not to “impede their [police] investigation, resist arrest or run.” As
we wrote at the time:
The essential political content of the video is, however, that the
NYPD will arrest anyone who interferes with ICE operations. The intended
audience of the video is the NYPD brass and the Trump administration.
The video seeks to reassure them that a Mamdani government will uphold
ICE operations in the city. It is worth noting that since Mamdani met
with Trump in November, he has not posted a single item on social media
criticizing Trump.
The pact between Trump and Mamdani has a
concrete—and chilling—meaning: Mamdani will allow the work of the
repressive apparatus of the state in the city, in this case primarily
the NYPD, to continue unimpeded.
This is the significance of his
reappointment of NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, the pioneer of one of
the most sinister mechanisms of repression aimed at the working class,
the NYPD’s mass surveillance tools.
*****
Most recently, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan warned that if New
York state advances measures limiting cooperation with federal
immigration authorities, the government will “flood” New York with “more
ICE agents than you’ve ever seen before.”
Mamdani campaigned on
the promise to be “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare” but instead has
courted him and openly crafted a cordial “partnership” with the fascist.
Following Mamdani’s second White House meeting with Trump, the WSWS wrote that this was “an act of treachery aimed at forging an alliance with the far right.”
*****
Workers, immigrants and youth rightly see ICE as an armed instrument of
state terror. Mamdani and the pseudo-left speak the language of
sanctuary while preserving a police apparatus that collaborates with
federal agents and suppresses popular opposition. The struggle against
deportations, police violence and authoritarianism cannot be waged
through appeals for cosmetic NYPD reform or pressure on the Democratic
Party. What is required is the independent political mobilization of the
working class—uniting workers, immigrants and youth in a common
struggle against ICE, the capitalist state, war and dictatorship.
According to the Financial Stability Board (FSB), the share of assets under management sourced by
retail investors has risen from virtually zero to 13 percent over the
past decade. But there is a difference between institutions and retail
investors. Institutions tend to invest longer term while individuals
want quick access to their money if problem signs emerge. But the
investments by private credit are in longer-term, relatively illiquid
assets, not easily turned into cash at a profit, they can only provide
for limited redemptions of investors’ funds.
The FSB said this
situation “could increase potential vulnerabilities related to liquidity
mismatches” because notwithstanding disclosures “retail investors may
not fully understand the illiquidity of the asset class, which may
amplify redemption requests during stress episodes.”
It is not
quite a run on the banks, but mass redemptions could turn into the
credit market equivalent. A recent article in the Murdoch-owned Australian
said the decisions by some major funds, including Apollo and Blue Owl,
“to invoke contractual withdrawal limits” marked the “most significant
liquidity crisis in alternative credit since the global financial
crisis.”
Inflation and the rise in interest rates, generally tightening credit
conditions, have focused more attention on the private credit market
after it grew at an exponential rate in the period of ultra-low interest
rates which prevailed from 2009 to 2022.
One of the practices
under scrutiny is the selling of assets by private equity investors. The
modus operandi is to buy assets in the expectation they will be able to
be sold at a later point realising a profit, after some
“restructuring”—above all reductions in labour costs—has been carried
out.
But the rise in interest rates has tended to lower the market
value of such assets and made them harder to sell at a profit.
Consequently, an increasing number of private equity firms are using
what are known as continuation vehicles.
These are new funds set
up by the original fund to which the assets are then sold, avoiding the
necessity to bring them to the open market where they would register a
loss. Another advantage is that this practice also generates valuable
fees.
One might well wonder how such practices are even legal. But
they are becoming increasingly used. The Institutional Limited Partners
Association, which represents some of the world’s biggest pension and
sovereign wealth funds, has estimated that last year transactions with
continuation vehicles amounted to one fifth of all buyout exits.
*****
Last year there were more than $100 billion worth of sales into
continuation vehicles, up from $70 billion the year before and just $7
billion or less a decade ago.
Insurance companies have been one of
the major backers of private credit because they cannot obtain a
sufficient rate of return from their traditional operations in the
public market.
This has brought a warning from the former Apollo
risk manager, Chak Raghunathan, who told the FT in an interview that
some insurance companies would not be able to manage policy holder funds
in a downturn.
*****
In 2011, the Senate report on the 2008 financial crisis found that it
was the “result of high-risk, complex financial products; undisclosed
conflicts of interest; and the failure of regulators, credit rating
agencies and the market itself to rein in the excesses of Wall Street.”
Senator
Carl Levin, chairman of the subcommittee, which carried out the
investigation, said it had found “a financial snake pit rife with greed,
conflicts of interest and wrongdoing.”
No one, however, was
prosecuted for what was clearly criminal activity in many cases. Goldman
Sachs, for example, sold financial products which it knew were going to
fail. The Obama administration took the decision that, having bailed
out the financial system on the basis that it was too big to fail, it
also determined that those responsible were too big to jail.
The
outcome of the Senate investigation was the Dodd-Frank Act which imposed
some limited restrictions on the financial operations of the banks. But
it is in the very nature of finance capital, rapacious in its
never-ending search for profit and willing to use all means necessary to
achieve this objective, that it found ways around these attempts at
containment.
And one of the means developed was the growth of the private credit,
which may be as large as $3.5 trillion, and which is starting to exhibit
some of the features which characterized the financial system prior to
2008.
The hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondius is rapidly unfolding
into an unmitigated disaster, exposing capitalist governments’ continued
war on public health. In the 36 hours since passengers and crew began
disembarking in Tenerife, Spain on Sunday, the number of confirmed and
probable cases of the highly lethal Andes virus has jumped from eight to
11, with new infections detected in returning passengers in the United
States, France, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Spain. Three
passengers—a Dutch couple and a German woman—are dead, two of them
confirmed by laboratory testing to have been caused by the virus and a
third pending confirmation.
The numbers will almost certainly
grow. The incubation period for Andes hantavirus may extend to 42 days,
meaning every one of the 147 passengers and crew evacuated from the
vessel—and every contact they encountered on the cascade of
government-chartered flights now dispersing them across Europe, North
America, Asia and the Pacific—must be regarded as potentially infected.
They have arrived in communities that received little to no prior
warning and in many cases have no contact tracing mechanisms in place.
This amounts to the deliberate international seeding of a lethal
pathogen that has demonstrated human-to-human transmission, with a
fatality rate of roughly 40 percent among severely ill patients.
The Andes strain is the only hantavirus known to spread between
humans, transmitted through close, prolonged contact with an infected
person’s saliva, respiratory secretions or other body fluids. There is
no vaccine and no specific treatment; survival depends on prompt
hospitalization and supportive care—hydration, artificial respiration,
dialysis.
Conditions aboard the Hondius made suppression all but
impossible once the outbreak took hold. The Dutch-flagged vessel, owned
by Oceanwide Expeditions, departed Ushuaia, Argentina on April 1 on a
33-day voyage to Antarctica and remote South Atlantic islands, carrying
around 150 passengers and crew of 23 nationalities in 95 cabins. For
weeks, the virus circulated in the closed, high-contact environment in
which it spreads most readily.
*****
Returning passengers of the Hondius are falling ill in the United
States and across Europe. Early Monday morning, 15 US citizens and one
British national living in the United States landed at Eppley Airfield
in Omaha, Nebraska, on a government medical flight and were immediately
transported to the National Quarantine Unit. Two more were flown to
Atlanta, where they are being monitored at Emory Hospital. Upon arrival,
one American passenger tested positive for the hantavirus, and another
began showing symptoms, with both traveling in the aircraft’s
biocontainment units.
This came alongside an alarming development
in France. A French woman who was among five French people evacuated
from the Hondius and repatriated to Paris on Sunday also tested positive
for the virus. French Health Minister Stéphanie Rist confirmed Monday
that her condition is deteriorating.
Cases
are spreading across Europe. A passenger of the Hondius who returned
home to Switzerland via flights through South Africa and Qatar has now
tested positive. The ship’s doctor, who tested positive for the virus,
was evacuated to the Netherlands, where 12 staff of the Radboud Hospital
in Nijmegen have been placed in quarantine after procedural errors in
handling him. In Spain, a Spanish passenger has been placed in isolation
at Gómez Ulla military hospital in Madrid after testing positive.
*****
While the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) classified its
hantavirus response as Level 3, the lowest of three CDC emergency
activation levels, the protocols it activated tell a different story.
Hondius passengers were flown on a government medical flight to Omaha,
Nebraska, to be assessed for early-stage hantavirus symptoms, including
fever, muscle aches and diarrhea at the National Quarantine Unit at the
University of Nebraska Medical Center. Anyone who falls ill could be
transferred to the nearby Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
The
National Quarantine Unit is described by Nebraska Medicine as the only
federally funded quarantine unit in the United States designed to safely
house and monitor people who may have been exposed to high-consequence
infectious diseases. Its 20 single-person rooms are fitted with negative
air pressure systems to contain airborne pathogens. It previously
treated patients during the 2014 Ebola outbreak and among the first
COVID-19 patients evacuated from the Diamond Princess cruise ship in
2020.
*****
The French government held an emergency meeting Monday afternoon,
after identifying 22 French people exposed to the virus on flights
taking Hondius passengers home. These individuals are to be held in a
42-day quarantine, while the cabinet insists the risk is low.
The
Spanish Health Ministry insisted “all measures” had been taken “with the
objective of breaking potential chains of transmission”—a statement
aimed at defusing public anger after protests broke out in Tenerife
against the arrival of the vessel. Photos have since emerged of a
Hondius passenger on the bus to his repatriation flight with his FFP2
mask pushed down below his nose and mouth, provoking outrage on social
media.
The Hondius outbreak is unfolding amid the ongoing dismantling of public
health infrastructure in every major capitalist country. The same
forces that allowed more than 27 million people worldwide to die in the
COVID-19 pandemic are now actively dispersing carriers of a virus many
times more lethal than SARS-CoV-2, while telling the public to remain
calm. The crisis exposes the incompatibility of public health with the
profit interests of the ruling class.
Kamara Bond, a production worker at the Dana Incorporated auto parts
plant in Warren, Michigan, was fired twice for reporting dangerous
working conditions on the shop floor. Chemical exposures, high
temperatures and poor ventilation at the Detroit area factory could have
very well contributed to the death of her co-worker Anthony King in
October 2025 and an unidentified janitorial contract worker in 2024.
The
Fortune 500 corporation, which employs 28,000 people in 33 countries,
reported $610 million in 2025 profits on $7.5 billion in sales revenue.
In an investor call last month Dana executives boasted they achieved $35
million in cost reductions during the first quarter and were on
schedule to slash $325 million as part of its Dana 2030 plan.
Dana
workers in Warren produce axle, driveshaft, suspension and steering
components for some of the most profitable vehicles sold by General
Motors, Ford and Stellantis. Far from being protected by United Auto
Workers Local 155, workers say union officials have allowed management
to sacrifice their health and safety for profit.
Kamara reached out to the World Socialist Web Site
to share her story and encourage her coworkers to come forward with
information on Anthony King’s death. She said workers had to prepare for
a fight when the current UAW agreement expires on May 22.
Rural hospitals are in a continued and escalating state of crisis,
impacting the health outcomes for an estimated 60 million Americans.
One-third of all rural healthcare facilities nationwide are at risk of
closing, according to an analysis from Healthcare Quality and Payment
Reform. This represents a staggering 734 rural hospitals.
This
crisis is the product of decades of subordinating healthcare to the
profit motive. But it is now being dramatically accelerated by the Trump
administration’s open offensive against every social program won by the
working class in the 20th century. Driven by a frenzy for profit and
the demands of imperialist war preparation, the ruling class is
demolishing what remains of the public health infrastructure.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill,” signed into law by Trump on July 4, 2025, is the legislative centerpiece
of this assault. It authorizes one of the largest redistributions of
wealth from the poorest to the wealthiest in American history, making
permanent $3.8 trillion in tax cuts overwhelmingly benefiting
corporations and the rich, while gutting the social programs working
people depend on.
*****
The crisis extends far beyond hospitals. According to a report
released last year by Good RX, approximately 81 percent of counties in
the United States are considered healthcare deserts in at least one
category, meaning large portions of the population have limited access
to critical services like pharmacies, primary care, hospitals, hospital
beds, trauma centers or community health centers. Estimates suggest that
over 120 million Americans, roughly one in three, reside in counties
identified as healthcare deserts.
*****
The Trump administration is attempting to cover up their demolition
of the rural healthcare system. At a House Ways and Means Committee
hearing last month, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. was asked about the crisis of rural healthcare by Adrian
Smith, a Republican representative from Nebraska. Kennedy responded
saying, “Last week I went to Arizona to announce an unprecedented $125
million investment in community health centers which are serving 39
million Americans mainly in rural areas around the country.”
Kennedy
is trying to claim credit for a $125 million investment in community
health centers while simultaneously supporting and defending the gutting
of Medicaid, which is the primary source of funding for those very same
community health centers. He went on to say, “President Trump made the
biggest investment in rural health care in American history, a $50
billion rural health transformation fund.”
The Rural Health Transformation Program (RHTP) is not a panacea for
rural healthcare. It is an accounting offset designed to facilitate
large-scale austerity and the marketization of rural care, while
providing political cover for the destruction of permanent public health
entitlements. Passed as part of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” the $50
billion is distributed over a five-year period and is conditional upon
an agreed investment plan between the state and federal government,
including restricting access to certain funds for states that are not
adopting “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) policies.
Additionally, the $40 billion in cuts to the HHS last year directly impacted rural healthcare funding through the elimination of grants. The World Socialist Web Site described
these cuts as “a deliberate, fascistic effort to destroy the
infrastructure of scientific research and public health that underpins
modern society. The aim is to return the working class to conditions of
social misery and industrial exploitation not seen since the 19th
century.”
The Trump administration has made unmistakably clear
that the subordination of society to war is their explicit program. At a
closed Easter lunch at the White House last month, Trump stated it in
plain terms: “Don’t send any money for daycare—we’re fighting wars. ...
It’s not possible for us to take care of daycare, Medicaid, Medicare.
... We have to take care of one thing: military protection.” He
dismissed Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as “little scams.”
On the evening of May 7, agents operating under the direction of the
United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), together with university
police, barred researchers from entering six rooms in a biology
laboratory at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington, halting ongoing
experiments and establishing a de facto police occupation of the
facility.
The primary target was the laboratory of Distinguished
Professor of Biology Roger Innes. A member of the National Academy of
Sciences, Innes has pioneered research on plant immune systems that
holds the potential of increasing global crop yields and mitigating the
need for toxic agricultural chemicals. The sudden closure of his
workspace is the latest escalation in a campaign of terror against
scientists of Chinese descent. The police state operation is no longer
limited to international researchers. It is now directed as well at
senior American-born faculty.
This campaign is aimed at whipping up anti-Chinese sentiment in
preparation for war against US imperialism’s greatest economic rival, a
nuclear power, intensifying the war against immigrants and imposing a
fascistic, America-first ideology on university campuses.
The IU
administration has not defended Innes. A memorandum issued by IU Vice
President for Research Russell J. Mumper stated the university was
“notified by the US Department of Agriculture that they will be engaging
in activity in a laboratory” and that “the actions taking place are
being directed by federal authorities, and the university is cooperating
as required.”
The government has targeted this laboratory because
Professor Innes has taken a principled and courageous stand against the
persecution of Chinese scientists. When the FBI and the Department of
Justice began manufacturing “agroterrorism” cases against Chinese
researchers, Innes intervened to expose the scientific fraud
underpinning the prosecutions.
*****
Indiana University is deeply integrated into the military-industrial
complex through agreements with Naval Support Activity (NSA) Crane and
the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC) Crane Division, the third
largest naval installation globally. IU President Pamela Whitten
recently renewed an Educational Partnership Agreement with NSA Crane,
establishing shared technology spaces on campus. IU has committed $53.5
million to expand research partnerships with defense applications,
focusing on artificial intelligence and microelectronics funded by the
Department of Defense.
The militarization of campus life is an
institutional expression of Washington’s preparations for a catastrophic
war. American imperialism must purge scientists with ties to China in
order to convert universities into secure nodes of the
military-industrial complex.
In July 2025, Secretary of
Agriculture Brooke Rollins announced a sweeping “National Agriculture
Security Action Plan,” framing American agriculture as a theater of war
against China. When asked about the prosecuted U-M researchers, Rollins
said, “We’re tracking and very well aware of the Michigan case, but
there are others as well.”
*****
What is unfolding at IU and U-M is a concentrated expression of the
terminal crisis of American capitalism. The ruling class can no longer
tolerate free scientific inquiry and international collaboration and is
herding the population toward a catastrophic war against China. This
operation can be stopped only through the independent political
mobilization of the working class and the building of an international
anti-war movement rooted in the working class and based on a socialist
program.
Christoph Vandreier's speech begins at approximately one hour and 20 minutes into the video; subtitle translations are available.
This
speech was delivered by Christoph Vandreier, National Secretary of the
Sozialistische Gleichheitspartei (Germany), at the 2026 May Day Online
Rally, organized by the WSWS and the International Committee of the
Fourth International.
Tamino Dreisam's speech begins at approximately one hour and 27 minutes into the video; subtitle translations are available.
This
speech was delivered by Tamino Dreisam, Leader of the International
Youth and Students for Social Equality (Germany), at the 2026 May Day
Online Rally, organized by the WSWS and the ICFI.
One day before the opening of the 61st Venice Biennale, the massive
global art exhibition, thousands of marchers took to the city’s narrow
streets to protest Israeli genocide in Gaza and now Lebanon. Marchers
included many of the festival’s artists and workers who took strike
action and closed for a day an estimated twenty-seven of the Biennale’s
100 national pavilions. Signs on a number of the pavilions read “We
Stand with Palestine.”
The strikers and demonstrators were responding to a call from the Art
Not Genocide Alliance (ANGA), supported by a number of other activist
groups. ANGA announced that the action was the largest of its kind in
the history of the Biennale, which runs from May 9 to November 22.
In a press release ANGA declared
Israel
has killed over 73,000 people in Gaza, with a further 10,000 missing.
It has systematically destroyed hospitals, schools, refugee camps,
cultural institutions, and civilian infrastructure. Its leadership faces
ICC arrest warrants for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The
Biennale knows this and it chooses to accommodate Israel anyway.
*****
While angry resistance to Israeli participation has come from
grass-roots organizations such as ANGA, leading European institutions
have exerted strong pressure on the Biennale through a combination of
political condemnation, funding threats and diplomatic pressure in an
attempt to block Russia’s participation at the art festival.
*****
All of this reeks of intense and obscene hypocrisy. Russia’s invasion of
Ukraine was a reactionary action taken by the Putin regime, but it was a
war deliberately and transparently provoked by NATO to weaken Russia
and create conditions for its eventual carve-up. As for “democracy,”
Zelensky rules in Ukraine as a dictator, who has banned political
opposition and locked up opponents. All the NATO powers that instigated
the war against Russia and now piously denounce its presence in Venice
have enthusiastically supported the mass slaughter in Gaza, the West
Bank and now Lebanon.
*****
The latest demonstrations and protests in Venice confirm that a
significant layer of artists and cultural workers are determined to
oppose the genocidal policy of Israel supported by Western governments,
including the far-right Italian government led by Giorgia Meloni.
Even as the administration of Donald Trump continues its war against
Iran—provoking the shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s
most critical commercial waterways—the Pentagon is escalating
preparations for a devastating regime-change war against Cuba.
A
report by CNN based on publicly available aviation data reveals a
dramatic surge in US military intelligence flights around the island.
“Since February 4,” CNN reported, “the US Navy and Air Force have
conducted at least 25 such flights using manned aircraft and drones,
most of them near the country’s two biggest cities, Havana and Santiago
de Cuba, and some coming within 40 miles of the coast, according to
FlightRadar24.”
*****
The aggressive posture was underscored on May 6 when Secretary of
State Marco Rubio was photographed at the headquarters of US Southern
Command in Doral, Florida, standing before a map of Cuba.
These
flights are not routine patrols, but intelligence-gathering missions
designed to map strategic targets that go hand-in-hand with the
escalating measures to shut down the Cuban economy and any ability to
fend off an attack.
*****
On May 1, after threatening to “take Cuba immediately,” Trump issued
the most aggressive sanctions yet imposed on the island. The executive
order threatens to cut off from the US-dominated financial system any
company conducting business with Cuba.
Under the order, Rubio
announced sanctions last week against the military-commercial
conglomerate GAESA, its executive Ania Guillermina Lastres Morera, and
the mining company Moa Nickel. GAESA, closely linked to the Castro
family, is estimated to hold stakes in roughly 40 percent of Cuban
enterprises.
These latest sanctions continue the tactical shift
away from earlier licensing arrangements that had permitted US capital
to penetrate Cuba through the private sector and through contacts with
figures connected to the Castro family and GAESA itself. Washington is
now waging all-out economic warfare while preparing broader
intervention.
Washington has set June 5 as the deadline for
foreign firms to terminate any operations involving GAESA, and Rubio
warned that additional sanctions are imminent.
*****
Washington’s claims that Cuba—a small island nation of fewer than 10
million people—constitutes a national security threat to the United
States are transparently absurd. Allegations that Havana harbors Russian
or Chinese spy bases, moreover, are propaganda devices aimed at
manufacturing public support for aggression.
*****
As in the cases of Venezuela and Iran, the Trump administration is
waging a global counterrevolutionary campaign against any government
that challenges, however partially or inconsistently, Washington’s
domination over world resources, markets and strategic territories. The
target is not merely the Cuban government but the remaining historical
legacy of the anti-colonial and social struggles of the twentieth
century.
The Chinese Revolution, the Iranian Revolution, the Cuban
Revolution and the Nicaraguan Revolution—all of them shaped, albeit in
various distorted manners, by the immense influence of the Russian
Revolution—represented blows against imperialist domination. Today, US
imperialism seeks to erase every remaining social and political
consequence of those upheavals.
Rubio himself has repeatedly
framed US foreign policy as a crusade against what he calls “godless
communist revolutions” and anti-colonial uprisings dating back to 1945.
Behind the language of “democracy” and “security” lies an attempt to
reimpose direct imperialist domination over the entire world.
*****
The Trump administration’s blockade and threats of military action
against Havana, its bombing of fishermen in the Caribbean and Pacific,
and overall onslaught against the region is part of the same strategy
that places migrants in concentration camps and orders federal forces to
kill protesters in US streets.
US imperialism is responding to
its unprecedented crisis by seeking to transform the entire continent
and world into a vast killing field, a captive market of cheap labor,
plundered resources and surveilled populations administered by puppet
regimes answerable not to their own people but to Wall Street.
The
working class across the hemisphere, and above all inside the United
States itself, must intervene as an independent political force to halt
any military aggression against Cuba, to free every migrant held in
American detention and to break the stranglehold of imperialism over the
continent.
The Mainz-based biopharmaceutical company BioNTech is halting
COVID-19 vaccine production in Germany, closing almost all its German
production sites and cutting 1,860 jobs. The sites in Marburg,
Idar-Oberstein and Singapore, as well as the recently acquired CureVac
plants in Tübingen and Wiesbaden, are to be wound up. The group, which
has earned billions from COVID-19 vaccines, aims to save €500 million a
year with these drastic cutbacks.
This is a severe blow to the
affected workers, who have done an admirable job in helping to contain
the COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover, the pandemic is far from over. Last
year, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) recorded almost 150,000 infections
and 2,551 reported deaths linked to COVID-19 in Germany. That is seven
deaths per day, although the actual figure is likely to be significantly
higher, as testing for coronavirus has virtually ceased.
*****
For almost two years now, since late 2024, the BioNTech board has
been hinting that the cutting of around a thousand jobs was planned,
including 300 IT positions. Many workers who had the opportunity
subsequently moved to other companies. But now that management is moving
towards mass redundancies and site closures, the chances of those made
redundant finding new work are significantly worse.
The
redundancies come at a time when other chemical giants (BASF, Bayer,
Evonik and many others) are also responding to the energy and sales
crisis resulting from the war in Iran with mass redundancies. In total,
between 40,000 and 50,000 jobs are currently at risk in the sector, and
redundancies are also being made in industry, the banking sector and the
IT sector.
Hypocritically, BioNTech has offered the redundant
staff the chance to reapply for positions within the company’s cancer
research division. The group intends to focus entirely on the
development of cancer drugs, a move that applies both to the current
co-CEOs, Uğur Şahin and Özlem Türeci, and to the remaining BioNTech
management in Mainz. Şahin and Türeci plan to set up their own new
company for this purpose and will step down from their leadership roles
by the end of the year at the latest.
*****
BioNTech has profited enormously from the COVID-19 pandemic,
specifically from scientific research findings that were publicly
accessible and deliberately not geared towards profit. The start-up
joined forces with the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to market its
COVID-19 vaccine—the first to receive approval—worldwide. As the WSWS
wrote: “The mRNA technology on which the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine is
based was developed at publicly funded universities. Private firms only
showed interest once huge profits beckoned. And even then, they were
generally supported and backed by public funds.”
The entire
vaccine development process was only possible because outstanding
researchers and scientists such as Professor Zhang Yongzhen in Shanghai
sequenced the virus’s genome and made it available free of charge on
open-source platforms. It was only such actions that enabled
BioNTech/Pfizer, Moderna and other pharmaceutical companies to develop
their vaccines so rapidly.
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread in
2020, the governments of the EU, the UK and the US provided generous
funding for research: In the case of BioNTech/Pfizer, this included a
€100 million development loan from the European Investment Bank and a
€365 million grant from the German government, alongside advance
payments from the US government, which were effectively interest-free
loans.
BioNTech’s share price skyrocketed, from €13 in October
2019 to €150 in 2021. On this basis, the pharmaceutical group generated
billions in profits. According to the Handelsblatt, sales of
the COVID-19 vaccine brought BioNTech just under €19 billion at its
peak, of which the company still holds assets worth over €15 billion to
€16 billion today.
German politicians, particularly the then-Chancellor Angela Merkel
(Christian Democrats), kept a protective hand over the private company.
When in 2021 more than 100 WTO member states, led by India and South
Africa, called for a suspension of patent protection to enable poor
countries to develop vaccines rapidly, the Merkel government opposed the
patent suspension with all its might. Angela Merkel is said to have
personally phoned Uğur Şahin to reassure him on this matter.
One
consequence of the rigid patent protection was, among other things, that
barely 2 percent of the population in Africa could be vaccinated, with
fatal consequences that have, however, received little public attention.
The catastrophically poor reporting systems simply ignored the
coronavirus death tolls in large parts of Africa. In Zambia, for
example, only ten percent of COVID-19 deaths with a positive PCR test
were actually recorded as coronavirus deaths. At the same time, new
variants such as Omicron were able to emerge in these regions and spread
rapidly across the globe.
At every turn and on every issue, the capitalist logic of profit has
been and continues to be prioritized over public health and the public
good. Fierce patent disputes between competing pharmaceutical companies
mean that scientific discoveries and research findings with immense
potential become a bone of contention between competing capital
interests. Publicly researched knowledge, which belongs to everyone, is
being privatized; the risks are socialised and borne by the taxpayer,
while the profits are appropriated entirely for private gain.
Manroland Sheetfed GmbH, once the world’s third-largest manufacturer
of printing presses and Offenbach’s biggest employer, will cease
operations there on June 1, 2026. The final 744 employees are losing
their jobs, 660 on June 1 and the remaining 84 at the end of the year,
when the factory is wound down. On March 6, Langley Holdings initiated
provisional self-administration proceedings and appointed an insolvency
administrator. At a works meeting on April 20, workers were informed of
the definitive closure. The works council and IG Metall union are
demanding a “transfer company” be established for those dismissed.
It
is impossible to speak about the end of Manroland in Offenbach without
looking back at the breakup of the corporation 14 years ago. And anyone
speaking about the insolvency at the turn of 2011-2012 must also address
the role played by IG Metall.
It is thanks to the union that a
workforce of more than 6,600 highly trained and militant workers at
three sites—Offenbach, Augsburg and Plauen—could be misled, divided,
deceived and massively attacked for two months without resistance. The
course was set back then for today’s disgraceful ending in Offenbach.
When Langley Holdings, a privately owned British engineering and
industrial manufacturing group, took over Manroland Offenbach in
February 2012, the company had already been broken into pieces with the
Augsburg and Plauen sites separated off and sold. More than 2,000 jobs
were destroyed, and the remaining workforce stripped of pension rights
and entitlements won through decades of struggle.
At the time, the Frankfurter Rundschau, the Offenbach Post and
IG Metall praised the takeover and re-establishment of the firm as
Manroland Sheetfed GmbH under the direction of Langley Holdings as “the
best solution for Offenbach”. The new owner Anthony Langley was hailed
as a “white knight” and “Robin Hood.” The World Socialist Web Site, by contrast, warned on February 7, 2012:
In
reality, the new owners are not interested in the production of
printing machines, and certainly not in the future of workers and their
families. … Realistically, one must assume that the new owners seized
the favorable opportunity to acquire the best “crown jewels” for little
money. They are primarily interested in conducting financial
transactions worth millions.
This assessment has been
fully confirmed. At no point did Anthony Langley, chairman and CEO of
Langley Holdings, provide any guarantee for jobs at Manroland. Remarking
that “The situation is not sustainable,” he has now decided the
ultra-modern Manroland production facility, which can look back on more
than 155 years of experience in printing press technology, will close on
June 1.
Manroland workers, many of whom have been employed there
for 30 years or longer, and who built up the Offenbach factory as
skilled professional workers, are now losing everything. Langley’s
wealth, by contrast, which stood at $368 million in 2011, is today
estimated at around $3.6 billion—a tenfold increase in his fortune. He
owns two large yachts, a seven-seat helicopter and a private jet, as
well as a sailing club.
His fortune had “really taken off steeply from 2005 onwards,” Langley boasted to Forbes.
He was referring to the start of his activity as a so-called “locust,”
buying up troubled companies, carving them up, selling profitable
sections at a gain and bleeding the rest dry.
This development was
foreseeable: billions for the capitalists, unemployment and
hopelessness for the workers who built everything. It is the result of
IG Metall’s refusal at the time to fight for jobs. That is why a look
back at the history of Manroland is of the greatest significance today
for all metalworkers and engineers—whether at VW, Thyssen, Bosch or
other plants threatened with job cuts and closure. It contains vital
lessons.
The most important lesson is this: IG Metall will abandon anyone who
relies on it. What is necessary is the building of rank-and-file action
committees independent of IG Metall and all the unions, capable of
acting on the basis of a socialist and international program.
*****
The WSWS exposed the betrayal and sell-out by IG Metall relentlessly and
almost in real time. Its statements circulated from hand to hand in the
factory and caused great unrest because workers knew that what the WSWS
wrote was true. The sell-out by IG Metall was so obvious that even the Offenbach Post took up the issue.
On January 21, 2012, its then editor-in-chief Frank Pröse wrote under the headline “Uneasy feelings” about the WSWS article “Manroland is being broken up with the help of the union,” which had appeared the previous day: “Yes, we are moving onto thin ice when we quote Ulrich Rippert of the World Socialist Web Site, who sees the breakup of ‘Manroland’ as a rigged game. But there are good reasons for this assessment.”
*****
The union functionaries of the works council leadership, the shop
stewards and the IG Metall headquarters reacted to the intervention of
the Trotskyists with anger and hostility. When a WSWS team attempted to
attend a meeting on December 7, 2011 concerning the future of the plant,
they were denounced as “splitters” and thrown out of the hall.
One
union official complained: “You are driving a wedge between the workers
and IG Metall,” while a shop steward lamented that he had come directly
from a Manroland workshop where the WSWS leaflet had caused great
commotion, making it difficult for him to convince workers of IG
Metall’s standpoint.
At a meeting of the Sozialistische
Gleichheitspartei (Socialist Equality Party), Ulrich Rippert stressed
that the right to work and a decent wage as an elementary democratic
right stood higher than the profit interests of management and
shareholders, and that it was necessary to build action committees and
prepare a factory occupation.
Rippert said: “I am not speaking of a
symbolic action, a few red flags at the main gate and limited protest
actions with radical speeches, but of a serious occupation strike aimed
at drawing the other sites and other factories threatened with
redundancies into a broad resistance.” The insolvency had to be
understood for what it really was: part of a social counterrevolution.
Today this social counterrevolution is far advanced. Many of the
Manroland workers now being dismissed are being driven into unemployment
and poverty in old age, and, if they are young, perhaps into the
Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) and the looming war against Russia. The
current Manroland closure is part of a wave of deindustrialisation that
has been developing for several years and has accelerated dramatically
above all with the escalation of war against Russia.
*****
Manroland alone still maintains sales and service branches in more than 40 countries.
IG
Metall has not considered it necessary to unite workers across
different plants—on the contrary. In order to enforce its role as the
capitalists’ junior partner, it deliberately and systematically divides
workforces by site and by country.
On Monday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer gave what was billed as a
“survival speech” following Labour’s disastrous loss in last week’s
local elections and elections to the devolved assemblies in Scotland and
Wales.
Labour lost almost 1,500 councillors in local elections
across England. The party lost power in Wales, after politically
dominating it for a century, and its worst-ever result at a Holyrood
election returned just 17 of the 129 seats in the Scottish Parliament.
The main beneficiaries
from the mass turn-away from Labour by millions of workers and youth
were the Greens, who presented themselves as a left alternative, and the
far-right Reform UK.
*****
Starmer tried to don a more populist guise, stressing in his London
speech his only policy choice that has had significant support: “If we’d
listened to the advice of other parties [a reference to Reform and the
Conservatives], right now we’d be stuck in a stand-off with Iran, having
been dragged into a war that is not in our interest, and I will never
do that.”
Trying to channel popular discontent, he declared, “The
British people are tired of a status quo that has failed them. Change
cannot come quickly enough. They turn on the TV. They see bombs falling.
They go to the petrol station, see prices rising. And they think, how
is this happening to us again?”
The response “this time, must be different,” he claimed, convincing
no one after almost two years of upholding “the status quo” in office,
including by handing over £13–14 billion to Ukraine in military support
and loans to fight Russia, and adding around £6 billion a year to the
overall UK military budget—to be taken from social spending.
Starmer
then gaslit the British population, claiming he had already delivered
major gains, which workers had simply failed to notice. The tin-eared
prime minister said he had spent too much time “talking about what I am
doing for working people, and not enough time talking about why or who I
stand for”!
His reset would begin with Wednesday’s King’s Speech setting out the
government’s agenda for the coming year. But the “examples” he gave only
confirmed how emphatically his government is a creature of the ruling
class, and how incapable it is of making an even half-serious pitch to
the working class.
*****
For now, Starmer will remain in place. Not thanks to his speech, which
confirmed him as one of the politically walking dead and was greeted by
several dozen more MPs calling for him to step down, plus the
resignation of four junior ministers. He staggers only thanks to the
fact that the preferred replacement of his Labour opponents is not in
parliament.
*****
Starmer’s time is up. But the danger is that Labour’s meltdown has
been exploited, as in every other country where social democracy has
played a similar role, by the far-right. Reform UK has captured the
despair of impoverished, mainly ageing workers.
Other, more
progressive and generally younger sections of the working and middle
class have turned to the Greens as a left-wing opposition.
But
neither of these capitalist parties represents a genuine political
alternative, which can only be provided by a socialist internationalist
program. There is no time to lose. Workers and youth must turn to the
building of their own party, the Socialist Equality Party, as the only
means of fighting the ruling oligarchy, its wars, austerity and attacks
on democratic rights.
Less
than three weeks after United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 7
called off the powerful strike of meatpacking workers at the JBS meat
processing plant in Greeley, Colorado, meatpacking workers at the JBS
beef and pork plant in nearby Denver voted April 27 to authorize strike
action.
Protests were held in several Australian cities on Saturday, against the
Labor government’s onslaught on disability funding. Around 500 people
participated in Melbourne and several hundred in Sydney, with a smaller
rally in Brisbane.
Labor is slashing funding to the National Disability Insurance Scheme
(NDIS) by more than $35 billion over the next four years, in the
largest single cut to a government program in history. Up to 300,000
disabled people are to be kicked off the NDIS, under conditions where
there is no alternative to it.
At the rallies, people with
disabilities spoke about the dire consequences. They noted that the
targeting of tens of thousands of autistic children would have dire
consequences. Families would simply be unable to cope, raising the
prospect of tragic circumstances, including death. Other speakers noted
the degrading character of a new “functional assessments” regime, under
which government bureaucrats will scrutinize the disabled with a view to
limiting the assistance they receive or kicking them off the NDIS
altogether.
The cut to the NDIS is the centerpiece of a broader
austerity budget that Labor is bringing down tonight that will also
target other essential services such as health, education and public
sector jobs. Labor is forcing the working class to pay for a deepening
crisis of capitalism and for record military spending, as it supports
US-led wars globally, including the criminal assault on Iran and
prepares for new catastrophes, above all plans for an offensive against
China.
The Socialist Equality Party and the International Youth and Students
for Social Equality are holding a series of public meetings in Sydney,
Melbourne, Brisbane, Newcastle and in Wellington, New Zealand, to
discuss the socialist and internationalist strategy that must be adopted
to stop the war against Iran.
The world stands at one of the most
dangerous crossroads in modern history. On February 28, 2026, the
United States and Israel launched a massive, unprovoked military assault
against Iran—a historically oppressed nation that posed no military
threat. Iran’s Supreme Leader and dozens of senior officials were
killed. A girls’ elementary school was bombed, with scores of children
among the dead. Thousands of people have since been murdered by US and
Israeli bombs.
The Trump administration is waging this criminal
war despite mass opposition from the American working class and the vast
majority of the world’s population. Hundreds of millions of people are
being plunged into poverty and hunger due to the blocking of the
critical Strait of Hormuz supply route.
Meanwhile, Israel wages a
brutal war of extermination in Lebanon and is extending its genocide of
Palestinians from Gaza into the West Bank. These wars, along with the
attack on Venezuela and the ongoing war against Russia over Ukraine, are
not isolated conflicts.
The war in Iran is the culmination of a
35 year period which began with the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet
Union. Trump’s threats to “end their civilisation” is the most grotesque
expression of the policy of military war to resolve US imperialism’s
declining economic situation. This is part of a developing Third World
War, in which US imperialism is seeking to seize markets and resources
and redivide the globe at the expense of Russia and China.
The capitalist class in Australia and New Zealand are not bystanders:
these junior imperialist powers want a seat at the table for the
violent redivision of the world. Both governments—Anthony Albanese’s
Labor government in Australia and the conservative coalition led by
Christopher Luxon in NZ—have lined up squarely behind the criminal
US-Israeli onslaught.
*****
The critical question is: How can the working class stop the global descent into barbarism and war?
These
meetings will expose the politically criminal role played by
pseudo-left organizations, such as Socialist Alternative in Australia
and Socialist Aotearoa in NZ. As they have done throughout the Gaza
genocide, these middle class groups are seeking to channel anti-war
sentiment behind the pro-imperialist Labor and Green parties and the
trade union bureaucracy.
Speakers from the Socialist Equality
Party (Australia), the Socialist Equality Group (NZ) and the IYSSE will
discuss the origins and driving forces of the US-Israeli war. They will
explain the socialist political program that must be adopted to unite
the working class internationally to put an end to war and fascist
dictatorship by abolishing the capitalist system which is their root
cause.
*****
NEW ZEALAND When: 6 p.m. Tuesday, May 19 Where: AM101 in the Alan MacDiarmid Building at Victoria University of Wellington (Kelburn campus). Register here
MELBOURNE When: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 24 Where: Community Hall A, Djerring Flemington Hub, 25 Mt Alexander Road, Flemington Register here
SYDNEY When: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 31 Where: Community Room 1, Bryan Brown Theatre, 80 Rickard Rd, Bankstown Register here
BRISBANE When: 2:30 p.m. Sunday, May 31 Where: Richlands Community Centre, 75 Old Progress Rd, Richlands Register here
NEWCASTLE When: 1 p.m. Saturday, June 5 Where: VG07 University of Newcastle (Callaghan campus) Register here
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.
