What if they held an election and nobody came? In some ways, the 2014 midterm election was very much like this. Just 36.6 percent voted, only 13% of them under age 30, and as many as 70 million eligible voters are not even registered. The main capitalist parties—the Democrats and Republicans—do not deal with real issues related to the lives of the overwhelming majority of the population. This is true bourgeois democracy. That is, democracy for the top 1% or 2%, but not for the rest of us!

We republish below the transcript of a speech delivered by​ WIL member Martin Michaels ​on ​November 1 in Minneapolis, MN​,​ at the March Against​ ​Corruption.​ ​

Join members of the International Marxist Tendency and the Marxist Student Association for this year's North East Regional School on 1 November. Speakers from Belgium and Canada will speak on the Arab Revolution and the Student and Youth movements throughout the Americas. More info below.

Many Americans are justifiably horrified by the atrocities being perpetrated by the ISIS gangsters. But imperialist intervention, which led to this wreck in the first place, is no solution. There is no short-term way out. Only a socialist revolution can transform the region and the world.

Today’s youth, the so-called millennials, face a bleak future under capitalism. They carry the highest student debt in history and have entered “adulthood” at a time when housing prices have skyrocketed and the labor market has imploded. More than half of recent graduates are unemployed or underemployed, often in low-wage jobs having nothing to do with their degrees. Nonetheless, they must make monthly payments on an average of $20,000 in student loans.

There is a lot activity and buzz around the struggle to raise the minimum wage in the United States. Here we provide an article by Tom Trottier of the US Socialist Appeal that explains the role of wages under capitalism and what has actually been achieved so far.

The “Ice Bucket Challenge” has gone certifiably viral. Countless videos showing people dousing themselves with buckets of ice water have flooded social media. Everyone from GW Bush to Will Smith to Britney Spears to your next-door neighbor to half your High School classmates are joining in the late-summer antics and nominating someone else to do it. If the challenge is not met within 24 hours, the nominee is supposed to donate to

As the protests in Ferguson, MO, enter their 12th day, following the shooting of Michael Brown by local police, the Workers International League (US section of the IMT) continues to intervene in this spontaneous upsurge, in Ferguson itself, and on the campuses in the area. These events mark a qualitative turning point in the class struggle in the United States. It is already being recognized as an event for which there will be a “before” and an “after,” even by the talking heads in the media and the representatives of the capitalist political establishment.

Leaflet for demonstrations against police repression in Ferguson, MO can be downloaded here.

The shooting of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown, followed by the breaking up of a protest march by police in riot gear and dogs, has let loose the pent-up anger and frustration of ​b​lack youth in the otherwise quiet working class St. Louis suburb of Ferguson, which saw a night of looting and vandalism. These events above all show that huge pressures are building up in US society, just one scratch below the surface.

We are living in an epoch of crisis, war, revolution, and counterrevolution. However, revolutions are nonlinear processes; they do not unfold in a single act. From the perspective of the working class, the objective conditions and class balance of forces have never been as favorable. However, given the confusion and limited options of the bourgeois, the class-collaborationist policies of the labor leaders, and the lack of a mass revolutionary party—the subjective factor—this process will necessarily have a prolonged character. There will be many starts and stops, periods of advance and retreat, inspiring victories and demoralizing defeats. But through it all, the workers will learn, and

100 years ago, US mining magnate John D. Rockefeller, with the help of the Colorado state government, ordered Colorado National Guard and militia forces to machine gun on a mining camp where 1,200 striking coal miners and their families were residing. Up to 60 people were killed and hundreds injured. The strikers were mainly immigrants who were paid slave wages by the company. They were forced to work 10–12 hour days and were not paid for "dead work" such as clearing the mines of rubble. The event marked a key milestone for America’s working class struggle to gain workplace rights, including the 8-hour work day, workplace health and safety measures, better housing, and the right to form

The epoch of world growth fueled by globalisation is over. Two giant free trade deals are being thrashed out which would place the United States at the centre of its own strategically drawn up domain, stretching from both sides of the pacific to Eastern Europe. But far from being a means to open up the world to a further intensification of trade and to liberate capitalism from its own fetters, these deals engineered by US imperialism in its own interests would carve up the world into two or more power blocs waging economic war with one another. It is protectionism masquerading as free trade.

The bourgeois press went into overdrive about organized labor’s “devastating defeat” in the South, after workers at a Chattanooga, TN Volkswagen plant voted 712 to 626 against unionizing. One could detect a triumphant tone in the coverage, as if to say, “What more evidence could you ask for? The unions’ days are finished!

On August 21, the presiding judge in the case against Chelsea Manning read the sentence at the end of the court martial. Chelsea Elizabeth Manning—previously, Bradley Edward—was sentenced to 35 years in prison with a dishonorable discharge. What was her crime?