United States: Election 2020 – The Socialist Case Against “Lesser-Evil” Politics 2020 has been a momentous year—a petri dish of capitalist chaos and instability not seen in generations. Tens of millions of American workers have been pushed off the cliff of a devastating economic meltdown and subjected to a criminally mishandled global pandemic. Sociopathic cops have been unleashed against ...
United States: School Teachers – Strike for Our Lives Against Disaster Capitalism! Despite record-breaking highs of COVID-19 new cases this summer, Donald Trump and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos have pushed hard for schools to reopen in person this fall.
Social media purges of left-wing groups intensify The censorship of social media accounts of left-wing groups has continued, with Facebook recently removing and restricting US anarchist and antifascist pages. This is part of a pattern, which has seen similar moves by other social media platforms. These purges demonstrate whose side these huge corporations stand on, and why we must fight for public control and ownership of social media.
USA: TikTok and Trump – National Security for Which Class? China’s recent economic growth constitutes a major challenge to the dominance of US capitalism. As a result, hostility to China is now a bipartisan priority for the US ruling class. In addition to increasing military tensions and the imperialist contest over countries in Africa and elsewhere, this has recently been expressed in the relationship between the US and Chinese tech sectors, supported by their...
USA: Black Lives Matter–Jacob Blake Shooting Reignites the Simmering Anger Another unarmed black man has been shot by police, this time in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The now-viral video of the shooting begins with Jacob Blake walking around his car to open the driver’s side door to get in, tailed immediately by two cops. One of the police grabs the back of Blake’s shirt, pulling him backwards to prevent him from getting into his vehicle, and almost immediately begins shooting at close range, firing seven shots into Blake’s back. Not shown in the video were Blake’s young children sitting in the backseat. Blake was admitted to the hospital, and his father says he is now paralyzed from the waist...
USA: Black Struggle and the Socialist Revolution This document on the Black Struggle and the Socialist Revolution was passed at the 2008 National Congress of the Workers International League, the US section of the International Marxist Tendency (now Socialist Revolution). It was originally published on 25 June, 2008. We republish it today, as the arguments it raises are more relevant than ever.
Uprising shakes the USA: reaping the whirlwind Alan Woods comments on the uprising in the USA, which was sparked by the police murder of George Floyd, and has become the catalyst for an explosion of anger by the downtrodden in America that has sent shockwaves throughout the world. What is the way forward?
[Video] Uprising in Minneapolis: an eyewitness account Interview with Erika Roedl, an International Marxist Tendency activist in Minneapolis and writer for Socialist Revolution, where she explains the movement against the racist police murder of George Floyd, the role of the Democrats, the emergence of neighbourhood committees and the perspectives for the movement.
USA: anger explodes at police murder in Minneapolis The racist capitalist system has yet again produced the same tragedy—right down to the pleading final words shared by both George Floyd and Staten Island’s Eric Garner. This has sparked some of the largest protests the Minneapolis area has ever seen, and similar actions have already spread to other cities like Los Angeles and Memphis.
Capitalists clash over hunt for COVID-19 vaccine As billions of dollars are invested into creating a vaccine for COVID-19, the imperialists are only interested in protecting their intellectual property and settling scores with one another. Meanwhile, global bodies like the WHO further reveal their impotence in the face of this international public health emergency.
The growing outbreak of discontent in the US military The coronavirus crisis is creating dissent within the ranks of the armed forces. This is a worrying development for the capitalist class, and a harbinger of explosive developments to come.
The WHO’s impotence and China-US relations The COVID-19 crisis is exposing the limitations of global bodies like the UN and the WHO, trapped between the competing interests of US and Chinese imperialism. Like an umbrella full of holes, they're useless precisely when they're most needed.
Class struggle in the USA: reactionary protests and the strike wave A string of right-wing protests against enforced social distancing and stay-at-home policies in Texas, Michigan, Virginia, Florida, Louisiana, and other states have received copious media attention in recent weeks. One particularly notable event was “operation gridlock” in Michigan, in which protestors got in their cars and deliberately blocked traffic—making it impossible for even ambulances to get through to respond to medical emergencies. Photographs and videos showed participants flying confederate flags, fascist insignias, and other reactionary symbols. Members of the semi-fascist Proud Boys gang were in attendance. The Michigan Conservative Coalition, which has close ties to...
USA: Massachusetts nurses on the frontline in the battle against COVID-19 With cases of the novel coronavirus continuing to rise and no plateau in sight, nurses in Massachusetts have found themselves fighting more than just the virus to keep themselves and their patients safe and healthy. Between the ineptitude and inaction of the government and the barriers to care created by hospital administrators and shareholders, the nurses are exercising their collective power and using the resources of their union to take control of providing supplies, support, and guidance to healthcare workers. The nurses’ actions clearly demonstrate the timeliness and effectiveness of the ...
USA: Bernie Sanders and the lessons of the “Dirty Break” – Why socialists shouldn’t run as Democrats The economic crisis and pandemic have made it patently clear that US capitalism is not at all exceptional. Like everything else in the universe, American capital’s political system is subject to sharp and sudden changes. After Bernie Sanders handily won the first few contests of the 2020 race for the Democratic nomination, he was seen as an unstoppable threat—prompting every other candidate to immediately fold up their campaigns and close ranks against him. After months of panicking over Bernie’s momentum, the ruling class finally managed to reverse the course of the electoral race—and they did it with unprecedented speed. Now, after an electrifying rollercoaster ride, Bernie Sanders’s...