English

Top Stories

Organizers for the United Auto Workers (UAW) union in the Northeast US have entered their second week on strike against “UAW management” in New York City, demanding better job security and benefits.

Elliott Murtagh, Jerry White

The injunction, coming just two days after the Fair Work Commission made an unprecedented ruling to ban pickets by 1,500 striking Woolworths workers, highlights the complete intolerance of the ruling class for any form of opposition by workers to the deepening assault on their standard of living.

Martin Scott

Made in Ethiopia—or anywhere else in the world

Shot over four years before and during the pandemic, Made in Ethiopia shows the impact of this first industrial park that hosts 103 companies producing cement, ceramics, aluminium, and fast fashion and employs 20,000 people, at a time of profound crisis.

Jean Shaoul

National strike in France against massive cuts in public spending; workers and retirees continue protests across Iran against dire living conditions; three-day stoppage by health workers in Lagos, Nigeria over pay

Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa

Workers in France in national stoppage against Social Security Budget as government falls; South Pars Complex casual oil workers in Iran join protests by students and retirees against collapsing living standards; strikes by Nigerian health workers in Lagos as staff walk out at three universities over pay and conditions

Peru’s corporate chiefs rattled by deepening crisis

Peruvian media coverage of the CADE 2024 conference touted as a model President Javier Milei’s fascistic economic program in Argentina, which has left half of the population in poverty.

Cesar Uco

South Korean president faces second impeachment vote

The opposition Democrats have pledged to repeatedly reintroduce the impeachment motion to parliament, after the first was defeated on December 7, until President Yoon is forced from office.

Ben McGrath

Donald Trump’s threat to abolish birthright citizenship

The proposal by Donald Trump to eliminate birthright citizenship by executive fiat on “day one” of his second administration would mean the formal repudiation of the bedrock democratic principle underlying the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments: that citizenship and the panoply of democratic rights attendant to it are available to all persons born in the United States, and that no branch of government can strip them away.

Eric London

Turkey leads regime change battle in Syria

The US and NATO-backed war for regime change in Syria, launched in 2011, has been revived. Turkey, Syria’s northern neighbour and occupying power since 2016, is playing a major role.

Barış Demir, Ulaş Ateşçi
84 years since the assassination of Leon Trotsky

Trotsky's assassination was the greatest political crime of the 20th century. Alongside Vladimir Lenin, Trotsky was the leader of the 1917 October revolution in Russia, which led to the establishment of the first workers’ state in history, and the preeminent strategist of world socialist revolution.

The Gaza genocide and the death of Aaron Bushnell: What are the political lessons?

This lecture was given by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Tuesday, March 12.

Namibia elections see declining support for ruling SWAPO

SWAPO’s decline and that of other anti-colonial national movements have exposed the organic incapacity of Africa’s bourgeois nationalists to realise the aspirations of the African masses for freedom from foreign domination, democracy and social justice.

Alejandro López

Chad ends longstanding military cooperation with France

Chad, a former African colony of France, has for decades been central to its military operations in Africa, but it is developing closer ties to Russia amid the NATO war with Russia in Ukraine.

Kumaran Ira

This week in history: December 9-15

This column profiles important historical events which took place during this week, 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago and 100 years ago

The speculative Bitcoin frenzy

The total size of the crypto market is estimated to be larger than the combined worth of Mastercard, Walmart and JPMorgan Chase.

Nick Beams

COP29, climate change and the normalization of mass death

The latest climate summit embraced the same policy that has been adopted since such climate talks began in 1995: the subordination of Earth’s environment and the lives of those impacted to the corporate and economic demands of the United States and the other major capitalist powers.

Bryan Dyne
On the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup

Fifty years after Chile’s horrific September 11 coup, its political relevance is becoming ever more urgent as the specter of dictatorship once again haunts the political life of Latin America.

Read
NOW AVAILABLE
COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic

Mehring Books, the publishing arm of the Socialist Equality Party (US), is proud to announce the publication of Volume 1 of COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic, a compilation of the World Socialist Web Site's coverage of this global crisis.

Read the introduction

Analyzing a World in Chaos from an Island of Tranquility

This speech was given by David North at the second international commemoration of the work of Leon Trotsky on Büyükada (Prinkipo), Turkey, during the first period of his exile from the Soviet Union between 1929 and 1933.

David North

On the anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky

Eighty-four years ago today, on August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was assassinated by an agent of the Stalinist secret police, the GPU, in his villa in Coyoacan, Mexico, where he spent the final three years of his life as a political exile.

David North
One Hundred Years Since the Death of Lenin

January 21 marked 100 years since the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924. This page includes a collection of essays reviewing the life and ideas of the great Marxist theoretician, founder of the Bolshevik Party, and co-leader of the Russian Revolution.

View page
Leon Trotsky and the Struggle for Socialism in the Twenty-First Century

The essays in this book, though written over the span of more than 40 years, are connected by a central argument: Leon Trotsky was the most significant figure in the history of socialism during the first four decades of the twentieth century, and his legacy remains the critical and indispensable theoretical and political foundation of the ongoing contemporary struggle for the victory of world socialism.

Order your print or epub version of the book from Mehring Books today.

Read
Statement of the Editorial Board
For a Global Workers’ Inquest into the COVID-19 Pandemic

The Inquest is necessary to break through the cover-up, lies and misinformation that have been used to justify policies responsible for the avoidable deaths of millions.

Find out more
25 years since the death of Vadim Rogovin

Vadim Z. Rogovin (10 May 1937 – 18 September 1998) was a Soviet Marxist sociologist and historian. Working in close collaboration with the International Committee of the Fourth International, Rogovin helped lay the foundations for the Trotskyist movement’s fight against the post-Soviet school of historical falsification, including in his six-volume Was There an Alternative? This page collects major essays and commemorations on Rogovin as well as links to his own writings.

Read

The Wuhan lab lie: “Weapons of mass destruction” redux

In an uncanny instance of history repeating itself, the lies used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on false claims about “weapons of mass destruction” are being used to promote the United States’ unprecedented military buildup around China.

Andre Damon

A discredited conspiracy theory about the origins of COVID-19

The Wuhan Lab Leak slander being resurrected to bolster US war drive against China

The Wall Street Journal disclosed that the Department of Energy has shifted its opinion on the origin of the coronavirus to it being most likely a result of a lab leak. However, unnamed sources who have read the report indicate the evidence is of low confidence.

Benjamin Mateus

Marcus Garvey and the reactionary logic of racialist politics

More than one hundred years after the formation of his Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), Marcus Garvey's legacy remains highly relevant in the struggle to overcome efforts to divide the working class along racial lines.

Lawrence Porter
Wije Dias: A fighter for Trotskyism (1941-2022)

Comrade Wije Dias, the longtime general secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka), died in Colombo on July 27, 2022. This exhibit includes two tributes to Wije by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North as well as a selection of Wije’s most significant articles and speeches.

Forty-five years since the assassination of Tom Henehan (1951-1977): A Revolutionary Life

October 16 marked the 45th anniversary of the assassination of Tom Henehan, a member of the Political Committee of the Workers League—the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party in the US. We are republishing here a tribute delivered by David North at a meeting in 1997.

Timeline of thirty years of war: The historical background to the US-NATO conflict with Russia

This interactive timeline presents some of the most important events that have brought humanity to the brink of World War III. It includes links to critical articles and statements produced by the International Committee of the Fourth International over the past 30 years.

View the Timeline

Aidan Beatty’s hackwork: The Israel-Zionist connection

The academic career of prominent DSA member Aidan Beatty, the author of a slanderous trash biography of long-time Trotskyist leader Gerry Healy, has been funded by Zionist institutions and Israeli-state sources.

Andrea Peters
The fight for Trotskyism and the political foundations of the World Socialist Web Site

The WSWS is publishing the report delivered by David North 25 years ago, on February 1, 1997, motivating the proposal to end publication of the SEP’s printed newspaper and replace it with an international website; as well as North’s reply to the National Committee ‘s discussion of the proposal.

Donald Trump’s threat to abolish birthright citizenship

The proposal by Donald Trump to eliminate birthright citizenship by executive fiat on “day one” of his second administration would mean the formal repudiation of the bedrock democratic principle underlying the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments: that citizenship and the panoply of democratic rights attendant to it are available to all persons born in the United States, and that no branch of government can strip them away.

Eric London
WSWS Review
Thirty years since the dissolution of the USSR

Review the most critical essays, lectures and letters produced by the ICFI in the course of its intervention in response to the crisis of Stalinism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Read more

New Zealand: Court action continues over Pike River mine disaster

Families of some of the 29 workers killed in the 2010 coal mine disaster are continuing their fight for answers about why authorities dropped charges against Pike River Coal chief executive Peter Whittall over the extremely dangerous conditions in the mine.

Tom Peters