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SEP online meeting, “The election debacle and the fight against dictatorship”

The socialist response to the election of Trump

The November 10 online meeting hosted by the Socialist Equality Party analyzed the causes and consequences of the Trump victory and elaborated a political strategy for the working class to fight back.

Trump’s threat that the US could end support for NATO unless the European powers significantly up their budgets for military spending, his declaration that he intends to end the “loser” war in Ukraine, and threats to increase tariffs on all goods being imported into the US have sent a shudder through Britan’s ruling elite.

Robert Stevens

The auto workers’ union in South Korea is attempting to prevent a broader struggle against job cuts as the car industry around the world prepares a jobs bloodbath as part of the so-called “just transition” to electric vehicles.

Ben McGrath

Teachers' strikes have begun in three districts on the North Shore of Massachusetts. Strikes began Friday, November 8, by about 800 educators in Beverly and 1,000 in Gloucester. Five hundred Marblehead teachers are set to strike beginning Tuesday, November 12.

Mike Ingram, Kate Randall

PPG Industries to cut 1,800 jobs worldwide and sell off manufacturing plants

As part of the global assault on jobs, 1,800 workers at PPG Industries throughout the United States and Europe will lose their jobs in the coming months. In addition, the company is selling off many of its paint manufacturing plants threatening the jobs of over 6,000 other workers.

Logan Brazek

Workers Struggles: The Americas

No cargo is moving at Canada’s three largest ports following a series of employer lockouts, while military police in São Paulo last week attacked students and educators opposing privatization.

Vote SEP in Sri Lanka’s November 14 parliamentary election!

We urge workers, students, youth and rural poor to vote for the SEP in this election to express their support for our international socialist perspective and on that basis prepare for the class struggles ahead.

Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka)

JVP/NPP leader foreshadows strike ban in Sri Lanka

The JVP/NPP’s preparation to ban all strikes is a clear expression of the fascistic character of its program, which has always been inherent in its virulent Sinhala chauvinism.

Saman Gunadasa

Who is Sri Lanka’s new President, Anura Kumara Dissanayake?

In the history of the JVP, Dissanayake has played a particular role in its jettisoning of socialistic demagogy and transformation into a pro-imperialist party of the Sri Lankan ruling class to implement austerity and crush any opposition.

Naveen Dewage, K. Ratnayake

North Korean troops in Russia as US/NATO escalates Ukraine war

As the US and its allies escalate the war against Russia in Ukraine, the global dimensions of the conflict become ever clearer: The European war is merging with advanced US-led preparations for war in Asia against China.

Peter Symonds

North Korean troops deployed to Russia, as US/NATO ramps up Ukraine war

The condemnation of North Korean troops in Russia is entirely hypocritical given that US/NATO, in its war against Moscow, has supplied Ukraine with billions of dollars of increasingly sophisticated military hardware along with training and intelligence.

Peter Symonds

This week in history: November 11-17

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.

Schools on rations: US education funding lags behind UNESCO benchmarks

A recent report from the Education Data Intiative exposes the fact that the world’s richest imperialist country has underfunded schools for decades. It indicts the US for failing to meet global benchmarks for education and, despite economic growth, allocating proportionally less for schools.

Nancy Hanover

Erdogan government suspends elected Kurdish mayors

The appointment of trustees to replace elected mayors is a blatant attack on basic democratic rights. The Socialist Equality Group condemns this anti-democratic police state repression and calls for the reinstatement of elected mayors.

Barış Demir

Erdogan government arrests Kurdish CHP mayor in Istanbul

This arrest and the appointment of a trustee to replace an elected mayor is a clear attack on basic democratic rights. The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long sought to stifle political opposition through such anti-democratic operations, building a police state.

Barış Demir

Kenya’s Gen Z insurgency, the strike wave and the struggle for Permanent Revolution-Part 1

The recent strike wave by workers in Kenya, following the Gen Z-led uprising, reflects deep-seated anger towards the regime of President William Ruto and its International Monetary Fund-backed austerity measures. Workers and the youth must forge a new path grounded in Leon Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution—the programme that inspired the October 1917 Russian Revolution. It is essential to revive the struggle of Trotskyism against Stalinism, Maoism, Pabloism, and bourgeoisie nationalism.

Kipchumba Ochieng

Kenya’s Gen Z insurgency, the strike wave and the struggle for Permanent Revolution-Part 2

The recent strike wave by workers in Kenya, following the Gen Z-led uprising, reflects deep-seated anger towards the regime of President William Ruto and its International Monetary Fund-backed austerity measures. Workers and the youth must forge a new path grounded in Leon Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution—the programme that inspired the October 1917 Russian Revolution. It is essential to revive the struggle of Trotskyism against Stalinism, Maoism, Pabloism, and bourgeoisie nationalism.

Kipchumba Ochieng
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.

CDC video downplays danger of H5N1 bird flu

The presentation, so brief as to be little more than a public service announcement, signals an abandonment of efforts to prevent the emergence of a wider avian flu pandemic.

Bill Shaw

Momodou Taal wins case against Cornell University

The campaign to stop Cornell University from forcing the deportation of international PhD student and instructor Momodou Taal for his outspoken opposition to the Gaza genocide has won an important victory with the announcement that the university has rescinded his suspension.

Kevin Reed
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.

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.

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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
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
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.

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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.

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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

Bankers in the Ivory Tower by Charlie Eaton

The financialization of higher education and the fight against war

Eaton’s book traces the financialization of higher education from the 1980s through the 2010s, which underlay the subordination of academia to Wall Street and the war machine of US imperialism.

Emma Arceneaux
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.

SEP online meeting, “The election debacle and the fight against dictatorship”

The socialist response to the election of Trump

The November 10 online meeting hosted by the Socialist Equality Party analyzed the causes and consequences of the Trump victory and elaborated a political strategy for the working class to fight back.

WSWS Editorial Board

Socialist Equality Party to hold emergency online meeting Sunday, November 10

The election debacle and the fight against dictatorship

Countless millions in the United States and throughout the world are stunned by the outcome of the election, which was made possible by the policies of the Democratic Party. But the shock is turning into disgust as they witness the Democrats’ craven surrender to Trump.

David North

Democrats grovel before Trump

President Biden and Vice President Harris have pledged full cooperation with the incoming fascist president-elect, while issuing no warning to the American people of the dangers of mass repression and rule by force.

Patrick Martin
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.

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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