This Sunday, May 1, at 3:00 pm US Eastern Time, the International Committee of the Fourth International’s online May Day rally will mark International Workers Day under conditions of extraordinary crisis.

The US/NATO proxy war with Russia in Ukraine has brought the world to the brink of world war and nuclear catastrophe. The NATO powers have sabotaged all efforts for a negotiated settlement. The Biden administration is carrying out a massive escalation of the conflict, vowing to pour tens of billions of dollars of weaponry into the war and declaring that its aim is to carry out a strategic defeat of Russia.

The coronavirus pandemic, now in its third year, has killed 20 million people worldwide. New variants are spreading across the world even as the capitalist governments declare the pandemic over and end all restrictions on business aimed at stopping the spread. The world’s banks and corporations are bringing immense pressure on China to end its Zero Covid policy, which would lead to millions more deaths. The unrestrained spread of the virus risks new, more deadly variants that may render vaccines ineffective.

During the coronavirus pandemic, the world’s ruling elite carried out a massive transfer of wealth, hoarding unprecedented sums and throwing billions deeper into poverty. After piling the developing economies with debt, the IMF and World Bank are demanding ruthless restructuring programs that will slash social spending, cause deeper hardship and intensify the class struggle. The capitalist markets are deeply unstable, commodity prices are surging and supply chains are breaking down.

War sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and European imperialist powers are driving hundreds of millions of people into famine. In the developing world, the loss of food and fertilizer exports from the breadbasket of Eastern Europe means mass starvation is on the horizon. In the advanced countries, price increases mean hundreds of millions more are struggling to stay alive or out of poverty. Growing inflation has reduced the real wages of billions of working people around the world.

There are 300 million people who have been forced out of their home countries by imperialist war, poverty, dictatorship and climate change. Those who escape death en route to Europe and North America face brutal repression, detention, criminalization and deportation in these lands of “democracy.”

In country after country, powerful sections of the ruling class are turning to fascism and dictatorship to suppress social opposition in the working class. In the US, Donald Trump remains at liberty even though it is impossible to deny his involvement in a dictatorial coup attempt. In France, Marine Le Pen secured the highest vote total for a fascist candidate in the country’s history. The growth of the far-right and the ruling class’s move toward dictatorial forms of rule are an international phenomenon from which no region is immune.

The same contradictions that give rise to war and reaction also demonstrate the potential and the need for a revolutionary transformation of society.

All over the world, millions of workers of every race and nationality are demonstrating, protesting and striking against the intolerable conditions of life under capitalism. This growing movement has the power to stop war and take power out of the hands of a financial aristocracy whose continued rule threatens the world with destruction.

In Sri Lanka, Iran, South Africa, Peru, Iraq, Vietnam, Argentina, Sudan, Indonesia, Brazil, Spain, Turkey, Finland and many more countries, mass movements or strike waves are developing against living costs that have spiraled out of control as a result of the war in Ukraine and imperialist sanctions. Powerful strike movements are now emerging in the countries whose governments plotted the war, including in the United States and the United Kingdom.

This growing movement needs political leadership. The Online May Day Rally will bring workers together from all over the world to mark International Workers Day and discuss the strategy for a revolutionary socialist solution to the crisis of the capitalist system.

We urge all readers of the World Socialist Web Site to register for this critical event and promote it widely on social media and among your coworkers.

Forward to the 2022 May Day Online Rally!