English

Top Stories

Workers across the country from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Vancouver, British Columbia, took enthusiastically to picket lines outside their depots and workplaces, seeking to beat back demands for major concessions by the federally controlled Crown corporation.

Niles Niemuth

“I've been with the post for almost nine years, eight of which are permanent full time, and I'm making just dollars above minimum wage,” a striker said. “With the cost of living rising, due to inflation brought to us by the Trudeau government, 11.5 percent is not an option over four years. 22 percent is very reasonable.”

our reporters

This demand is addressed not to the right-wing JVP/NPP government, parliament or the opposition parties—all of which are organically behold to international finance capital. Rather it is addressed to the working class as a lever for mobilizing it against the bankrupt capitalist order and in the fight for workers’ power and the socialist reorganization of society.

Vilani Peiris, K. Ratnayake

Workers Struggles: Asia, Australia and the Pacific

South Korea: KMWU shuts down strike at Hyundai Transys; India: Madhya Pradesh health department workers fight for improved wages; Australia: Woolworths warehouse workers strike in New South Wales and Victoria; Canberra public hospital doctors walk out over salaries

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

White House endorses Israel’s deliberate starvation policy in Gaza

The US State Department declared Tuesday that Israel is not committing “gross violations of human rights” by withholding food to Gaza, effectively endorsing Israel’s policy of deliberately seeking to exterminate the population of Gaza through starvation.

Andre Damon

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

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

This week in history: November 18-24

Myanmar-Thailand border clash; UN recognizes Palestinian “right of return”;British Labour government nationalizes iron and steel industry; first Australopithecus skull discovered.

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
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
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.

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
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

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.

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

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.

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