Throughout the world, workers are engaging in strikes and mass protests over austerity, unprecedented levels of social inequality and the criminal response of capitalist governments to spread of the pandemic. This page will report on the latest developments in the class struggle throughout the world and provide a voice to workers and a means of organizing their struggles. At the same time, it will help workers draw the necessary lessons from the history of the class struggle and socialist movement for their battles today.
To be effective today, even the most basic forms of working-class resistance must be coordinated on an international scale. As the global class struggle escalates, the page will assist workers in building new organizations of struggle, rank-and-file factory and workplace committees independent of the unions, to defend themselves and coordinate their struggles across national borders.
The task of the WSWS is to assist the growing mass movement by providing the Marxist theoretical guidance and political perspective required to transform the spontaneous eruptions of social opposition into a class conscious and internationally coordinated revolutionary struggle for socialism.
Tens of thousands of Argentine workers and youth protest brutal repression of homeless families
Tens of thousands of workers and youth mobilized in protest last Thursday, October 29, in many Argentine cities. The demonstrators were responding to the savage expulsion of 1,000 homeless families from the land they had occupied for 100 days in the early morning hours of that October 29 demanding decent housing.
The attack included the burning of precarious homes and possessions, the use of tear gas and the chasing-down of homeless men, women and children, in a vacant field known as Guernica where the homeless had set up camp in the General Perón sector of Buenos Aires Province.
Mexican teachers and normal students continue holding up freight train lines
As of last week, teachers and normal school students (teachers in training) continued to block rail lines in Michoacán, disrupting the Kansas City Southern Rail lines that transport goods north from the pacific coast Port of Lázaro Cárdenas and into the United States. The blockade impacted shipments of steel, car parts and parts for domestic appliances.
St. Joseph, Missouri container workers battle demands for excessive work shifts
Workers at Silgan Containers Corporation in St. Joseph, Missouri are entering their 16th week on strike against excessive work shifts. Members of the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air Rail and Transportation Workers Local 2 voted 109-1 back on July 18 to reject the company’s demand for contract language that could force workers to labor 18 days straight on 12-hour shifts.
Nova Scotia shipyard workers stop work over violation of COVID protocols
About ninety workers at the Irving Halifax Shipyard, members of Unifor, refused to work last Tuesday in a job action against the company’s failure to follow the proper COVID-19 Atlantic Provinces’ “bubble” protocols. The refusal to perform unsafe work was prompted by the company deployment of a contractor from Quebec who had not been quarantined for the requisite 14 days after entering the province of Nova Scotia. The contractor had interacted with workers throughout the previous day. Irving management had not notified workers that the contractor had bypassed quarantine. Virus infections in Quebec have skyrocketed over the past two weeks.
Around the world, workers are rising up against the attacks by the capitalist class on their wages, standard of living and basic democratic rights. Millions are opposed to the drive to re-open schools, factories and other workplaces, sacrificing human life in the interest of private profit.
To provide these struggles with an independent organization and democratic leadership, the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party are building new organizations of struggle, rank-and-file committees, among autoworkers, teachers, warehouse workers and other section of the working class. Rank-and-file committees provide the means for workers to fight independently against both the companies, their union lackeys and their political representatives, and establish democratic control over production by workers themselves.
Rank-and-file committees reject the nationalist poison of the unions, which divides 'native' workers against 'foreign' workers and ensures the defeat of both. Instead, rank-and-file committees understand that workers all over the world have the same interests, and provides them the means for international discussion and collaboration.
The government and corporations are demanding a return to work in the midst of a pandemic, which is claiming thousands of lives every week. Their drive for profits takes priority over the health and safety of workers and their families.
In response to the emergence of a new cluster of coronavirus cases at the factory last week, the Faurecia Gladstone Rank-and-File Safety Committee, founded in August to oppose the spread of the contagion, inhumane working conditions and the systematic victimization of whistleblowers, has issued the following statement.
Our committee answers directly to the interests of the working class, not to the major corporations, their political representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties, or the teachers unions which have facilitated school reopenings.
Emma, a parent of primary school age children, said, “I could not agree more with all of you. How can anybody make schools safe? Even our primary school head said they couldn’t guarantee safety.
Autoworkers rank-and-file safety committees are teaming up across the country to restore the eight-hour work day, to oppose forced overtime, and to oppose the unchecked spread of COVID-19.
Rank-and-file safety committees represent and fight for the health of workers, in opposition to the demands of management and the profit principle, which are jointly defended by the companies and the unions. Committees will draw up detailed regulations and standards that must be monitored and enforced. Where conditions are violated, there must be a stoppage of work.
Core objectives of these committees include:
Controlling work hours and line speeds.
Guaranteeing personal protective equipment.
Ensuring safe and comfortable working conditions.
Enforcing regular testing.
Demanding universal health care and guaranteed income.
Ensuring the distribution of information.
Ensuring job security.
The World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party stand ready to assist. Contact us today for more information.
This resolution was adopted unanimously by the membership of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States at its Sixth National Congress, which was held online from July 19 to July 24, 2020.
The irreconcilable conflict between the capitalist class and the working class finds its most obscene expression in the correlation between the number of dead, unemployed and impoverished, and, on the other side of the ledger, the explosive rise of share values on Wall Street.
This is the opening report delivered by David North to the 2020 International May Day Online Rally held by the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International on May 2. North is the chairman of the International Editorial Board of the WSWS and the national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the US.
The characteristic of every great crisis is that it lays bare the contradictions that have accumulated and been suppressed for decades. All that is backward, anachronistic, corrupt, and, in the most profoundly objective sense, absurd and even irrational in the economic organization, social structure, political leadership and dominant ideology of the existing society is brutally and comprehensively exposed. The pandemic is such a crisis.
This work, first published in 1998, evaluates the bitter historical experiences of the working class with the trade unions and national liberation movements, and with Stalinism as practiced in the former Soviet Union and China.
This lecture, given by Nick Beams at the 1998 International Summer School on Marxism and the Fundamental Problems of the 20th Century, explains how the unprecedented global integration of production exposes the bankruptcy of the nation-state system and is preparing the way for new revolutionary upheavals.
This lecture by David North examines the causes for the betrayals of the trade unions in their hostility to the class struggle and socialism, and reviews the historical conflict between the trade unions and revolutionary Marxism. It was re-published in the 2014 book, The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished 20th Century.
This speech by David North was the opening address at the Labor at the Crossroads Conference held by the Workers League, the forerunner to the Socialist Equality Party (US), in Detroit on June 18-19, 1992.
