By David North
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Karl Marx, the originator of the materialist conception of history, the author of Das Kapital and, with Friedrich Engels, the founder of the modern revolutionary socialist movement. Born on May 5, 1818 in the Prussian city of Trier, Marx was, to quote Lenin, “the genius who continued and consummated the three main ideological currents of the nineteenth century, as represented by the three most advanced countries of mankind: classical German philosophy, classical English political economy, and French socialism combined with French revolutionary doctrines in general.”
Marx died in London on March 14, 1883 at the age of 64. By that time, he and Engels had placed utopian socialist aspirations on a scientific foundation and laid the basis for a revolutionary political movement of the international working class. Between 1843 and 1847, Marx carried out a revolution in theoretical thought that overcame both the limitations of the predominantly mechanical materialism of the eighteenth century and the idealist mystifications of Hegel’s dialectical logic. Read more » |
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 Working-class opposition erupts in Iran: A harbinger for the world in 2018
By Keith Jones
The long-suppressed and brutally exploited Iranian working class has burst onto the scene shaking Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime.
Since Dec. 28, tens of thousands have defied the Islamic Republic’s repressive apparatus and taken to the streets in cities and towns across the county. They have done so to voice their anger over food price rises, mass unemployment, gaping social inequality, years of sweeping social spending cuts and a pseudo-democratic political system that is rigged on behalf of the ruling elite and utterly impervious to the needs of working people.
The scope and intensity of this movement and its rapid embrace of slogans challenging the government and the entire autocratic political system have stunned Iranian authorities and western observers alike. Yet, it was preceded by months of worker protests against job cuts and plant closures and unpaid wages and benefits. Read more » |
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 Trump threatens North Korea with nuclear war
By Peter Symonds
The Trump administration has begun the year with an open and reckless threat of nuclear war against North Korea—a conflict that would inevitably drag in other nuclear-armed powers, with catastrophic consequences for the world.
In a New Year’s speech, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un offered talks with South Korea to ease tensions on the Korean Peninsula but warned the US he was ready to defend North Korea. The entire US mainland, he declared, was “within the range of our nuclear weapons and the nuclear button is always on the desk of my office.”
US President Donald Trump fired off a derogatory and provocative tweet: “Will someone from his depleted and food starved regime please inform him that I too have a Nuclear Button, but it is a much bigger & more powerful one than his, and my Button works!” Read more » |
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| Seattle councilperson Kshama Sawant targeted by defamation lawsuit for calling police “murderers”
By Eric London
Kshama Sawant, a Socialist Alternative member who was first elected to the Seattle City Council in 2013, is the target of a defamation lawsuit filed by police after she publicly denounced two officers for murdering Che Taylor, a 42-year-old African American man, in February 2016.
The Socialist Equality Party opposes and denounces the police-led legal attack on Sawant. The SEP has clear and well documented political disagreements with Sawant and Socialist Alternative. However, the defamation lawsuit, filed in August by officers Scott Miller and Michael Spaulding, is an attempt by powerful sections of the political establishment to block any criticism of police, who killed 38 people in Washington state in 2017 alone. Read more » |
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 Romanian Ford workers defiant as company seeks to impose blackmail contract
By Jerry White and Eric London
The new year began with the auto giant Ford seeking to impose a two-year labor agreement on 4,200 workers at its Craiova, Romania plant. Workers returned from their holiday break in a rebellious mood, however, with the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter receiving reports of sporadic work stoppages and a growing determination for collective resistance.
On December 21, an estimated 1,000 Craiova workers walked out of the southeastern Romanian plant in a wildcat strike after the Ford Craiova Automobile Union signed the sellout deal with Ford Romania. The agreement freezes the pay of senior workers and reduces new-hire wages to below the minimum salary or as little as €300 (US$358) a month, while cutting payments for overtime work and introducing “flexible” schedules whenever “operational demands require it.”
The US-based auto giant, which made $16.3 billion in gross profits in 2016 and $9.4 billion in the first three quarters of 2017, purchased the former Daewoo Motors facility from the Romanian government in 2008. Romanian wages can be as low as €2 (US$2.26) an hour or less than five percent of the overall labor costs of a German autoworker. Craiova workers churn out Ford’s compact SUV EcoSport—starting price $19,000 (€15,777) or four times the annual wage of a new hire—largely for the western European market. Read more » |
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 Strikes against austerity throughout Israel’s public and private sector
By Jean Shaoul
Israeli workers are facing an onslaught on jobs, wages and conditions, in both the public and private sectors. The attacks organised by the corporations, government and the courts are proceeding with the active collusion of the labour unions.
Last week, the trade unions agreed a rotten deal with the government and the Israel Electric Corporation (IEC), the state-owned utility, on the liberalisation and privatisation of industry to snuff out lightning strikes mounted in defiance of a ban on walkouts against market-based reforms.
Last August, the High Court of Justice ruled that workers at state-owned enterprises can no longer strike against market reforms, overturning an earlier judgement supporting the right to strike. This was a response to a series of strikes by electrical workers in June and July. Read more » |
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