Workers’ rebellion in France: Coup capitalism with communist revolution

As Emmanuel Macron, the president of France and a shameless stooge for finance capital, tries to ram through a plan to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64, millions of workers are waging the largest mass fightback in that country in more than fifty years. Enraged by former investment banker Macron’s anti-worker reforms, garbage collectors, utility workers, train conductors, and museum workers have walked off their jobs in droves.

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From Turkey to Ohio Capitalism Kills

Millions of workers have been devastated by earthquakes in Turkey and Syria and a train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio–and most of all, by capitalism. These tragic events were not “natural” disasters or accidents. Corrupt building practices and neglected infrastructure are part and parcel of  a system that’s based on the ruthless drive for maximum profit.
On February 6,  the mass collapse of flimsy buildings in Turkey and Syria killed 50,000 workers and displaced millions. Three days earlier, an oversized Norfolk Southern train with inadequate brakes burst into flames. Fifty cars derailed, spewing toxic chemicals into the air, killing thousands of fish in nearby waterways and potentially contaminating the area’s drinking water (Newsweek, 2/17).

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Editorial: U.S., China up the ante in war preparations

The two imperialist superpowers are accelerating toward World War III, with more brazen provocations by the day. Since shooting down an apparent Chinese spy balloon on February 4, the U.S. military has downed three unidentified flying objects over Alaska and Canada that “might turn out to be harmless commercial or research efforts that posed no real threat to the United States” (New York Times, 2/14). The Joe Biden administration blacklisted five Chinese companies accused of links to military surveillance programs—barely a week after the U.S. expanded its footprint on military bases in the Philippines less than 200 miles south of Taiwan.

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U.K. Rishi Sunak, face of fascism for a system in crisis

Amid runaway inflation and surging worker fightback, Britain's chaotic ruling-class merry-go-round has turned--for the moment--to filthy-rich Rishi Sunak, the UK's third prime minister in six weeks. Britain's instability reflects the international crisis of capitalism: a looming worldwide recession/depression, the implosion of the old U.S.-led liberal world order, the bosses' escalating attacks on the international working class, and the global volatility that will lead U.S. rulers—Democrats and Republicans alike—to full-blown fascism and world war with China and Russia.

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The Queen is Dead: Long Live The Working Class!

The nine-mile line to mourn Queen Elizabeth II, the monstrous figurehead for degenerate Nazi-loving billionaires and callous capitalist bosses, reminds us that the working class still struggles through a dark night of false unity with the ruling class. Through Elizabeth’s seventy years as the royal family’s number-one parasite, British imperialism exploited, enslaved, tortured, and slaughtered countless workers across the globe (see box on the British atrocities on page 6). The Queen “spent a lifetime smiling and waving at cheering native people around the world, a sort of living ghost of a system of rapacious and bloodthirsty extraction” (New York Times, 9/11). As the monarchy looted an estimated $28 billion from the international working class, more than 20 percent of the British population sank into poverty (House of Commons Library, April 2022).

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Reject all imperialists: U.S. empire in rapid decline while rivals rise

The U.S. is an imperialist superpower in steep decline. A recent case in point: At the G20, a conference of the world’s largest economies, the Big Fascist liberals—the multinational banks and energy companies that control the Democratic Party—utterly failed in their attempts to isolate rival imperialist Russia. From the New York Times (7/8): "[I]n a reflection of why Russia’s economy continues to function, [Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov did meet directly with…major nations that have declined to join the Western-led coalition against his country.”
As the U.S.-European alliance behind Ukraine seems exhausted, Russia has strengthened its economic ties with regional powers from Iran and India to Brazil and Mexico. Imperialist China, the greatest threat to U.S. dominance, dismissed an appeal from Secretary of State Antony Blinken to join the anti-Russia coalition. U.S. sanctions be damned, Russia is raking in record revenues from fossil fuels (NYT, 6/13). (The ruble is up nearly 30 percent against the U.S. dollar this year.) All the while, millions of workers worldwide are starved and impoverished by droughts, floods, and an inflationary spiral with no end in sight.

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Colombia: ELECTORAL FARCE EXPOSES CAPITALIST CRISIS

The government of hope has arrived…We are going to develop capitalism in Colombia.
--Gustavo Petro in a June 19 victory speech

The election of misleader Gustavo Petro as president of Colombia is a desperate move by the country’s capitalist rulers to pacify millions of angry workers with empty promises of a social “transformation.” On the heels of a humiliating Summit of the Americas (see CHALLENGE, June 22), his victory reflects the U.S. bosses’ decline in their old imperialist backyard. But while every

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Summit of the Americas, flashpoint of inter-imperialist rivalry

Mexico’s president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) announced he is boycotting this week’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles and half a dozen other heads of state are either threatening to do the same or barred from coming. The meeting is only the latest fiasco for host Jim Crow Joe Biden but significantly shows the crumbling of  U.S. imperialism. As capitalist bosses in China and Russia expand their economic and military presence in Latin America and the Caribbean, the old U.S. bosses’ “backyard” is becoming a flashpoint for inter-imperialist competition and the next world war.   

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Buffalo Massacre: Disarm capitalist butchers with communist revolution

Armed with a military-grade assault rifle and the rulers’ racist ideas, Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old monster created by capitalism, traveled 200 miles to Buffalo, New York, to murder Black people. Donned in body armor, he began firing in the parking lot at Tops Friendly Market—the only supermarket in Buffalo’s largest Black neighborhood—before walking inside. He shot 13 of our working-class brothers and sisters, 11 of them Black. Ten were killed; the killer, treated far more carefully by the kkkops than many unarmed Black workers, was arrested without a scratch.
By then the camera attached to Gendron’s helmet had livestreamed the atrocity to a popular gaming platform. Like photographs of lynchings in the early 1900s, the graphic footage found a ready audience. The butchery drew more than three million views, and was still generating revenue for Facebook a full day later. Under capitalism, the bosses’ media and social media eagerly amplify the profit system’s racist terror.

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Abort capitalism! The only healthy choice for our class is communism

The U.S. ruling class is imploding. The leaked draft of a Supreme Court ruling to destroy a fundamental part of women’s healthcare—access to abortion—reveals a deeply divided ruling class. In the desperate battle between the Big Fascists of multinational finance capital and the domestically oriented Small Fascists, the U.S. bosses are ready and willing to destroy trust in their most sacred institution.
The Big Fascist media typically describe the fight over abortion as one between compassionate “pro-choice” liberals and heartless “pro-life” reactionaries. But this framing ignores the longstanding sexism and racism that bars working-class women from life-saving access to healthcare. It also minimizes the threat posed by the dominant Big Fascist bosses as they move toward a bloody global conflict and the vicious destruction of working-class lives around the world.
Antisexists, let’s not fall into the trap of voting for the liberal rulers who oppress us. They are the greatest danger.

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