The speculative binge on Wall Street is an expression of what Trotsky so rightly characterised as the death agony of the capitalist system a coterie of oligarchs rakes in billions of dollars as millions die.
The meaning of the May Day 2021 Online Rally
On Saturday, May 1, the International Committee of the Fourth International held its eighth annual International May Day Online Rally. The rally motivated and concretized the ICFI’s decision to initiate the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
The May Day rally both reflected and anticipated changes in the world situation produced by the coronavirus pandemic. The ICFI has defined the pandemic as a “trigger event” analogous to World War I, which is accelerating all the underlying contradictions of the world capitalist system. This includes, above all, the growth of the class struggle, of which the ICFI and its May Day rally are the most conscious expression.
May Day Online Rally calls for formation of International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees
On Saturday May 1, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the
World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) held the annual International Online May Day Rally. The rally motivated the formation of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).
The rally was a major international event. It attracted a global audience of over 2,000 participants from 73 countries. There were attendees from the United States, Great Britain, Sri Lanka, Australia, Canada, India, France, Brazil, the Philippines, Turkey, Thailand, Spain, Pakistan, Japan, Mexico, Iran, Israel, Russia, South Africa, Nigeria, and many other countries.
Watch: Meeting commemorates decades-long Australian Trotskyist Barry Jobson
20 January 2021
Below is the full video of a Socialist Equality Party meeting on January 17, commemorating the life of Barry Jobson, a decades-long fighter for the program of Trotskyism. The speakers Cheryl Crisp, Nick Beams, Terry Cook and Max Boddy reviewed different aspects of Jobson’s political contribution to the working class, in the context of the deepening crisis of Australian and world capitalism.
Death on an unprecedented scale: One year since the first death from COVID-19 in the US
This week, many of the national COVID-19 trackers will mark the death of 500,000 Americans in the United States from the coronavirus. It was just one year ago, on February 29, that the first official US fatality from COVID-19 was reported, a man in his 50s residing in Washington state. Postmortem testing in Santa Clara County, California, indicates that there may have been two earlier deaths, one on February 6 and another on February 17.
Still, a closer examination of these horrific numbers, including excess deaths, a term that refers to the number of deaths from all causes during a crisis, above and beyond what would typically be seen, demonstrates that the present catastrophe is far more massive than official figures and, most likely, on par with the 1918 influenza pandemic and even the US Civil War. More on this later.