The 2018 midterm elections are already upon us and 2020 will be here before we know it. Although the left and labor leaders seem to have blanked 2016 from their memories, the takeaways from that earthshaking political cycle are clear: 1) People are fed up with the status quo; 2) Interest in socialism is skyrocketing; 3) You can’t fight evil with more evil. How can we combine all of this to fight and defeat Trump and everything he represents?

Teachers are on the move around the United States. By shutting down schools in every county in the state of West Virginia—even defying anti-strike laws that prohibit public sector employees from taking such action—teachers and other education workers have provided an exemplary lesson in class struggle for the labour movement to follow. Their inspiring victory has now set off similar actions in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona and other parts of the country.

50 years ago, on 4 April 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – the leader of the civil rights movement in America – was shot dead in cold blood. On that day, Dr. King was in Memphis, Tennessee, to lead a demonstration and rally in support of a three-month-long fight for trade union recognition by 1,300 local refuse collectors.

A series of school walkouts in the United States has given voice to a range of social demands that go beyond the typical gun-control debate that has prevailed in Washington and the media. More than a million high school, middle school, and even elementary students on over 3,000 campuses across the US staged walkouts on 14 March—exactly one month after 17 students and staff were killed in the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The Parkland, Florida shooting marks a tipping point, transforming the shock and grief of thousands of students into outrage and a vow to put an end to the horrific pattern of school massacres.

Socialist Revolution, US section of the IMT, reports on the recent, inspiring victory by striking teachers in West Virginia. The American comrades are also running their annual Fighting Fund appeal.Support their struggle to build socialism in the States: pledge generously today!

Tom Trottier examines the rise and fall of the Labor Party, which was founded by an alliance of unionists in 1996 and won some support, but rapidly declined in the late-90s and early-2000s. Tom explains why the Labor Party failed and why Marxists must draw lessons from the past to start laying the foundations and framework for a future mass, working-class, socialist party in the United States.

Interest in socialism has skyrocketed over the last two years. Millions of people yearn for change and want to fight back against capitalism. They are looking for ideas and an organization that can help them do just that. But there is as yet no viable point of reference, no mass socialist party, no clear and confident exit indicated out of the burning building. As a result, most people doubt whether a serious challenge to the system and its institutions can be mounted, let alone its total overturn. This explains the revival of interest in reformism.

The student loan industry's parasitism is matched by the Democratic Party's unwillingness to take them on. Martin Scorsese’s classic 1991 film Goodfellas lays bare the basic operations of the mafia. In a classic scene, narrator and mobster Henry Hill describes the fate that befalls those who partner with the mob.

 Neither taxation nor privatization will keep our water clean, bridges safe, or roads intact. Taking control over these essentials means a fight against those who hold them–and us–hostage under a failing system.

En las últimas dos semanas, olas de protestas heroicas se han extendido rápidamente por los pueblos y ciudades de todo Irán. Esta fue una erupción espontánea de rabia por parte de la juventud de clase media-baja y de la clase obrera contra la pobreza, el aumento de los precios y la indigencia, así como contra la riqueza y la corrupción de la élite iraní, en particular del clero. Se estima que 21 personas han muerto en las protestas hasta ahora y más de 1.700 han sido detenidas. Inmediatamente, los líderes occidentales desde Washington a Londres levantaron un coro defendiendo los derechos humanos del pueblo iraní.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer will stop research on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, and is expected to lay-off 300 research and development staff in Massachusetts and Connecticut, in a move that could severely hamper progress towards effective treatments for these illnesses – proving that critical medical research cannot be left in the hands of capitalist profiteers. Corporations like Pfizer should be expropriated and their assets, data and equipment placed under democratic control, to be used for the betterment of mankind.

2017 has been rich in political earthquakes and we have yet another to add to the list. Doug Jones has become the first Democrat in 25 years to win a US Senate seat for Alabama, a traditionally safe Republican seat with a predominantly white, religious and conservative electorate. Alabama will now have a Democrat in the US Senate. This is an outcome that would have seemed all-but-impossible a year ago and still seemed unlikely even as voters headed to the polls on Tuesday, given the flaccid and unispiring campaign waged by the Democrats, who have learned nothing from 2016 and have shifted even further to the right.

The past two years have seen huge shifts in political consciousness in the United States. A recent poll circulated by rabidly anti-communist organizations shows that 51 percent of American millennials want socialism and an additional 7 percent say that they want to live under communism – that makes 33.2 million socialists and a further 5.3 million “communists”! The mainstream bourgeois media is confused and asks: “Why is socialism suddenly so popular?” and “Why are there suddenly millions of socialists in America?”

The International Marxist Tendency has been celebrating the centenary of the Russian Revolution all year, releasing articles, videos and reading guides to commemorate the occasion. Around the day of anniversary itself (7 November by the modern calendar), we hosted a series of meetings, parties and events throughout the world. We have already published reports from Mexico, ...

Though reform of the US healthcare system is now considered common sense, the Democrats cannot and will not deliver. Only a mass independent political force—with single payer placed at the top of its agenda—is capable of winning this fight.

On September 19th President Donald Trump delivered his first address to the UN General Assembly to outline his view of the world, the universe and life in general.

Three years ago, the police murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO brought to the surface the brutality faced by the black and poor population of the city of St. Louis and its surrounding suburbs. Now, the city finds itself in the news again with a murderous police officer at the center of the story. Brown’s killing in 2014 at the hands of Ferguson PD officer Darren Wilson was simply the spark that ignited a flame that eventually led to the nationwide prominence of Black Lives Matter, which can trace its origins to the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Today, however, none of the problems which caused this social explosion have been resolved. In fact, they have only worsened.

Two hurricanes have hit the US Southeast in two weeks. The total death toll has surpassed one hundred. Hundreds of thousands of households have lost everything. In the Florida Keys alone, 25 percent of all homes have been completely destroyed. Millions of lives have been ruined and many areas will never be restored to their previous level.

Like Katrina and Sandy before it, Hurricane Harvey has once again revealed the rotten results of capitalism’s prioritization of profits over people. The disturbing images of wheel chair-bound nursing home residents up to their chests in floodwater say it all. “But the system was overwhelmed!”

This year has seen exceptional tension between the US and North Korea. A recent (Aug 29th) North Korean missile test flew a rocket through Japanese airspace for the first time ever, before it was exploded in an unknown location. This follows months of hostilities as the US administration has repeatedly made threats against the country.