When Trump, with his usual bravado and bluster, proclaimed that the U.S. government was close to an agreement to end the war with Iran, it may have excited the big investors on Wall Street, who bid up stock prices, looking for short-term speculative gain. That’s probably what Trump intended.
But for everyone else in the world, other than billionaire Wall Street speculators, things are looking much different. Even if some agreement is reached between the Trump regime and the Iranian regime, any pause in the war in the Middle East against Iran will only be a temporary respite.
The consequences of this barbaric war have already been devastating. While Trump acts like an unhinged madman, proclaiming himself doing “God’s work,” the war he ordered has killed thousands of people in Iran and Lebanon, including hundreds of children. Millions of people have been forced from their homes and many now have no home to go back to. U.S. bombs have blown up factories, steel mills and other productive infrastructure in Iran.
Israel, the U.S.’s partner to the war, took advantage of the U.S. assault on Iran to invade Lebanon, to push the population out of southern Lebanon.
The blocking of the Strait of Hormuz disrupted supply chains worldwide. Vital oil and gas supplies are blocked, along with fertilizer and other chemical products, causing shortages and raising prices around the world. China and many other countries in Asia depend on oil from the Middle East. Farmers from Africa and most of the world depend on this fertilizer, endangering food production.
The damage already done to the world’s economic infrastructure may be irreparable. At best, it will take years, if not decades, to patch back together a broken system that rests on oil. At least 20% of the world’s supply remains at risk. In typical fashion, capitalists everywhere have rushed to maximize profit, not to prevent further damage to the system.
The whole world is tied together economically, and the consequences of this current war will lead to more explosions in the future.
Wars are the consequence of the normal functioning of the capitalist system. But wars compound crises which again generate further wars. The capitalist economic system has been in an ongoing crisis for decades.
The economic damage caused by this war against Iran has made the crisis worse, which means competition between capitalists will intensify. This can only lead to the number of wars increasing. Wars in one region easily spill over into another region.
Today the number of active wars has reached a level unseen since the end of World War Two. Today nearly half of the world’s population live in countries affected by war. Today we can say that we are already in World War Three.
The population in this country is already paying a price for the war against Iran. Corporations use wars to price gouge and increase their profits, so gas prices have shot up and the prices of food and many other products are following. The government has already cut social programs to pay for the military budget. If the military budget is increased to 1.5 trillion dollars, like Trump says he wants to do, that money will be taken from programs that the population needs.
The U.S. government is now going to automatically put the names of young working-class men on a list for the draft. The government is preparing for when it will be ready to use them as cannon fodder in the next war. When the U.S. government goes into its next war, the price we pay will not just be in dollars, it will be in lives. With today’s weapons reaching across oceans, nobody will be safe.
The capitalist leaders of this world and their political representatives are perfectly ready and willing to sacrifice our lives for the sake of capitalist profits.
The only way to stop this madness of war rests with the working class here and in the rest of the world. When the working class begins to respond to the capitalists’ wars and attacks on its standard of living, the working class can feel its power, opening the possibility that it will organize against this insane capitalist system, with the goal of building a system to serve us all. That is the hope for humanity’s future.
The federal income tax cut for overtime pay is a lot smaller than advertised. “Eligible” workers can only deduct the premium part of overtime pay, up to $12,500 for single filers or $25,000 for joint filers. That means only the extra “half” in time-and-a-half pay qualifies for the tax break, not our full overtime earnings.
Moreover, this is only a federal income tax deduction, not a full exemption. So, we still have to pay the full payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare, as well as state and local taxes.
As prom season approaches, families are faced with higher costs for limo rides, tickets, dresses, corsages, and hair and nail care. Our children should have a great time. We should be able to afford it. America is rich because of our labor.
Gas prices shot up immediately when the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran. But when the ceasefire started, did gas prices shoot back down? Heck no!
Gas prices being the highest they’ve been since 2022, this is a lousy time for us to get short hours.
According to AAA, the average gas price in L.A. County reached $6 per gallon. Some of us now pay more than $100 to $130 to fill our vehicle’s gas tank. And these prices are expected to continue to increase for the foreseeable future.
And the irony is that companies extract oil practically right under our feet, right here in the Los Angeles region. So, the gas we purchase is not from the Middle East.
Banks and oil companies are the main culprits in this scheme, laughing at us while filling their pockets.
The World Soccer Cup is coming to L.A.! But if you want to see one of the matches, you need to fork out at least $120 for lower-demand group matches, or several thousand dollars for premium matches. If you want to watch the final game next to our president and his lackeys, ultra-rich, and kings and queens, you have to pay around $11,000.
Considering how much a soccer ball costs, organizing a World Cup among ourselves would be a wise option.
Last week at the White House, Trump said, “We’re fighting wars, we can’t take care of day care.”
“Don’t send any money for day care. Because the United States can’t take care of day care. That has to be up to a state. Send it to the states. The state should pay for it, too. They have to raise their taxes …”
“It’s not possible—Medicaid, Medicare, all these individual things … We have to take care of one thing, military protection …”
It’s true, that most of the time, when the president opens his mouth, it only verifies that he is a moral monster.
But the real monster is the system that requires war and will go to any length to carry out its imperialist policies, with no expense spared. Wars that kill children. Money for wars, rather than what human beings need.
The Iran war is hitting California drivers harder than any other state, with average gasoline prices currently at least six dollars per gallon. This is two dollars more per gallon than the already outrageously high prices in the rest of the country. So, already cash-strapped families in California are often paying more than 100 dollars to fill up a tank of gas. As for truckers, they are now paying over 1,000 dollars to fill up their tank, as opposed to 600 dollars just a couple of months ago.
As usual, the oil companies and news media blame the supposedly “liberal” state government for environmental regulations and higher taxes for this disaster. But what they don’t bother to mention is that on the very day the war began the oil companies hiked prices. Within a matter of days, they had tripled their profit margins for refining oil from 50 cents per gallon to $1.50 per gallon, according to Jamie Court of the rate payer advocacy group Consumer Watchdog.
This is hardly a surprise. As many experts have pointed out, only five major companies (Chevron, Marathon, Valero, PBF Energy and Phillips 66) dominate production and distribution in the state. These companies may not be considered a cartel in a legal sense. But they sure do coordinate their price hikes—just like a cartel.
California also could soon face big fuel shortages of all sorts, driving prices still higher. California used to be a big producer of crude oil. But production has declined steeply over the last several decades. And companies have also been systematically closing oil refineries over the last four decades, bringing their numbers down from 40 refineries to 11 today. In the process, these companies have also slashed tens of thousands of jobs.
These cuts in supply are made worse by the fact that the California energy sector is considered an isolated “oil island,” since there are no interstate pipelines carrying crude oil and gasoline from the rest of the country. So, even though the U.S. produces more oil than any country in history, pumping 13.5 million barrels per day, California refineries depend on roughly 75% of their crude oil from other countries, almost one-third of which comes from the Middle East.
California also gets jet fuel and gasoline from countries whose refineries depend on the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. So, with the Strait of Hormuz still closed, South Korea and India—two of California’s biggest fuel suppliers—are dramatically slowing exports, threatening to squeeze the Golden State’s energy supplies even more. This month, South Korea is set to ship about half the jet fuel it normally sends to California.
Obviously, the longer the Iran war goes on, the worse this crisis will get.
Moreover, even if this crisis is resolved and crude oil begins to flow more freely, California, with its enormous population of 39 million residents, and its enormous economy, ranked fourth in the world all by itself, will continue to be threatened with much bigger price hikes and fuel shortages, given the worsening global instability. But as history shows, the big oil companies won’t miss a beat in using each new crisis as a justification to increase their prices … and profits.
The Chicago Tribune did some digging into ICE data from last fall’s Operation Midway Blitz. Trump, Bovino and ICE have consistently said that their so-called immigration enforcement—like Midway Blitz in Chicago—was focused on “the worst of the worst criminal, illegal aliens who put the American people in danger.”
Their own data show that to be a lie. The Department of Homeland Security detained about 3900 people in the Chicago area during their “Blitz,” deporting around 2500. Sixty percent had no criminal record at all, and very few had been charged with violence or serious crimes. For every person deported with a felony record, there were 44 who had done nothing. So much for “worst of the worst!” Most were Mexico-born and over 40—working here for years to make this city run.
Trump got elected by blaming economic problems for working people on immigrants—claiming they took jobs and brought violence. The policy of raids in places like Los Angeles, Chicago and then Minneapolis has been to attack workers using military force—a way to try to intimidate the working class and condition people to seeing military force on the streets. All the lies about “criminals” are smoke and mirrors.
Tax Day just passed and most workers are probably pretty angry after seeing how much of their income went to taxes. And justifiably so, especially if you look into how little the richest Americans pay in taxes.
According to an investigation by ProPublica put out in 2021, the 25 richest Americans had 401 billion dollars in income between 2014 and 2018, and paid just 3.4% in taxes on that income! Warren Buffett paid only 0.1%, Jeff Bezos paid just 0.98%, and Michael Bloomberg paid a grand total of 1.3%.
So how do they manage to avoid paying taxes on their income? Yes, the politicians have lowered the tax rate on the top income brackets in 1964 from 91% to 70%, then again in 1981 to 50%, and in 2018 to 37%. But the richest of the rich avoid even this 37%.
It’s also true that the highest capital gains tax rate is 20% and those with the highest incomes would pay an additional tax of 3.8%. To most of us, even that 23.8% rate seems pretty modest compared to what most workers pay. Another study by economists at University of California-Berkeley found that average Americans pay about 15% in income and payroll taxes, and that doesn’t even include things like sales taxes or gasoline taxes that hit workers and the poor harder than the rich.
The richest of the rich have found loopholes to avoid paying even these rates of taxes. They avoid receiving dividends on their stocks, instead pushing for companies to put the money into ways of driving up the prices of their stocks. Then they borrow money against the huge amounts they have in stocks from lenders that only require them to pay off the interest on the loans from year to year. They hold onto their stocks until they die and pass them on to their children or others who inherit from them.
Theoretically, there is supposed to be an inheritance tax of 40% on property over 15 million dollars. But if they break their wealth up into smaller pieces, their inheritors get a discount on that tax rate. When their children inherit their stock, they then only pay capital gains taxes based on the value of the stocks at the time they inherited them, not against the amount the person passing them on paid when they initially bought the stocks!
Their success in avoiding estate taxes shows in the amounts collected in estate taxes. In 2024, the richest 1% of Americans owned 50 trillion dollars in wealth. The estate tax raised only 30 billion dollars on that 50 trillion in 2024, or less than 0.1%.
So when there is no money for SNAP assistance or to provide money for schools, despite how much most workers are paying in taxes, it’s because the richest of the rich practically manage to avoid paying any taxes at all.
On the night of the 4th of July in 2025, two dozen anti-ICE activists in Texas took part in a demonstration outside the Prairieland ICE Detention Center.
From 50 yards away, they launched fireworks—as people do at night on the 4th of July! In Spanish, they relayed messages of encouragement to detainees using a bull horn. They called their activity a “noise demonstration.”
Others, dressed in black, let the air out of two tires on one ICE van. Someone no one had met before that day spray-painted one tiny guard shack with: “F--- you pigs.”
Because this prison is owned by the City of Alvarado, when loud noises happened, one Alvarado police officer responded.
Unfortunately, one anti-ICE demonstrator—a former Marine reservist and gun enthusiast—brought his rifle. He “stood guard” in a nearby woods. When the one Alvarado police officer arrived, this guy panicked and accidentally wounded the officer.
Of those who demonstrated that night, 16 faced federal felony charges. Some pled guilty in a deal to avoid trial. On March 13, 2026, eight were convicted of “offering support to [domestic] terrorists” and many other charges. One was convicted of lesser charges. Sentencing is scheduled to happen in May.
Because a few of the anti-ICE protestors were gun owners, they were convicted of terrorism—even though their “legal-in-Texas” guns were locked up at home!
None of this explains the terrorism charges and convictions. The federal government had decided that they do not like the population interfering with the harsh tactics of ICE. A Trump-appointed judge was selected and the jury was instructed so as to make an example of these folks.
The U.S. Government would like to replace the memory of Minneapolis and a community coming together in huge numbers with this made up “terrorism” scenario from Texas.
If you throw a firecracker, you will be convicted of terrorism.
If you have no gun on you, but own a gun that is back at your house, you will be convicted of terrorism.
Ever since the end of the social movements of the 1950s to 1970s, beginning around 1975, there has been a more reactionary path that the federal government has been on. Mass incarceration was one step along the way. What is happening now is the continuation.
The way the federal government fiercely reacted and threw the book at these protestors is telling. This protest was held outside a Border Patrol/ICE Immigrant Detention Center. This private, non-government-run facility was protected by the federal government as if it were Fort Knox. Why?
The Trump Administration has a goal to use harsh punishment to train the population on where they can and cannot protest and what they can and cannot do. For the population to accept this attempt to silence protest would be a big mistake. In Minneapolis, the population figured out what to do when faced with similar threats.
This article is translated and excerpted from the April 17 issue, #3011 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
A new flotilla of several dozen boats left the port of Barcelona, Spain, bound for Gaza on April 12.…
This time again, doctors, humanitarians, and Palestinian rights activists are on board to alert public opinion to the plight of the nearly two million Gazans, whose terrible situation no longer makes the headlines—especially since the start of the American-Israeli offensive against Iran.
The situation in Gaza is terrible and cannot be summed up in a few figures. But the figures are damning: more than 72,300 dead in the last two and a half years, more than 172,000 wounded, and 10,000 Gazans missing, likely still buried under the rubble. Since the Trump ceasefire plan on October 10, massive Israeli army bombings have stopped, but “surgical strikes” continue to kill.…
For Gazans who refuse to flee or simply have nowhere else to go, it’s a matter of surviving in tents and makeshift shelters amidst ruins and on the rooftops of crumbling buildings. Eighty to ninety percent of what was built is now destroyed. According to a U.N. agency, by the end of 2025, more than three-quarters of the population were expected to face “high levels of acute food insecurity.” And while the October ceasefire allowed some food to enter, leading to a drop in prices, the offensive against Iran has triggered new restrictions and renewed inflation. Nothing that is needed is getting through the one crossing point authorized by the Israeli government: no generators, no spare parts, no medical equipment, no medicine. More than 1,700 healthcare workers have lost their lives in two years of war. As a doctor on the flotilla reports, “People are dying from diseases that could have been prevented. There’s a shortage of everything, especially anesthesia.” At least 18,000 critically ill patients hope to be evacuated to Egyptian hospitals. Gazans, almost entirely dependent on humanitarian aid, still face the threat of expulsion of 37 NGOs, as Netanyahu threatens.…
This article is translated and excerpted from the April 17 issue, #3011 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Hungarian Prime Minister and strongman Viktor Orbán seemed unshakeable for 16 years. He was the poster child of the European far right. He controlled all the levers of the government and the media. But he suffered a heavy electoral defeat on April 12 and was ousted from power.
This defeat is also Trump’s, who had thrown his full weight behind Orbán by sending his right-hand man J.D. Vance, to support him in the campaign. It’s also a defeat for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who made Orbán one of his closest allies. The election was a defeat for all the proponents of the far right who held Orbán up as a role model, such as Marine Le Pen in France.
Orbán was defeated because millions of working-class voters in big cities and small towns turned out to reject him. But contrary to what many pundits now claim, most workers and small businesspeople did not vote in the name of abstract democratic principles or to strengthen the European Union against Putin and Trump.
No, they rejected Orbán because he plunged them deeper into crisis. In four years, prices rose by 40%. The purchasing power of the working class collapsed. Meanwhile, money gushed into the business world. Corruption scandals erupted as Orbán showered his inner circle with money.…
On Thursday, April 16, Donald Trump announced on social media that a ten-day cease-fire between Israel and Lebanon was to go into effect at midnight. The next day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was accepting the cease-fire “at the request of my friend, President Trump.”
This was a 180-degree turn for Netanyahu, who has repeatedly declared that he would not stop attacking Lebanon until the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia was destroyed—which is not the case.
Much has been said in the media about Israel “forcing the hand of the U.S.” to go to war against Iran. No, this cease-fire in Lebanon, whether it lasts or not, shows who ultimately is in charge in the partnership between the U.S. and Israel. It’s the U.S. superpower, of course, which supplies all the advanced, deadly weaponry that its far smaller junior partner, Israel, uses in the wars it has been fighting—against the Palestinian populations of the Gaza Strip and West Bank, against Iran, against Lebanon.…
This also shows who is behind the Israeli military’s mass murder of more than 72,000 Palestinians in Gaza, more than half of them women and girls, since October 2023. The U.S. could have stopped this unspeakable horror if it had insisted Israel to do so—and stopped supplying weapons.
But Trump never insisted that Israel stop its attack on Gaza, nor did Biden before him. U.S. imperialism, loyally served by both Republicans and Democrats, has shown again and again that it will turn a blind eye to the mass murder of civilians in its quest to control the resources of the world.
This article is translated from the April 17 issue, #3011 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
After Trump’s threat to bomb Iran “back to the Stone Age,” the guns fell silent, undoubtedly only temporarily. But before the ceasefire, the attacks intensified.
The bombings have claimed thousands of civilian lives. They targeted a bridge near Tehran where families were picnicking, believing themselves safe; the Sharif University of Science; and even a Jewish synagogue! Iranian Red Crescent rescue workers were not spared either, not even their ambulances. Bombs struck functioning industrial sites, such as the Bushehr nuclear power plant, from which 200 Russian workers had to be evacuated. Near Isfahan, 15 workers were killed in a strike on a factory manufacturing heating and air conditioning equipment.
Oil depots, gas plants, and steel mills have been hit. The country’s two largest steel mills are shut down, damaged by bombing. The Mobarakeh steel mill—which employs tens of thousands of workers and supplies steel sheeting to automotive, appliance, and construction factories—will run out of raw materials and be forced to shut down. The vast majority of workers have precarious job contracts, without benefits like unemployment insurance. Thousands are left without income, laid off when their factory closed. Most workers who still have jobs must travel to earn a living. Many are forced to remain in bombed-out cities, lacking money, ways to get around, or anywhere to go. When their workplace isn’t hit by a bomb, it’s sometimes their home or loved ones.
Inflation reached a record high of 50% annually on March 20th. Employers’ decisions in the face of this economic catastrophe only exacerbate the situation. Bosses always make their employees pay for their misfortunes, even when they don’t lay off staff. For example, a large chain of stores in Isfahan decided to cut wages to compensate for the drop in sales. Many Iranian families rely on the support of relatives who had emigrated to other Persian Gulf countries for work. But the approximately 500,000 Iranians living there have had their visas revoked. Iranian businesses in Dubai and elsewhere have had to close as a result of the war. Their employees find themselves without income and with nothing to send back to Iran.
Even though the precarious and fragile ceasefire brought some relief to the population after 40 days of bombing, the imperialist fury fostered a certain national unity. Human chains around power plants brought together thousands of volunteers who supported the regime, as well as ordinary pacifists, like the musician who came to play “for peace.” Even some opposition to the negotiations with the U.S. emerged, seeing negotiation as betrayal. Some Iranians accused the leaders of not “avenging” the Iranian victims of the American and Israeli bombings, and of abandoning Hezbollah fighters by excluding Lebanon from the ceasefire. The hatred of imperialism among the population gives the regime the political means to hold on and resist American demands, despite the persecution of opponents labeled “traitors” and the continued executions of prisoners.
This article is translated from the April 17 issue, #3011 of Lutte Ouvrière (Workers Struggle), the paper of the Trotskyist group of that name active in France.
Chinese officials have repeatedly called on the U.S. to end the war in Iran. The war has consequences for China.
China extracts slightly more than a quarter of its oil domestically. But it buys the rest from abroad, primarily from the Persian Gulf states, which supply nearly half of its needs. This oil, originating from Iranian oil terminals, as well as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait, and Qatar, passes through the Strait of Hormuz. However, unlike its neighbors such as Thailand and the Philippines, which have declared an energy emergency, China is not facing any shortage. Reportedly China built up approximately 100 days’ worth of reserves. It has diversified its suppliers, with Russia becoming its main one now. To date, the impact of the crisis has been limited to a 20% increase in fuel prices; both pricing and supply management are under state control. Supplies from the Middle East would have to be disrupted for several more months to pose a significant problem.
The war against Iran primarily affects China, due to its central role in Middle Eastern trade. Long considered the preserve of American imperialism, the Middle East is a prime market for China because of the wealth concentrated in the Gulf monarchies. Since 2024, China has been the leading trading partner of the Gulf states, ahead of the U.S. and Europe, exchanging almost 260 billion dollars annually in goods and capital with them. At the heart of this trade, of course, was Iran. Ninety percent of Iranian oil is exported to China—paid for not in dollars but in yuan, the Chinese currency. In return, Iran purchases tens of billions of dollars worth of goods annually from China. But China’s commercial power has expanded far beyond Iran, with investments in all the Gulf states. China spent nearly 20 billion dollars on real estate development in Saudi Arabia last year. Chinese oil companies have invested in Qatari gas and have developed pipelines and storage facilities throughout the region. In 2016, Chinese shipping company Cosco invested nearly one billion dollars in a container port in Khalifa in the UAE and will operate this port for 35 years. Kuwait signed a four-billion-dollar contract with a Chinese company in 2022 for the construction and operation of a similar port. In the UAE, several Chinese companies are building the brand-new railway network. All of this infrastructure serves as a gateway for Chinese imports. If the war continues and spreads, these investments could be wiped out.
In reality, the Middle East has become a major arena of economic confrontation between the U.S. and China. This began well before the war against Iran. This war, and the military resources deployed in the region, show that the U.S. intends to maintain its dominant position there.
The Democratic Party is trying to use May Day to rally support for its candidates in the coming midterm elections. Many union leaderships are playing along.
Ever since the big immigrant rights May Day rallies in 2006 and 2007, Democratic politicians have tried to portray this holiday as a time to rally for themselves. They say, vote for them, and they will protect immigrants from the attacks Trump is carrying out.
But if the history of May Day shows anything, it is that workers can only count on themselves. This holiday was born out of the fight of workers for the 8-hour day—a fight in large part led by immigrant workers who had lost their illusions in the politicians of the two capitalist parties, Democrats and Republicans.
In the early days of the industrial revolution, the number of hours squeezed out of workers in factories, mines, and worksites climbed and climbed, from 12 to 14 and even 16 hours a day, often six days a week. In the U.S. almost from the beginning, the bosses counted on a supply of desperate immigrants willing to take these jobs. For instance, refugees from starvation in Ireland could be forced to take any job at any hours—at first.
But workers—including desperate immigrants—did not simply accept these long hours. Already in 1835, Irish coal heavers led a general strike in Philadelphia, demanding a twelve-hour day with two hours for meals.
At the same time, in the South, slaves were forced to work extremely long hours—often as long as it was light enough to see, and sometimes into the night.
The fight of workers in the North and slaves in the South were connected from the beginning. As Karl Marx pointed out: “Every independent movement of the workers was paralyzed so long as slavery disfigured a part of the Republic. Labor cannot emancipate itself in the white skin where in the black it is branded. But out of the death of slavery a new life at once arose. The first fruit of the Civil War was the eight hours’ agitation, that ran with the seven-leagued boots of the locomotive from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from New England to California.”
Immediately after the Civil War, workers demanded that the Republican Party pass 8-hour-day laws. This was the party of Lincoln that had adopted pro-labor language to mobilize workers to fight in the Civil War. But the Republican Party then as now was a party of the bosses. They were not going to seriously restrict the hours of work. In Illinois, for instance, the Republican-led legislature passed a law in 1867 making the official work day eight hours. But it had a huge loophole: workers could work longer if they signed a contract to do so! In response to the passage of this law, workers launched a major strike in Chicago on May 1, 1867, demanding that employers go along with this “recommended” workday. But after a week, this strike was defeated.
The link between the fight against slavery and the fight of wage workers had a direct, human aspect. Two of the main leaders of the next phase of the workers movement were a couple, Albert and Lucy Parsons. Albert was white and Lucy was probably born a slave. As a teenager after the Civil War, Albert founded a newspaper and worked with the Republican Party in Texas, advocating for the rights of the freed slaves.
In 1873, he and Lucy brought this political experience and his skill as a typographer to Chicago, where they found many impoverished working people. In his autobiography, he said that he “discovered a great similarity between the abuse heaped upon these poor people by the organs of the rich the actions of the late Southern slave-holders in Texas toward the newly enfranchised slaves whom they accused of wanting to make their former masters ‘divide’ by giving them ‘40 acres and a mule’ that it satisfied me there was a great fundamental wrong at work in Society and in existing social and industrial arrangements.” They soon met immigrants, mostly from Germany, who had brought socialist and communist ideas with them, most importantly a man named August Spies, and both Lucy and Albert joined with these militant immigrant workers, both becoming lifelong opponents of the capitalist system.
In 1876, seeing how both major parties supported the interests of the capitalists, Albert Parsons participated in the founding of a “Workingmen’s Party of the United States.” He ran a few times as this party’s candidate, pointing out that both Democrats and Republicans are parties of the capitalists, the enemies of labor. This Workingmen’s Party argued that workers must take over control of the economy from the wealthy class that owns all the factories, mines, railroads, docks, and other things people need to make the necessities of life. At first, Albert Parsons and those who worked with him thought this might be possible by getting workers elected to run this government.
In 1877, workers across the country launched a massive strike, first against the railroads, then against all kinds of employers. In response, government forces at all levels moved against the working class. The U.S. army was put at the disposal of railroad companies. State militia units shot down strikers in Baltimore and Pittsburgh. In Chicago, the police did most of the dirty work, beating and killing strikers and breaking up their meetings.
In the aftermath, Albert and Lucy Parsons, August Spies, and a few others drew more revolutionary conclusions. They concluded that the government was fundamentally against the working class, and that workers would have to arm and organize themselves to defend their movement. They increasingly broke from the idea that workers could solve their problems through elections, since even the politicians that claimed to be on workers’ side had helped send in armed forces against them—or at best, had done nothing.
These revolutionaries turned to the international scene for ideas. They were inspired by the Paris Commune of 1871, where workers had seized power for ten weeks. They soon helped form a small group that considered themselves part of the International Working People’s Association of Marx and Engels.
The International was divided between people who considered themselves socialists or communists, and those who considered themselves anarchists. The Chicago branch of the International would later be labeled “anarchist” by the press, and they embraced that label, but they also called themselves socialists and communists and didn’t differentiate very much between these different sets of ideas.
Parsons, Spies, and their comrades formed an organization of militant activists that tried to bring their political ideas to the working class. They began publishing newspapers in Chicago in German and English that indicted the capitalists and their political servants, discussing the issues facing the working class both in the U.S. and internationally. They joined unions when they could, advocated for workers to defend themselves and organize, and even built workers’ self-defense clubs. They also organized social activities aimed at uniting the working class, including marches and picnics.
In 1885 and early 1886, the workers’ movement was growing throughout the country and especially in Chicago. And even though Chicago’s Democratic mayor Carter Harrison claimed to be on the side of the working class, the police under his control increasingly used violence to break strikes. But police violence did not quell the movement.
One of the workers’ main demands was for the eight-hour day. The militants of the International Working People’s Association helped generalize this demand among Chicago’s workers. They saw the fight for a shorter work day as part of the fight for revolution. Workers needed to have time to read, study, socialize, and organize. They inscribed on their banners “Eight Hours for Work, Eight Hours for Rest, Eight Hours for What We Will!”
Under the pressure of the growing workers’ movement, the American Federation of Labor called for a general strike on May 1, 1886. This call was answered beyond their expectations—joined by thousands of workers they had never organized, as well as those in other unions like the Knights of Labor. Perhaps 350,000 workers struck nationally, with 40,000 or so going out in Chicago alone. The city was paralyzed.
Two days later, on May 3, some of these strikers gathered in front of McCormick Reaper Works, where the police had earlier broken picket lines. Reinforced with the masses of workers striking for the eight-hour day, McCormick strikers threw bricks and stones at the scab workers coming out of the plant. Management called the police—and the cops shot into the crowd of strikers, killing at least two and wounding many more.
The next day, August Spies, Albert Parsons and other leaders called for a meeting at the Haymarket west of downtown to protest these police murders. When police moved to disperse that meeting, an unknown person threw a bomb into the ranks of the cops. The police opened fire. At the end of the night, seven cops had been killed.
This played right into the hands of the city’s capitalists. The newspapers increased their already shrill attacks on the workers’ leaders as “vipers,” “serpents,” and “foreign traitors.” The police arrested hundreds of known labor leaders and smashed up meetings. Eight anarchist leaders were eventually prosecuted and four were hanged, including both Albert Parsons and August Spies, even though neither was accused of throwing the bomb. They were prosecuted on the basis of their ideas.
In the short run, this repression broke the May Day strikes, though many employers had been forced to grant the eight-hour day already. But soon, the workers movement rose again.
The First International of Karl Marx and of Albert Parsons and August Spies died. But just a few years later, in 1889, a new workers international was founded in Paris. At its first meeting, it declared May 1 a day for a “great international demonstration” in commemoration of the events in Chicago and in support of workers’ demands for the eight-hour day. In countries throughout the world, workers demonstrated.
Lucy Parsons would remain a militant of the working class for the rest of her life. She kept agitating and organizing working women to confront their problems. And she went on to help found the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905.
The preamble to the constitution of that organization reads: “The working class and the employing class have nothing in common. There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two classes a struggle must go on until the workers of the world organize as a class, take possession of the means of production, abolish the wage system, and live in harmony with the earth.”
Those words remain as true today as they were in 1886, or 1905. That is the true heritage of May Day.
What follows is the editorial that appeared on the front of all SPARK’s workplace newsletters, during the week of April 12, 2026.
The war that Trump and Netanyahu started against Iran and Lebanon is supposedly paused for two weeks.
Truce or no truce, Israel continues to pulverize the southern part of Lebanon, including its capital, Beirut. Trump continues to make wild statements about his war—the latest being that his god supports the U.S. and Israel in their war.
This war has already cost thousands of civilian lives in Iran and Lebanon. Schools and hospitals in Iran are being destroyed. A million people in Lebanon have been forced out of their homes by Israel’s bombs. But, says Trump, “God is good, and he wants to see his people taken care of.”
At an Easter egg hunt on the White House lawn, Trump told children gathered there that he doesn’t like killing people, but he might have to do it, sending all the Iranian people straight to hell.
Trump may seem mad. Netanyahu may seem mad. But this war is not the product of one man’s wild delusions—nor of several madmen conspiring together.
It’s the economic and social system that is mad. This system gives a country’s presidency to such men. How crazy is that?
This latest war in the Middle East is the logical product of capitalism, a social system based on the exploitation of labor by a tiny minority. It rests on violence to maintain severe and growing inequalities—inequalities first of all between classes, but also between ethnic and racial groups. There are worsening inequalities between nations. And sitting on top of this mess of inequalities is the U.S. superpower, which came out of World War II holding most of the world’s wealth, the only nation having benefitted materially from the war.
Devastating the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and much of the civilian populations of Dresden and Milan, the U.S. superpower never looked back. Engaging itself in never-ending wars, the U.S. amassed millions of victims in the Middle East, Asia and Africa.
In all the years since the last world war, the U.S. has been preparing for the next one—pushing new technologies, storing up armaments, building bases all over the world—more bases than all the rest of the world put together.
The U.S. spends on war—this is why the country’s medical system is inadequate, why many schools don’t teach, why many children can’t read, why public transit is a joke. Money for war is money not spent on the population’s needs.
We are going to war—make no mistake about it. We are being prepared to go to war.
Four months ago, Congress enacted a law making registration for Selective Service automatic, using Social Security at birth to do it. There is no draft yet, but its machinery is being set up.
In the country as a whole, repression is speeding up.
Trump’s government has been putting its hands on the media: TV, local radio, newspapers. Several reporters were threatened with prison. Social media companies were served with a demand for the names on all accounts criticizing this war.
Several college professors who expressed socialist views or opposition to U.S. wars found themselves sacked. People who opposed the swarm of ICE troopers invading their cities were called terrorists, charged with felonies. Lawyers defending Trump’s critics found themselves charged.
No, it’s not everyone—not yet. But the prosecution of some is the threat toward everyone. This is terrorism aimed at making everyone shut up.
ICE itself is a preparation for war. It invades cities, using military weapons and disdain for civil rights. ICE’s roundup of immigrants shows the whole population how quickly civilian society can be put under military control.
We will have war—unless this capitalist society, which is mad, is torn up and tossed out. We will have war—until working people regain confidence in the power of their own class to tear up capitalism, and to run a sane society serving us all.
The author does an incredible job of following Johnson & Johnson through decades of lying and harm. He details nine case studies, nine examples of drugs that actually did more harm than good, all the while making the company billions. They included a cancer drug that actually caused the cancer to grow; an anti-psychotic medicine for troubled youths that caused boys to grow breasts; vaginal meshes which caused women to not be able to have sex or be pain-free the rest of their lives. And don’t forget the baby powder that caused cervical or ovarian cancer.
Where was the FDA? The book reveals that the FDA gets their funding from the same pharmaceutical companies that they oversee, so they rarely oppose them. Fines are sometimes eventually issued but they barely put a dent in the billions in profits that Johnson & Johnson was raking in.
No wonder no one trusts the medical establishment!
This acclaimed, award-winning film stars Wagner Moura as a Brazilian man on the run in 1977 during Brazil’s military dictatorship. He is a public university research scientist who comes up against a corporation that wants to privatize and profit from his inventions. You see the rampant corruption of the dictatorship, the indifference to crime, and the violence of the state. Yet you also see the beauty of the working population, the close ties of friends and family, the underground resistance and amidst it all, the joy of Carnival, a uniquely Brazilian holiday.
A video posted online shows a man’s hand deliberately igniting a fire in a warehouse. In the background, a narrator states several times, “All you had to do was pay us enough to live,” and also adds in a text, “Pay us more of the value WE bring. Not corporate. Didn’t see the shareholders picking up a shift.”
A massive fire, which started on April 7 at 12:30 a.m., completely destroyed Kimberly-Clark’s 1.2-million-square-foot warehouse, causing an estimated $500 million in damage, according to the Department of Justice. This warehouse is located east of Los Angeles, in Ontario, California. When this fire started, 20 workers were in the facility, but they left the building without any injuries.
The arsonist of this fire acted alone, and endangered the lives of other workers. The fire destroyed their workplace, very likely causing workers to lose their jobs.
Later, Chamel Abdulkarim, 29, of Highland, California, was arrested and charged with arson for setting up this fire. Abdulkarim was a worker of NFI Industries, a subcontractor that operated this facility for Kimberly-Clark.
NFI warehouse workers earn approximately $18 an hour, or about $37,440 a year before taxes, assuming 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year. Kimberly-Clark’s own warehouse workers fare only marginally better, earning approximately $23 to $24 an hour—about $50,000 per year.
But the living wage in Ontario, California, is $28.26 an hour or $59,000 per year, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)’s Living Wage Calculator website. This wage is $10 higher than NFI workers’ wages, like Abdulkarim’s, and $4.00 higher than Kimberly-Clark’s workers’ wages.
So, the subcontractor NFI and even Kimberly-Clark don’t pay their workers enough to live.
But Kimberly-Clark exploited these workers who cannot afford to live to extract an annual net profit of about two billion dollars in fiscal year 2025. They are responsible for workers’ angry impulses to strike back.
Hospitals in Maryland have collected as much as three billion dollars from patients to invest in unregulated, untaxed malpractice insurance funds. State regulators looked the other way for decades but recently proposed to “study” the issue over the next two years.
“Malpractice” is a euphemism for the intolerably high level of avoidable infections and injuries patients suffer in hospitals, mostly because of the dangerous level of understaffing, which worsened with the COVID pandemic. Accidental deaths and injuries of patients in Maryland hospitals tripled from 2019 to 2022 to almost 800 per year. Nationally, almost two million hospital patients become accidentally infected every year. Tens or hundreds of thousands of hospital patients nationwide die by accident each year.
Often these horrors could be avoided simply if staff had enough time between patients to wash their hands, a medical practice known for 150 years. But in recent years, one in four nursing positions has been vacant in a state like Maryland, with serious shortages in other positions like respiratory therapists and laboratory technicians. Swamped with impossible patient loads, corners get cut, and disaster strikes.
Hospitals do not react to this problem by hiring more staff. No, they take the capitalist route of raising prices, to be able to set aside money to pay for lawsuits. But this gives them huge kitties of money to invest, with a steady flow of premiums coming in from patients. And they register these in-house or “captive” insurance plans in … the Cayman Islands, oceans away from regulation and taxation!
Regulated malpractice insurance companies in Maryland report around five percent profit on premiums, and more than 10% return on investments. What higher profits do the unregulated hospital funds make? Only they know, pending the state’s proposed two-year “study!”
In the capitalist system, a hospital is not a building where patients get medical care. No, under capitalism a hospital is a flow of income to be maximized over expenses in order to make more profits. This should not be.
The Maola milk processing factory in Laurel, Maryland between D.C. and Baltimore will close this summer, throwing 72 workers out of work. These job losses are the latest blows in the rampant consolidation of the milk industry.
Maola will transfer the work of processing fresh milk into powdered milk, condensed milk, and butter to several other local plants. The brand is owned by Maryland & Virginia Milk Producers Cooperative Association, Inc. Officially, the co-op is more than 100 years old and has hundreds of regional dairy farmers as members. In fact, it functions like any profit-seeking corporation. The farmers are beholden to it to buy their milk at the price management sets. But even bigger businesses like supermarket chains and bigger processors keep driving wholesale milk prices lower.
Maryland’s several hundred dairy farmers sell almost 200 million dollars of milk a year. But those with smaller herds are squeezed under strong economic pressures to “get big or get out” as expenses keep rising.
As long as foods like dairy are commodities in a capitalist system, the work of producing food is increasingly exploitative.
Hospitals’ medical clinics in Virginia filed more than a million lawsuits against patients to collect medical debt between 2010 and 2024. That’s around one every minute! In a quarter of the cases, the court let them garnish the patient’s wages. But the main reason workers have medical debt is because our wages and benefits don’t cover the outrageous level of our heath care bills!