“It sounds good on paper, but socialism will never work, because if everybody gets everything they need whether they work or not, then there is no incentive to work at all!” This is one of the most typical and caricatured arguments against socialism.

The bourgeoisie is not entirely blind. There are layers of the ruling class that can, on occasion, come to similar conclusions as Marxists. The benefit of a birds’ eye view of the capitalist system allows them to potentially have a more expansive view of the system as a whole—its corruption, its inequality, and its senility.

On July 18, the long–economically depressed city of Detroit officially declared its intention to file for bankruptcy. The bankruptcy is the largest ever for a US city, with $18 to 20 billion in debt. It is also the largest US city to ever go bankrupt, despite the disastrous collapse in the population over the last 30 years.

As the 2013-2014 school year begins, youth across Canada will once again have to face the crisis facing them under capitalism. Tuition fees continue to rise across the country, making post-secondary education increasingly inaccessible to a growing number of youth. Moreover, the lack of stable well-paying jobs means that students are graduating with a record level of debt that makes a decent future seem like a pipe dream.

In one country after another, crisis, protests, war, revolution, and counterrevolution are raging. Here in the United States, however, it may seem to some that “nothing is happening.” But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Slowly but surely—though not linearly—the economic, political, social, and psychological tensions continue to build.

As Marxists, we welcome and fight for any increase in the wages of workers. A gain for one layer of the working class is a gain for all, and there are few layers of the American working class more desperate for such a gain than retail workers. The 2010 average retail worker’s hourly wage was a wretched $10.09, adding up to a $20,990 yearly income. However a four-person family in DC requires a staggering $88,615 every year, a clearly unattainable amount of money for parents working the most common job in America.

Fast-food workers in more than 60 US cities have embarked on a strike, in the biggest food industry walkouts ever. The workers demand a pay rise to $15 an hour, double the rate for many employees at fast-food chains. Here we publish a leaflet written by the comrades in the Workers International Leagueto be distributed across the United States.

On Friday 2nd of August we finally made public what we have been doing for some time now: the conscious and consequent study of the ideas of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. The inaugural activity was a meeting introduced by the Swiss comrade Caspar Oertli. During his leadoff he sketched out in general terms the socio-political and economic crisis that the Old Continent suffers, the question of SYRIZA in Greece and the role of the International Marxist Tendency on a world scale.

The case of Trayvon Martin has ripped up the deep wounds of Racism in the USA. Here we provide a leaflet written and distributed by the American Marxists of Workers International League.

Hands Off Venezuela, Bolivia Solidarity Campaign and others would like to express our solidarity with the Bolivian president Evo Morales, with the revolutionary workers and peasants of Bolivia, in the face of the blatant imperialist aggression which held the president against his will in Vienna for over 14 hours.

Minneapolis-St. Paul, St. Louis, and Madison, but also from Portland, Dallas, NY, NJ, Boston, Italy/North Carolina, met in Minneapolis on the weekend of June 29 and 30 for the first-ever Midwest Regional School. The presence of so many comrades from other regions, including a comrade from the Italian section of the IMT, Falce Martello, was a huge boost and made the weekend that much more electric.

Five unions, which represent a total of 175,000 construction workers across Quebec, went on strike as of Sunday midnight when negotiation broke down. This is the first province-wide strike of construction workers in 20 years.

What started as a small demonstration against an increase of 20 cents (barely 9 pence) in the price of public transport fares in Sao Paulo became a national mass movement which mobilised more than a million people in 80 cities, after having forced the mayor of the city Haddad and the regional governor Alckmin to retreat on June 19.

“Billions racked up in public debt to plug budget holes, pay overdue bills, and put money into its mismanaged pension funds... this has resulted in decrepit commuter trains and buses, thousands of unsound bridges, 200 hazardous dams and one of the most inequitable public school systems... Retirees may lose their pensions as the funds dwindle, low-income and disabled people may lose their health care as costs escalate...”

The "Red Flag"  Committee of Struggle for a United Front in Defence of Democratic Freedoms and of the Workers', Popular and Student Organizations formed in São Paulo.