USA

The cold-blooded murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police is yet another horrific act of racist violence against an unarmed black man in broad daylight. This has yet again sparked protests across the country, showing that people are fed up with the systemic racism of the capitalist system. When the great revolutionary martyr Malcolm X said, “You can’t have capitalism without racism,” he summed up a profound truth about the world we live in. This racist brutality is hardwired into the capitalist system. This Saturday at 7PM ET, Antonio Balmer (Socialist Revolution editor) will speak on racism, police violence, and the need for revolution.

The police murder of George Floyd—an unarmed black man, who was handcuffed by four police officers in Minneapolis before being choked to death—has unleashed a wave of protests across the country, escalating out of control in several cities. Following the murders of Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, this latest in an endless string of police killings was the straw that broke the camel’s back, unleashing a tsunami of pent-up fury at all the injustices in American society. Necessity has been expressed through accident – although Floyd’s murder was no accident.

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions tried to prepare for social isolation like they would for a blizzard—stocking up not just on toilet paper and sanitizer, but also on pantry basics like milk, eggs, flour, and beans. Faced with this sudden surge in demand, grocery stores across the country were completely overwhelmed. Not just shelves but entire stores were cleared out, so “one-per-customer” rules were established on select items and notices were posted detailing which were out of stock. As we have written elsewhere, the capitalists can’t efficiently sustain supply

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Watch John Peterson, editor of Socialist Revolution – newspaper of the International Marxist Tendency in the USA – discussing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the States, which has rapidly become a focal point of the global outbreak, with nearly half-a-million confirmed cases and 13,000 deaths across the country.

The COVID-19 pandemic has plunged American society into panic and dismay. All fifty US states and Washington, DC have now confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, and the death toll is rising by the hour, after surpassing 150 deaths on March 18. Public health officials worry the US has reached a tipping point and may fast approach the situation seen in Italy, where hospitals are overwhelmed and the entire country is locked down. Dr. Carlos Del Rio, a professor at Atlanta’s Emory University School of Medicine, recently told CNN: “I’m really worried about … having the worst possible combination: too many patients; too (few) doctors, nurses … to take care of them.”

The outcome of Super Tuesday (in which the largest number of delegates in a single day of the US Democratic primary race are up for grabs) has been gleefully celebrated in the bourgeois media. They see Joe Biden’s “comeback” as the best way to put an end to Bernie Sanders' momentum, which is seen as a major threat to market stability.

The Democratic primary campaign has become a two-horse race. Former Vice President Joe Biden and self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders are set to slog it out over a gruelling campaign, reminiscent of the Democratic primaries in 2016.

The party establishment are terrified of a Sanders win - not simply because of the Vermont Senator himself, but because of the mass movement behind him. An article in the Economist even argued that Democratic primaries are too democratic and that it would be preferable for “party insiders” to “vet candidates by setting tighter eligibility criteria” in order to

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Bernie Sanders came out on top in the New Hampshire primary, edging out Pete Buttigieg. The movement behind Sanders expresses a desire for left-wing politics in the USA, particularly amongst the young, who are fed up with the machinations of US capitalism and its two main parties. The establishment is in crisis, and an explosive period is being prepared. 

Yet again, necessity has been revealed through accident as the rotten nature of American capitalist democracy was exposed in Iowa. The political importance of the small Midwestern state was built up for months as countless candidate dollars and hours were spent in an effort to generate early momentum for November. Instead, the world was treated to a trainwreck of unimaginable incompetence—or cynical

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The debacle around the Iowa Caucus has once again highlighted the true nature of the Democratic Party: a party of the US ruling class whose interests are directly opposed to those of the workers and the youth. We will publish a full comment on these events tomorrow. In the meantime, we are publishing an editorial by the US Marxists of Socialist Revolution, originally written on 24 January. Readers may also be interested in this article on the 2016 Iowa Caucus, which

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"If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going". Up until recently, this was the slogan many pilots and passengers had adopted when flying or boarding an aircraft. It was a nod of respect for the Seattle aircraft manufacturer that brought America into the jet age with airliners like the 707, the three-engine 727 that followed, and the “Queen of the Skies” – the 747. How times have changed!

On 1 December, a feature article about the IMT made the main headline on the front page of one of Japan’s top daily newspapers. The Mainichi Shimbun (“The Daily Paper”) is Japan’s oldest major newspaper, founded in 1872 and published twice daily, with a circulation of 4 million. We publish below for our readers the English translation of the article, entitled The Internationale Resounds in NYC—Socialism Resonating with the Youth.

Lenin once said that “politics is a concentrated expression of economics.” For over a decade, we have been subjected to a deep and systemic crisis of capitalism. The only way out for the ruling class is to ramp up austerity and to intensify our exploitation even further. With inequality already at historic levels and relative standards of living in free fall for billions, this is a finished recipe for explosions of the class struggle. This explains why, just a quarter-century since the “end of history” was declared, the masses are again moving might and main to change their destinies.