Oil workers mobilise against French labour law

Kumaran Ira

Hundreds of gas stations in France were hit by fuel shortages over the weekend as truckers and oil workers blocked fuel depots and shut down refineries to protest the Socialist Party's (PS) unpopular and regressive labour law.

Oil workers at Total voted on Friday to shut down three refineries including Donges near Nantes, Feyzin near Lyon, and Gonfreville-Orcher in Normandy. Workers began to shut down oil production at Gonfreville-Orcher and Feyzin. Workers also blocked deliveries from Total's Grandpuits refinery to the Paris region, as well as oil depots in northern and western France, causing petrol shortages that could spread throughout the country if the strike continues.

French oil industry group UFIP (Union Française des Industries Petrolières) reported that 317 of Total's 2,200 petrol stations in France had run out of all or some fuels on Saturday. The north and west of France are the hardest hit: 54 percent of petrol stations in Brittany, 46 percent in Normandy, 43 percent in Pays de la Loire and 34 percent in Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy face shortages.

Several departments in the north and the west have begun partially rationing fuel supplies, banning fuel sales in transportable containers. La Voix du Nordreported that stations supplying Lille were poised to run out of petrol over the weekend.

The PS government reacted to the strike with blustering threats and desperate attempts to crush the strike before it spreads to broader layers of workers. Visiting Israel yesterday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls insisted the labour law would be maintained and claimed there were no oil shortages in France, while bluntly warning that the PS would take all necessary measures to end the oil strikes, including deploying police to smash strikes.

“We are fully in control of the situation,” Valls blustered. “I think some refineries or fuel depots that were blockaded have been cleared or will be in the coming hours or days. Everyone can see the French government's determination to prevent shortages. Anyway, we have reserves to deal with shortages.”

In fact, despite Valls' boasting, the PS is in a desperate crisis. The widespread opposition to the labour law has escalated after President François Hollande’s government rammed the law through the National Assembly without a vote. The law—which allows unions and bosses to sign contracts violating the Labour Code, lengthens the work week, cuts pay, facilitates mass sackings and eliminates job security for new hires—is widely seen as an illegitimate attack on workers' social rights won through decades of struggle.

Faced with overwhelming popular opposition, the PS is relying on the treachery of the union bureaucracy, the Left Front and the New Anti-capitalist Party (NPA). These long-time allies of the PS, who called for a PS vote in 2012, are desperate to block a political struggle of the working class against the PS government. Under far more explosive conditions, they are reprising their role in the 2010 oil strike against pension cuts: isolating strikers, allowing the police to smash blockades and try to restart production and prevent a fuel shortage from forcing the government to retreat.

Yesterday morning, the PS government ordered CRS riot police to smash blockades at two oil depots, the Rubis terminal and at Saint-Pol-sur-Mer in Dunkirk, blocked by members of the Stalinist General Confederation of Labour (CGT) union. Police also intervened to disperse blockades of oil depots in Brittany, including at Vern-sur-Seiche near Rennes, and in Lorient.

When CRS intervened to disperse blockades in Dunkirk, the CGT did not seek to mobilise broader sections of workers to defend the strikers, but lifted the blockades without challenge. Christelle Veignie, secretary of the local union, stated: “Everything happened peacefully, the CRS asked us to leave nicely. We didn't resist.”

While the main weapon the oil workers have is their ability to shut down oil production and cause fuel shortages when they go on strike, CGT-Oil federation leader Emmanuel Lepine stressed, “Our goal is not to create fuel shortages.”

The struggle against the PS' agenda of austerity and war must be organised independently of the unions and their political allies, through a ruthless political break with them. As long as workers' struggles remains under their control, these organisations will seek to divide, sabotage and sell out the successive struggles of the working class as they erupt.

Now, the trade unions have signaled their readiness to isolate and wind down strike action. On Friday, the FO (Force Ouvrière) union called truck drivers to suspend road blockades after the PS claimed it would maintain their overtime pay despite the provisions of new labor law.

Both the FO and CGT hailed the government decision. In a common communiqué, they wrote, “The government is making concessions on overtime. This is very good news for a profession that is suffering.”

In fact, the workers will win nothing except through a conscious struggle to mobilise the working class in a political struggle against austerity across Europe on a socialist and internationalist platform.

Austerity cannot be fought by a struggle conducted under the national straitjacket imposed by the unions and pseudo-left parties like the Left Front and the NPA. Despite their toothless criticisms of the PS, these forces do not oppose austerity. Their ally in Greece, Syriza, is in power, imposing austerity measures even more draconian than its right-wing conservative and social democratic predecessors, while attacking protesting workers and tear gassing immigrants.

While these forces seek to divide the workers along national lines, the draconian austerity policies being imposed in one country after another are planned and imposed jointly by governments across Europe. The French labour law, modelled on the Hartz IV law in Germany, aims to boost French competitiveness by imposing the type of deep attacks on the workers imposed in Germany a decade ago. When workers and youth began protesting the French labour law in March, social democratic politicians from across Europe met in Paris to support Hollande.

These included German Social Democratic Party (SPD) leader Sigmar Gabriel, Italian Prime Minister and Democratic Party (PD) Chairman Matteo Renzi and EU Commission Vice President Federica Mogherini.

To the extent that these forces and their pseudo-left allies are allowed to pass themselves off as “left,” this only strengthens the hand of far-right populist forces like the National Front (FN) of Marine Le Pen, running on a nationalist, anti-immigrant and anti-EU platform.

The PS government itself tacitly supported a protest against “anti-cop hatred” organised by the Alliance police union with FN support last week, which was attended by Eric Cocquerel of the Left Front.

US Supreme Court avoids ruling on corporate religious objections to birth control

Tom Carter

The US Supreme Court last week refused to issue a decision on the merits of a controversial series of cases captioned Zubik v. Burwell. In these consolidated cases, various institutions are insisting it violates their “religious liberty” if their employees receive insurance coverage for birth control, even if the institutions do not have to pay for it.

This absurd and provocative position is part of a legal campaign unleashed by the Supreme Court’s 2014 decision attacking the separation of church and state, entitled Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. In that case, the court held that the provision of birth control and contraception under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) violated the religious liberty of corporations.

That Hobby Lobby decision opened the floodgates for numerous lawsuits, executive orders and legislative bills around the country invoking “religious liberty” to attack the right to abortion and birth control and discriminate against gay and transgender individuals. One such measure is North Carolina’s House Bill 2, which codifies discrimination against transgender individuals, among other reactionary provisions. There is no logical endpoint to this “religious liberty” campaign except the total abrogation of the separation of church and state and establishment of a theocracy in America.

This antidemocratic offensive, spearheaded politically by the Republican Party, has been abetted by the Obama administration and the Democrats, who at every turn have sought to accommodate themselves to religious fundamentalists, including by adding loopholes and exemptions for religiously affiliated organizations to the Obamacare law. President Obama bent over backwards to conciliate the religious right and the Catholic Church, going so far as to give a speech in 2012 riddled with the upside-down, pseudo-legal jargon later used by the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby decision. Granting the accommodations in question, Obama declared himself committed to the “principle of religious liberty,” adding, “As a citizen and as a Christian, I cherish this right.”

The case decided May 16 gets its name from David A. Zubik, the Roman Catholic bishop of Pittsburgh, on whose behalf the first such case was filed. Other cases consolidated with Zubik’s were filed by Priests for Life, Southern Nazarene University, Geneva College, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Washington, East Texas Baptist University and Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged.

The Obamacare law generally provides for birth control and other reproductive health services to be covered by insurance. However, pursuant to accommodations granted by the Obama administration, religious groups may object and opt out of paying for these services. In the case of an objection, the coverage is still generally to be provided, at no cost to the employer. The plaintiffs in the Zubik case are arguing that even with the accommodation, their religious liberty is violated if their employees or students are provided access to reproductive health care services.

If elementary democratic norms were applied in any sane or rational way by the Supreme Court, the Zubik case would be summarily tossed out and the attorneys who brought the case would be fined for making frivolous arguments. Neither the US Constitution nor any enforceable statute gives corporations the power to impose their religious prejudices on students and employees. Businesses and churches have no legal right to dictate the health care decisions of private individuals, and the Obama administration had no business granting arbitrary “accommodations” and “exceptions” to such institutions in the first place.

The Zubik case highlights the unprincipled prostration of the entire political establishment before the protracted assault on the separation of church and state. With the influence of religion declining in the population at large, especially among younger people, the most rabidly reactionary section of the ruling class and its political representatives are seeking to whip up religious fundamentalism to disorient and confuse the population, mobilize violent and backward forces, and block the development of organized social opposition to capitalism.

In its brief nine-page opinion, the Supreme Court expressly refused to decide the Zubik case on the merits. Instead, the case was returned to the lower courts with instructions for the parties to try to compromise. The Obama administration and the objecting religious groups “should be afforded an opportunity to arrive at an approach going forward that accommodates petitioners’ religious exercise while at the same time ensuring that women covered by petitioners’ health plans receive full and equal health coverage, including contraceptive coverage,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in aper curiam opinion on behalf of the entire court.

She added that the lower courts were expected to “allow the parties sufficient time to resolve any outstanding issues between them.” Supreme Court analysts and commentators were fairly unanimous in calling this decision a “punt,” almost certainly the result of a 4-4 deadlock among the justices. Unable to break a tie, they returned the case to the lower courts without deciding it.

The Supreme Court, usually composed of nine justices, is currently functioning with eight following the death of the arch-reactionary Associate Justice Antonin Scalia in February. It can safely be assumed that the court’s right-wing bloc of Chief Justice John Roberts and associate justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, together with the so-called “swing justice” Anthony Kennedy, would have favored the religious groups in the Zubik case. They would likely be opposed by the “liberal” wing composed of associate justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer.

In March, President Obama nominated the conservative former prosecutor Merrick Garland to fill Scalia’s seat. Republican legislators had overwhelmingly supported Garland’s appointment to lower courts, but they are now stalling Garland’s confirmation in hopes that a Republican president will take office following the November elections and nominate someone more right-wing.

Front-running Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees on Wednesday. Presented as an appeal to the Republican Party’s divided “moderate” wing, the list of nominees is a who’s-who of figures considered by the Republican establishment to have strong “conservative credentials.” The Washington Post ’s Chris Cillizza responded approvingly, applauding it on his list of “5 very smart things Donald Trump has done since becoming the presumptive GOP nominee” and calling it “a very smart strategic play.”

The Post continued, “Trump made no secret of his goal with the list: to put 11 names on it that would be totally unimpeachable in the eyes of conservative activists.” Zubik was among a number of cases the Supreme Court returned to the lower courts last week, apparently reflecting a 4-4 tie vote. Nevertheless, the court continues to carry out its essential functions, which include presiding over America’s brutal system of mass incarceration. In a unanimous decision on Thursday in the case of Betterman v. Montana, the Supreme Court decided that a 14-month delay before a man’s sentencing did not violate his constitutional right to a “speedy trial” under the Sixth Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights. Justice Ginsburg, considered the ideological leader of the four-justice “liberal” bloc, wrote the opinion for the unanimous court.

Currency conflicts surface at G-7 meeting

Nick Beams

Rising geo-economic tensions, resulting from the continuing stagnation of the world economy, came to the surface at a meeting of G-7 finance ministers and central bankers at Sendai, Japan, at the weekend held in advance of the group’s summit meeting this week.

The immediate point of contention was sharp opposition from the US over statements from Japan that it stands ready to intervene in currency markets to push down the value of the yen, a move aimed at boosting the Japanese position in the struggle for export markets. On top on the currency conflict, there were deep divisions over the role of increased government spending in trying to revive the global economy.

The currency dispute came into the open with statements by an unnamed US Treasury official as the meeting opened criticising remarks by Japanese government and financial officials that the recent upward movement in the value of the yen was “disorderly” and that intervention through the selling of yen may be necessary.

“If the perception and/or reality is that it’s for gaining unfair advantage, that is very disruptive to the global economic system,” the US official said. “It’s hard to imagine that if one country were perceived to be doing it that it wouldn’t lead to other countries doing the same.”

The Japanese warnings of intervention have come in response to the surprise increase in the value of the yen—at one point it has been up by as much as 13 percent—following the decision of the Bank of Japan (BoJ) at the end of January to initiate a policy of negative interest rates. While the BoJ move did not have the stated objective of lowering the yen’s value, it was expected this would take place.

However, the move of the currency in the other direction has had a significant impact on major Japanese corporations, many of which are reporting lowered profit expectations as a result of tougher conditions in international markets because of the yen’s rise.

This has prompted the calls for intervention, including from the Japanese finance minister Taro Aso. Echoing his views, a top Japanese financial official, Masatsugu Asakawa said in a recent interview: “What we need to be conscious of is that excessive volatility and disorderly movements will have an adverse impact on economic stability.”

However, the claim of “disorderly” movements was directly discounted by the US treasury official, making it clear the present situation did not fall into that category by referring to the conditions which followed the 2011 earthquake in Japan when it was agreed that there should be intervention.

“I think you have to distinguish the kind of crisis that was presented in those circumstances from the kind of fluctuations in a market that just happen,” the official said.

US Treasury secretary Jack Lew raised the issue from the beginning of the talks. A statement from the US Treasury said he had underscored the commitments made at the February meeting of the G-20 in Shanghai to “refrain from competitive devaluation and communicate closely” saying they have “helped to contribute to confidence in the global economy in recent months.”

Lew emphasised these points at a news conference saying that it was important that the G-7 have an agreement not to engage in competitive devaluations and to communicate “so that we don’t surprise each other.” “It’s a pretty high bar to have disorderly (currency) conditions,” he said.

While Aso said there had not been a “heated” exchange with Lew and that it was natural that countries had differences over how they view currency movements, he persisted in his original assertion about the increase in the value of the yen.

“I told (Lew) that recent currency moves were one-sided and speculative,” Aso said at a news conference, adding that the gains in the yen over the past weeks had been disorderly.

But Japan received no support from other participants. The French finance minister Michel Sapin said monetary policies were “well adapted” and there were “no big discrepancies in currencies, so there is no need to intervene.”

Behind the currency conflict is the fear that, as the ongoing stagnation of the global economy—characterised by lowered growth rates, deflation, and falling investment—increasingly comes to resemble the decade of the 1930s, the beggar-thy-neighbour policies of that era will return. Each of the major powers will increasingly resort to economic nationalist measures to protect its own position.

As with other major economic summits of the recent period, the G-7 finance ministers meeting failed to produce any coordinated response to global stagnation. The US and Japan want to see a boost in fiscal spending. But this is completely opposed by Germany and to some extent by Britain.

Germany has opposed both the quantitative easing monetary policies of the European Central Banks and any suggestion that it should use its stronger fiscal position to initiate stimulus measures. Its opposition is rooted in the fear that any relaxation of its demands for austerity measures will lead to a weakening of the German financial system and work to the advantage of stronger US banks and finance houses.

Consequently there was no agreement on coordinated measures. There was a completely vague, general agreement on the need to employ a mix of monetary, fiscal and structural measures, with the rider that these measures should take into account “country-specific circumstances.” In other words, what has been described as “go your own way” approach.

Emphasising his opposition to both fiscal and monetary stimulus, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble said “structural reforms”—the code phrase for deepening attacks on labour protections and social conditions—were the most important and there was greater recognition in the G-7 that “structural reforms are crucial.”

While the differences over currency values between the US and Japan did not lead to an open breach, the tensions will continue. This is because what were once regarded as “normal” conditions for the functioning of the capitalist economy are breaking down.

The chief factor in the global stagnation that is fuelling currency conflict is the lack of investment in the real economy. In Europe, investment levels are running some 25 percent below where they were before the global financial crisis of 2008.

In the US, major companies instead of re-investing profits in new plant and equipment are now hoarding cash. A Financial Times article at the weekend, citing a report by Moody’s, noted that five major US hi-tech companies—Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Cisco and Oracle—were sitting on $504 billion in cash at the end of 2015, nearly one-third of the total of $1.7 trillion being held by US non-financial corporations.

Moody’s reported that capital spending in the US had contracted for the first time since the official end of the US recession in 2009, down by some 3 percent. One of the chief factors was the reduction in investment by mining and energy companies as a result of the sharp fall in commodity prices, itself another expression of falling global growth.

The capitalist crisis and the defense of democratic rights

Andre Damon & Alex Lantier

On Sunday, Austria’s presidential runoff between Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom Party and Alexander Van der Bellen of the Green Party ended in a deadlock. Mail-in ballots will now determine whether Hofer will become the first head of state of a major European country since 1945 whose party traces its lineage to the Nazis.

Thirty years ago, the exposure of Austrian President Kurt Waldheim’s previous membership in the Nazi Party ignited a political scandal. Today, Hofer’s rise is part of a growing and increasingly dominant international tendency that has significant support in ruling circles. In country after country, right-wing and authoritarian forces are being mobilized to divert the anger and frustration felt by masses of people toward the traditional parties of the ruling class.

This tendency can be seen in the rise of the French National Front, the Alternative for Germany, the UK Independence Party, neo-fascistic forces in Ukraine and the election of Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. Most significantly, with the imminent nomination of Donald Trump as the Republican presidential candidate, one of the two principal parties in the United States will be led by an individual with a distinctly fascistic program and orientation.

Underlying the breakdown of democratic institutions is the protracted global economic crisis, the extreme growth of militarism and war, and, above all, the intensification of the class struggle.

In the Perspective published on May 21, the World Socialist Web Site called attention to signs of a resurgence of class struggle and a process of political radicalization on a world scale, including the strike by 39,000 Verizon workers in the US, mass protests against reactionary labor “reform” laws in France, a general strike in Greece, and strikes in China and India. The revival of class struggle, we explained, “is finding political expression in a turn by workers against all the parties of the official ‘left’ that are backed by the trade unions.”

The ruling elites feel themselves under siege from all sides. They are well aware that their policies of war and austerity are deeply unpopular and are provoking mass resistance. They are attempting to preempt this political radicalization through the mobilization of far-right forces, while creating the conditions for ever more violent and brutal repression of social opposition.

To the extent that neo-fascistic forces are able to win broader support, the political responsibility rests with the right-wing and anti-working class character of the nominal “left.” This can be seen most clearly in France and Greece. Workers and youth elected a Socialist Party government in France that has imposed emergency powers in the name of fighting terrorism and forced through a law attacking workers’ wages and working conditions. In Greece, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), is using riot police to implement, over mass working class opposition, the very austerity measures it promised to oppose.

In Brazil, the Workers Party (PT) government, which for 13 years loyally imposed the dictates of the global banks, has paved the way for the direct intervention of the military 52 years after an authoritarian dictatorship seized power and launched a reign of terror against workers and youth. In nearby Venezuela, the political heirs of Hugo Chavez are responding to rising inflation and plunging oil revenues by imposing a state of emergency that bans workers from striking for higher wages.

As for Trump, the ability of this billionaire businessman to win support by promising to “make America great again” on the basis of chauvinism and extreme nationalism is entirely bound up with deep popular hostility to the two-party system. In a campaign between Trump and his likely Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton, it will be Trump who positions himself as the “anti-establishment” candidate against a corrupt and despised representative of Wall Street and the military-intelligence establishment.

Under these conditions, the representatives of the middle class pseudo-left are advancing the argument that what is needed is a general alliance of “democratic forces” on a capitalist basis. Typical are the comments of Yanis Varoufakis, the former finance minister of the Syriza government in Greece, who played a central role in the betrayal of the struggle of Greek workers against austerity.

In an open letter published on the International Viewpoint web site, Varoufakis declares, “We are at a moment in history very much like” the 1930s, with “deflation, xenophobia, hyper-nationalism, competitive devaluations, jingoism, etc.” What, he asks, “was the duty of progressives” in the 1930s? “It was… to reach across party affiliations and borders to create a pan-European movement of democrats (radicals, liberals, even progressive conservatives) in opposition to the forces of evil. I very much fear that this is our duty today too.”

In fact, the 1930s are an object lesson in the bankruptcy of the politics Varoufakis is espousing. In that decade, the Stalinist-dominated Communist parties responded to Depression, war and the growth of fascism by promoting the program of “popular frontism”—an alliance with supposedly “democratic” elements of the bourgeoisie against fascism. This proved to be a disaster for the working class. By 1940, most of Europe was under fascist rule.

In similar fashion to the Stalinist popular front of the 1930s, Varoufakis’ policy of shackling workers to the very parties that are carrying out austerity and war is aimed at precluding the development of a political movement against the growth of far-right forces that can actually win mass support. He wants a campaign for “democracy” without changing any of the conditions that have given rise to the danger of fascism. In the United States, the political forces around the Democratic Party are preparing a political movement against Trump without proposing any change to a social policy that has produced an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the working population to the financial aristocracy.

Explaining the crisis of bourgeois democracy in the period between the First and Second World Wars, the great Marxist theoretician and revolutionist Leon Trotsky wrote:

By analogy with electrical engineering, democracy might be defined as a system of safety switches and circuit breakers for protection against currents overloaded by the national or social struggle. No period of human history has been—even remotely—so overcharged with antagonisms such as ours… Under the impact of class and international contradictions that are too highly charged, the safety switches of democracy either burn out or explode. That is what the short circuit of dictatorship represents.

Trotsky based his analysis on an understanding that the breakdown of democratic forms was the product of a social and economic system in deep crisis. The task today, as it was then, is to mobilize the working class internationally on the basis of a political program directed against the source of the electrical overload: capitalism.

We call on our readers all over the world to draw the necessary conclusions. Nothing will be achieved by attempting to shore up the crumbling institutions of bourgeois rule. Two alternatives are starkly posed: either the ruling class and its economic system will drag humanity into the abyss of war, Depression and dictatorship, or the international working class will take power and reorganize the world economy on a socialist basis.

UN Assessment: Global Destruction Of Mother Earth On Fast Track

Andrea Germanos

A little girl searches for recyclable materials in a garbage dump with smelling gas evaporating around her in Mandalay city, Mandalay province, Myanmar. (Photo: Nyaung U/United Nations Development Programme)

With no region of the Earth untouched by the ravages of environmental destruction, the state of the world's natural resources is in a rapid downward spiral, a comprehensive assessment by the United Nations has found.

Published Thursday, Global Environmental Outlook from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) involved the expertise of more than 1,200 scientists and over 160 governments, and exposes through reports on each of the world's six regions that the rate of environmental deterioration is occurring faster than previously thought—and can only be halted with swift action.

"It is essential that we understand the pace of environmental change that is upon us," stated UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

One threat many of the world's inhabitants are facing is that of water scarcity. For North America (pdf), for example, it "is of increasing concern," though it's just one of many "worsening pressures."

The report points to the recent five-year drought around Texas—a problem exacerbated by climate change. It also notes how the impacts of climate change were vividly felt when Hurricane Sandy struck in 2012.

"The 30 centimeters of sea level rise off New York City since 1900 likely expanded Hurricane Sandy's flood area by approximately 65 square kilometers, flooding the homes of more than 80 000 additional people in New York and New Jersey alone," UNEP states, adding: "Climate change is generating impacts across the region, and aggressive hydrocarbon extraction methods bring the possibility of increased emissions, water use and induced seismicity. The coastal and marine environment is under increasing threat from nutrient loads, ocean acidification, ocean warming, sea level rise, and new forms of marine debris."

And even with successful efforts to rein in carbon emissions, the outlook for the region isn't bright, the report notes:

A wide range of potentially catastrophic impacts are built in to the near and medium term climate, so that climate change impacts are highly likely to increase regardless of how fast the region reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and how fast it supports global emissions reductions. The consequences for human lives and livelihoods will depend on measures to adapt to climate change and increase resilience that, while showing signs of promise, are not yet sufficient to meet the threats. The region has been surprised by the emergence of major failures in traditional environmental issues, such as drinking water safety, suggesting that past successes are in jeopardy.

Or take the Latin American and Caribbean region (pdf), where greenhouse gas emissions are growing, a problem fueled in part by agriculture. UNEP notes:

>> Agriculture has had a strong impact on the emission of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide emissions - from soils, leaching and runoff, direct emissions, and animal manure - increased by about 29 per cent between 2000 and 2010. The abundance of beef and dairy cattle in the region has also increased methane emissions, which grew by 19 per cent between 2000 and 2010.

>> Andean glaciers, which provide vital water resources for millions of people, are shrinking and an increase in the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events are affecting economies.

In Asia and the Pacific, meanwhile,

Increasing unsustainable consumption patterns have led to worsening air pollution, water scarcity and waste generation, threatening human and environmental health. Increased demand for fossil fuels and natural resources - extensive agriculture, palm oil and rubber plantations, aquaculture and the illegal trade in wildlife - are causing environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.

Spreading desertification is a key threat for West Asia, while Africa's land degradation, due, in part, to deforestation, are among the environmental challenges for those regions.

And, of course, there's the Arctic region—"a barometer for change in the rest of the world" —with dropping levels of summer sea ice extent and glacier ice loss.

Among the recommendations UNEP calls for are scaling back fossil fuel dependency and increasing sustainable infrastructure investments.

While the UN body said there was still time to address many of the threats, urgent action, it stressed, was key.

"If current trends continue and the world fails to enact solutions that improve current patterns of production and consumption, if we fail to use natural resources sustainably, then the state of the world's environment will continue to decline," Steiner said, emphasizing the urgency "to work with nature instead of against it to tackle the array of environmental threats that face us."

German Social Democratic Party in free-fall

Ulrich Rippert

Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) finds itself in free fall. In the latest poll by Forsa on Wednesday, its support fell to 19 percent, a decline of 2 percent from the previous month and an historic low for the SPD.

Forsa’s voter trends report for Stern/RTL states, “Only 14 percent say the SPD best represents their personal interests.” Forsa head Manfred Güllner commented on the results, “The working class still makes up the majority of society but no longer feels represented by the current SPD.”

The collapse of the SPD in the polls is the direct product of the right-wing, anti-social and militarist policies the party has pursued for years. The SPD is known as the “Hartz IV party,” which initiated an unprecedented social decline ten years ago with the Agenda 2010. The Hartz laws of the SPD/Green Party government (1998-2005), under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and foreign minister Joschka Fischer, had catastrophic consequences.

Laid-off workers now lose all rights to social benefits after a year at the latest and are degraded to pleading for assistance. Those who wind up on Hartz IV welfare barely stand a chance of ever making it out of poverty. According to a study by the Paritätische Wohlfahrtverband, three quarters of those affected remain on Hartz IV permanently. Even the threat of falling into Hartz IV forces many laid-off workers to take a new job, often on the basis of low wages, a temporary contract or part-time hours.

Through the Agenda 2010, a second labour market was created, characterised by temporary work, short-term contracts and all kinds of low-paid jobs without any social security or rights. The legalisation of such precarious jobs has led to a sharp rise in poverty. The Paritätische Wohlfahrtverband’s latest poverty report classifies 15.4 percent of the population, or 12.5 million people, as poor. Among these are around 3.4 million pensioners and over 2.5 million children.

At the initiative of Labour Minister Andrea Nahles (SPD), the Bundestag two weeks ago adopted new legislation to regulate temporary jobs and short-term contracts. It writes extreme conditions of exploitation into law. At the same time, in collaboration with the trade unions, all opposition is being suppressed.

The SPD’s social counter-revolution has become the model for social democratic politics across Europe, The SPD led the way in enforcing one austerity programme after another on the Greek population and blackmailed and plundered the country in the interests of the international banks. Due to the collapse of the social democratic Pasok as a result of these policies, SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel and president of the European Parliament Martin Schulz (SPD) now cooperate closely with Syriza to press forward with social attacks.

The SPD has been attempting for years to export its Agenda 2010 to France. Two years ago, the architect who gave his name to the reforms, Peter Hartz, visited French President François Hollande and his government in the Elysee Palace to advise them on their labour market reforms. The result is the El-Khomri law, which the Socialist Party government has now imposed by emergency decree against mass protests.

In mid-March, at the beginning of the key phase in France’s Agenda policy, leading European social democratic politicians met in Paris to strengthen the hand of President Hollande. Along with Gabriel and Schulz, Italian Prime Minister and Democratic Party (PD) chairman Matteo Renzi, the then Austrian Chancellor and SPÖ chairman Werner Feymann, Portuguese Prime Minister and chairman of the Socialist Party Antonio Costa and the vice president of the EU Commission, Federica Mogherini, all participated.

The SPD has also played a key role in the preparations for war. Frank-Walter Steinmeier (SPD), Germany’s foreign minister, has led the shift in foreign policy and the return of German militarism. In close collaboration with defence minister Ursula Von der Leyen (CDU), he has organised military rearmament. Hundreds of millions of euros which have been squeezed out of the working class by austerity measures are flowing directly into arms programmes for the military.

These reactionary policies are coming up against growing popular opposition. The SPD virtually collapsed in March’s state elections. In Baden-Württemberg and Saxony-Anhalt, the SPD barely surpassed 10 percent of the vote and finished behind the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Members are also rushing in large numbers to leave the SPD. Since 1990, it has lost more than half its membership.

The SPD’s financial structure has in the meantime become largely independent of declining membership dues. The bureaucratic organisation works according to corporate targets and controls a wide-ranging network of commercial operations. In addition, the party receives large sums from the state party financing system. Last year, state subsidies amounted to more than €50 million. The SPD is a party of the state, which enforces the interests of German imperialism and leading corporate associations with utter disregard for the opposition of the population.

Concern is growing in the ruling elite about the party’s declining influence. The latest edition of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ’s weekly magazine published a lead article on the subject entitled, “Decline of a people’s party.” It began,“The SPD has hit rock bottom.”

The article continued: “The SPD is Germany’s oldest party. It resisted the Nazis, provided three great Chancellors and influenced the German state like no other party apart from the CDU. But if federal elections took place on Sunday, it would receive, according to the latest polls, only 20 percent of the vote. In the east, the AfD would be 5 percentage points ahead of the SPD. A horror scenario for the great old party.”

The advanced decomposition of the social democrats is an international phenomenon. In Austria, Greece, Britain and above all in France, and also in many other countries, a similar development is taking place. It is connected to a growing radicalisation of the working class.

In Greece, mass strikes have taken place against the brutal austerity policies of the Syriza government. In France, workers and students have taken to the streets for weeks to protest against the Hollande government’s social cuts and labour market reforms. In Germany, strikes and workplace protests are sharply on the rise. Last year, the official number of strike days surpassed the one million mark for the first time in many years.

In the United States, China and India, strike waves are also breaking out. In the US, over 40,000 employees of the telecommunications giant Verizon have been on strike for weeks. This growing global radicalisation of workers and youth is finding expression in the mounting opposition to the SPD.

The working class confronts the task of finally liberating itself from these reactionary, nationalist bureaucracies. However, this requires more than a rejection of the party by refusing to vote for it and abandoning membership. The danger that far right parties like the AfD and FN could exploit the political vacuum is great.

The working class must adopt a new political course; it requires a new political perspective. Not a single problem confronted by the workers throughout the world can be dealt with within the framework of the nation state or the capitalist profit system. The working class needs an internationalist, socialist programme and a revolutionary party.

Herein lies the significance of the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit’s (PSG) participation in the Berlin state elections in September. Unlike the Left Party, which pursues the goal of retaining the SPD in power and supporting it, we call upon everyone wishing to combat war, repression, nationalism and social inequality to energetically support the PSG’s campaign. We are pursuing the aim of abolishing the capitalist system, the source of inequality, poverty and war, and developing a mass movement on the basis of a socialist and internationalist programme.

Sports Authority to close all stores, lay off 16,000

George Gallanis

The major retail company Sports Authority announced Thursday the closing and liquidation of all of its more than 460 stores. All employees, who according to Forbes currently total 16,000, are expected to be laid off. The shuttering of Sports Authority comes about after store closings and job cuts by other retail giants such as Kmart and Sears and is a further indication of a deepening social crisis facing the working class.

The elimination of 16,000 jobs will impact 41 US states and Puerto Rico. It is estimated that it will take three months until all stores are closed, leaving thousands of workers scrambling to find new jobs in an already depressed job market.

Sports Authority workers will be joining workers to being laid off from Kmart and Sears. Sixty-eight stores are slated to be closed at Kmart and 10 at Sears. Most of the stores will close in late July.

Sports Authority was in fact once owned by Kmart, which bought it in 1990. Its history is littered with mergers and acquisitions, fueled by financial speculation. Founded in Lakes Mall in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, The Sports Authority, Inc. was put together by venture capital groups led by William Blair Venture Partners, including First Chicago Venture Partners, Bain Capital, Phillips-Smith Venture Partners, Marquette Venture Partners, and Bessemer Securities.

Its first store opened in November 1987 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A few years later, Kmart would acquire the company. Within five years, its stores sprawled across 26 states. It would eventually separate from Kmart and become an independent entity.

By 2003, The Sports Authority had expanded to 205 stores in 33 states and had become the largest full line sports retailer in the United States. In the same year, it would complete the “merger of equals” with Gart Sports Company, which also operated Oshman’s and Sportsmart, leading to the rebranding Gart Sports stores with the Sports Authority insignia.

SA’s yearly profit hit $3.5 billion in 2006. The same year, affiliates of the private equity investment firm Leonard Green & Partners agreed to leverage a buyout worth $1.4 billion. Since then, Sports Authority has been plagued with stagnant profits and heavy competition from rival sports realtor Dick’s Sporting Goods.

This past March, The Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announced a plan to close at least 140 of its 463 stores and lay off 3,400 of its employees. On April 26, SA announced that they would sell off their assets and remaining store locations. Then, on May 18, the company announced that they had failed to restructure their debt making liquidation unavoidable, leading to the closing of all stores.

Going-out-of-business sales are expected to begin next Wednesday at all stores and will continue until Aug. 3. Stores previously slated to close have already begun the process of emptying their inventory. Dick’s Sporting Goods is seeking to acquire roughly twenty of Sports Authority store leases. “There’s a small group of stores we would love to get,” stated Dick’s CEO Edward Stack.

From one merger to another, from bankruptcy to financial riches, it is the working class that pays for it all. As 16,000 workers will soon be left jobless, the small staff of 45 at Leonard Green & Partners, which is leading the liquidation and selling of SA, will no doubt rake in a heavy profit for itself.

Like many private equity firms, Leonard Green & Partners has overseen acquisitions, mergers, and the selling off of numerous companies, including those of Petco, Whole Foods Market and Lucky Brand Jeans. It is the product of an economic system that places the interest of profit above that of the vast majority of people.

Commenting on the closing of Sports Authority stores, a worker said, “It’s all about a small number of hedge fund shareholders and f*ck the employees and community economic development incentives they suck dollars from.”

While cause of Egypt Air crash remains unknown, terror scare mounts

Thomas Gaist

Investigators discovered wreckage Friday believed to be remains of Egypt Air Flight 804, the Cairo-bound jetliner that crashed into the eastern Mediterranean Thursday after a series of abrupt swerving maneuvers.

It certainly is possible that the destruction of this aircraft was the result of some form of sabotage. But no solid evidence has yet been found, among the wreckage or elsewhere, to justify claims advanced by Western leaders Thursday that Flight 804 was targeted for a terror bombing. In contrast to the provocative statements of various political figures, officials charges with investigating the disaster have been careful to avoid jumping to conclusions.

US officials initially claimed that satellite photos show “strong indications” that the plane was brought down by an explosion, yet failed to bring forward any hard evidence.

A US avionics expert cited in US media late Friday suggested that a mechanical breakdown in the cockpit might have produced an electrical fire.

Even as uncertainty remains over the crash, the US and European ruling elites are seizing on the incident to demand further escalations of their military operations in the Mediterranean and across Africa and the Middle East, and to intensify their drive to remove all remnants of democratic restraint on the powers of the state.

The NATO powers, which are engaged in massive buildup on Russia’s border, responded to the crash by deploying a multinational naval flotilla to the crash area.

Los Angeles International Airport implemented heightened security procedures Friday, including random searches in entrance areas.

US media responded to 804’s disappearance with warnings that a “New Stage in the War on Terror” has begun, and that “Islamic State and Al Qaeda are on the March.”

The possibility that a bomb was smuggled onboard a flight leaving from Paris’ Charles De Gaulle (CDG) airport would prove the failure of “all the preventative security measures taken to safeguard global civil aviation since 9/11,” Time magazine warned in its report, “If a Bomb Brought Down Egypt Air 804 the War on Terror is About to Change.”

“If airline employees are being doubted, wouldn’t that include a mechanic, who could know where to tuck something out of sight?” Time warned, informing readers that “ISIS operates more like a mass movement” and that “anyone can join who is angry.”

Far from idle speculation, these conceptions are being advanced to rally support in ruling circles for even greater attacks on democratic rights, including intensified surveillance against the working class and broad mass of the population, under the slogan “anyone may be a terrorist.”

The decade and a half since September 11, 2001 has witnessed, in all of the advanced capitalist countries, a systematic buildup of the state’s capacity to spy on and capture individuals without any legal process. Open dictatorship now looms in all of the leading capitalist “democracies.”

Justified to the public in the name of fighting Islamic terrorism networks, these preparations are intended for use against the international working class. The November 13, 2015 attacks in Paris, planned under the noses of European intelligence, became the basis for the imposition of martial law decrees throughout France that remain in force today and are being bolstered with sweeping anti-labor measures.

The same terror groups who supposedly constitute “the enemy” were armed and financed by the US and the European powers on behalf of their predatory and neocolonial interests. Beginning in 2011, these forces were mobilized by NATO as tools of its wars against Libya and Syria.

In discussions with members of the Washington-backed dictatorship of General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in the Egyptian capital on Friday, US and British diplomatic chiefs offered “all kinds of support” to Egypt’s military government.

The crimes of Egypt’s military regime, which has carried out massacres and mass executions in an effort to terrorize the revolutionary movement of the Egyptian working class that erupted in 2011, exemplify the real meaning of the “war on terrorism,” which aims at the suppression by military and police violence of the workers and oppressed masses throughout the entire world.

US prepares troop deployment to Libya amid fight for oil fields

Bill Van Auken

Five years after a US-NATO war shattered Libya, Washington is preparing to send troops into the oil-rich North African nation for a “long-term mission,” the Pentagon’s top uniformed commander said Thursday.

Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters returning aboard his plane from a meeting of NATO commanders in Brussels that the new military deployment, which could involve thousands of US troops, could happen “any day.” It awaited only a formal agreement with the new government that the Western powers and the UN are attempting to set up in Tripoli, he indicated.

General Dunford told reporters that there had been “intense dialogue” and “activities under the surface” aimed at bringing about the Libya intervention. This apparently referred to efforts by the US ambassador to Libya, Peter Bodde, and the State Department’s special envoy for Libya, Jonathan Winer, to wrest a formal request for military intervention from Fayez al-Sarraj, the unelected head of the Western-backed Libyan Presidential Council.

Under UN and US tutelage, Sarraj and his allies established this council in exile in Tunisia, returning to the Libyan capital, Tripoli, at the end of March. It is obvious that this new puppet regime has been created for the sole purpose of providing a veneer of legality to another US-NATO military intervention in the devastated country.

Sarraj’s legitimacy, however, is by no means clear. His is now one of three competing regimes, including the Islamist-dominated General National Congress (GNC) in Tripoli and the House of Representatives (HoR) based in the eastern city of Tobruk, which was previously recognized by the West as the legitimate government of Libya. Neither the GNC nor the HoR have recognized the authority of Sarraj’s presidential council.

Nor is it clear what fighting force Sarraj can rely upon and the US and its allies can arm and train. It was revealed earlier this month that US Special Operations troops have been on the ground in Libya since last year attempting to contact and assess various rival militias to see which one could be employed in the service of Washington’s interests in the country.

Ostensibly, the US and its allies are intervening to counter the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) inside the country. ISIS fighters, reported to number at least 5,000, have taken control of a stretch of the Libyan Mediterranean coast. It is no accident that the center of this territory is the city of Sirte, formerly the hometown of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. The city was reduced to rubble by US-NATO attacks in the days leading up to the October 2011 torture and murder of Gaddafi at the hands of US-backed Islamist militiamen.

As in Iraq and Syria, Washington is justifying this new intervention in the name of combating a force that it itself spawned. Libya’s ISIS fighters came from the Islamist militias that the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies supported and armed in the bid to oust Gaddafi in 2011. Many of them were then sent into Syria, along with large stockpiles of Libyan weapons that were shipped to that country as part of an operation run out of the secret CIA station in Benghazi. That station and a separate US consulate were overrun by Libyan Islamist militiamen in September 2011, leading to the deaths of US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Discussions on the coming Libya intervention took place at a meeting of foreign ministers from the US, Europe and the Middle East on Monday in Vienna. Among the decisions taken was to seek exemption from an arms embargo imposed by the UN after the fall of Gaddafi so that weapons can be funneled in to forces loyal to the puppet Sarraj, though it is, as of yet, unclear who those forces are. US Secretary of State John Kerry allowed that a “delicate balance” had to be found to prevent the arms from falling into the hands of Al Qaeda-linked and ISIS elements that Washington is ostensibly fighting.

The real objective in Libya today, as in 2011, is the assertion of undisputed US-NATO hegemony over the country and its massive oil reserves, the largest on the African continent. Having turned Libya into the model of a so-called “failed state” with its first intervention, Washington appears to want to impose some kind of neocolonial regime with its pending second incursion.

The centrality of oil is manifest in the operations of the two major armed militias that are being considered for the role of Western puppet forces. The first is the so-called Libyan National Army formed under the command of Khalifa Hafter, a former Libyan army officer who became an “asset” of the CIA in the 1980s, set up near the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia and then airlifted by the Americans back into Benghazi during the 2011 war for regime change.

Hafter’s forces have been moving slowly west from Benghazi toward the ISIS center of Sirte, expending most of their energies on seizing control of some 14 oil fields along the way. The fields were taken largely from the Petroleum Facilities’ Guards (PFG), whose commander, Ibrahim Jadhran, had sworn allegiance to the US-backed regime of Sarraj after previously seeking autonomy for the east and attempting to sell oil independently of the government in Tripoli.

Meanwhile, a rival militia based in the city of Misurata in northwestern Libya has been approaching Sirte from the opposite direction with similar intentions. It is widely anticipated that these two forces, apparently the principal candidates for serving as the foundation of a Western puppet force in the country, may end up battling each other rather than ISIS.

While General Dunford predicted a US-NATO intervention was imminent, he was less forthcoming about its composition.

It had been reported initially that Italy, which exercised brutal colonial rule over Libya under the fascist dictatorship of Benito Mussolini, would lead the mission, providing upwards of 5,000 troops. Among Rome’s principal concerns—aside from reasserting its old colonial ambitions—is securing the Libyan coast, which is expected to be the major route for refugees seeking to reach Italy, now that the EU has sealed off the so-called Balkan route.

On Monday, however, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said that Italy would not send troops into Libya. “While under pressure to intervene in Libya, we have chosen a different approach,” Renzi said in a statement.

For its part, Germany has reportedly rejected placing any of its troops in Libya, saying that it would only train Libyan forces in neighboring Tunisia.

The apparent disarray within NATO’s ranks reflects the competing interests of the US and the various European powers as the Libyan intervention escalates what is emerging as a new imperialist scramble for Africa.

As Washington prepares to launch another military intervention into a nation that it previously decimated through a war of aggression, its ongoing campaign in Iraq appears in growing danger. Baghdad was placed under military curfew Friday night after Iraqi security forces used tear gas and live fire to drive back thousands of antigovernment demonstrators who stormed the heavily fortified Green Zone, reaching the office of Iraq’s US-backed prime minister, Haider al-Abadi.

Initial reports indicated at least one civilian, and perhaps several, killed by security forces, and dozens wounded.

Protesters, including supporters of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had stormed into the blast wall-enclosed Green Zone on April 30 to protest government corruption and failure to provide basic services and security. Anger has only deepened in the intervening weeks as the result of a series of terrorist bombings claimed by ISIS that have killed more than 150 people in Baghdad this month.

In the wake of the bloodshed in the Green Zone, there is a growing threat that an armed confrontation between government forces and armed Shia militias in the Iraqi capital could eclipse the so-called war against ISIS.

A resurgence of class struggle

Barry Grey

There are mounting indications that a quarter-century during which the class struggle in the US, Britain and other industrialized countries was artificially suppressed is coming to an end. Recent weeks have seen a wave of strikes and protests in France against a reactionary labor “reform” law, carried out in defiance of a state of emergency imposed by the right-wing Socialist Party government; a general strike by Greek workers against austerity measures implemented by the pseudo-left Syriza party; strikes by junior doctors in Britain against social cuts carried out by the Conservative Party government with the support of the Labour Party; a strike by air traffic controllers in Belgium; and strikes by workers in India and China.

In the US, a strike by 39,000 workers against the global telecommunications giant Verizon, the biggest American labor stoppage in many years, is now in its sixth week. This is a significant, although still initial, expression of a growth of the class struggle in the center of world capitalism. It coincides with a series of strikes and sickouts by teachers in Detroit and other cities, and a wave of social protests such as the demonstrations against the poisoning of the water supply in Flint, Michigan and protests against police killings of unarmed workers and youth.

All of these struggles take place in the face of the treachery and sabotage of the trade unions. The unions at Verizon, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have isolated the Verizon workers and done nothing to oppose company strikebreaking and violent attacks on picketers by scabs, who are being escorted and protected by the police.

They are desperate to end the strike and impose a sellout contract. In a sign of the accelerated drive to end the walkout, 88 Democratic congressmen, allies of the CWA and the IBEW, issued an open letter Thursday calling for an end to the strike.

In 2015, the United Auto Workers union barely succeeded in suppressing a rebellion of autoworkers against sellout contracts they signed with the Detroit-based auto makers. Despite the best efforts of the union bureaucracy, however, the past year has seen a modest but significant increase in strike activity.

Figures released last February by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) quantify the inflection point in the class struggle in America. They show a 400 percent increase in the number of days lost to major labor disputes in 2015 as compared to the previous year. The bulk of the increase is accounted for by the four-month strike of 5,000 oil workers across the US that year and the lockout of 2,200 steelworkers by Pittsburgh-based Allegheny Technologies.

The Verizon strike will dramatically raise the figure for days lost to labor stoppages for 2016. Labor contracts, meanwhile, are still pending for 573,000 postal workers, hundreds of thousands of state and local public employees and teachers, and hundreds of thousands of retail workers.

The level of strike activity remains far below what was commonplace from the 1940s to the 1980s. In 2015, there were 12 major work stoppages (1,000 or more workers) involving 47,000 workers, an increase over the previous year. This compares to the peak year for US work stoppages, 1952, when 2.7 million workers participated in 470 major industrial disputes.

In the 1980s, the AFL-CIO betrayed a wave of bitter strikes against mass layoffs, wage cuts and union-busting, beginning with its sabotage of the PATCO air traffic controllers strike in 1981 and its tacit support for the firing and blacklisting of 11,000 strikers by the Reagan government. This led to decades during which strikes in the US fell to historic lows. The growth of social inequality and record rise in the fortunes of the corporate and financial elite were directly connected to the virtual disappearance of any form of organized class struggle.

The collapse of the financial system in 2008 and the ensuing onslaught on jobs, wages and social programs left the working class stunned and disoriented. But as it became clear that the ruling classes of the world were intent on exploiting the crisis to wipe out all of the past social gains and reduce the working class to penury, workers began to realize there was no alternative to bitter struggle.

The revival of the class struggle is finding political expression in the beginning of a turn by workers against all of the parties of the official “left” that are backed by the trade unions: the Labour Party establishment in Britain, the Socialist Party in France, the Social Democratic Party in Germany.

In the US, the growth of working class militancy is accompanied by the beginning stages of a profound political radicalization, reflected initially in the broad support for Bernie Sanders, whose claim to be a socialist has magnified his appeal to millions of workers and youth who are rejecting capitalism and looking for a radical alternative. His campaign is a preemptive response to the growth of the class struggle and the danger of the emergence of an independent political and revolutionary movement of the working class. Its aim is to keep this movement trapped within the Democratic Party.

The Donald Trump campaign is likewise a preemptive response to the growth of working class opposition to the existing economic and political setup. Its aim is to direct this movement along chauvinist and nationalist lines and prepare the conditions for the ever more direct use of violence to repress social tensions at home.

The revival of class struggle may be in its initial stages, but it will expand explosively. It is being driven objectively by the crisis of the world capitalist system, which offers nothing but poverty, dictatorship and the horror of global nuclear war. All of the struggles, whether strikes or social protests, raise revolutionary issues and pose the question of political power.

The first task that confronts workers is the need to break free of the reactionary pro-capitalist labor bureaucracies. But as Leon Trotsky explained in the founding program of the Fourth International, the Transitional Program, there are powerful objective forces that facilitate this task:

The orientation of the masses is determined first by the objective conditions of decaying capitalism and second by the treacherous politics of the old workers' organizations. Of these factors, the first is of course the decisive one: the laws of history are stronger than the bureaucratic apparatus.

The urgent and critical need is the building of a revolutionary Marxist leadership to unite all of the different struggles into a single class struggle and provide it with a revolutionary political perspective.