The resurgence of class struggle and the fight for socialism

[TexasTowelie]

Note: I believe that this article is a worthwhile read regardless of where anyone identifies themselves on the capitalism/socialism debate.


Opening report to Online International May Day Rally
The resurgence of class struggle and the fight for socialism
By David North
6 May 2019

On Saturday, May 4, the International Committee of the Fourth International held the 2019 International Online May Day Rally, the sixth annual online May Day Rally held by the ICFI, the world Trotskyist movement. The rally heard speeches on different aspects of the world crisis of capitalism and the struggles of the international working class from 12 leading members of the world party and its sections and sympathizing organizations around the world.

In the coming days, the World Socialist Web Site will publish the texts of the speeches delivered at the rally. We begin today with the opening report, given by David North, the chairman of the international editorial board of the WSWS and national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US).

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In the not too distant future, when historians begin to reconstruct and explain the origins of the revolutionary convulsions of the first half of the 21st century, and attempt to identify the point at which the threat to the very survival of the capitalist system was clearly recognized by the ruling elites, the scholars may well draw their students’ attention to the annual meeting of the Milken Institute that was held in Los Angeles last week, on April 29-30, 2019.

Organized by the notorious junk bond racketeer Michael Milken, who, since his release from prison, has spent a portion of his multi-billion-dollar fortune to burnish his reputation as a humanitarian and social visionary, the gathering of capitalist luminaries was dominated by the specter of socialism. From atop their piles of wealth they peer over the horizon and see the approaching storm. “I’m concerned with this notion,” said Google founder Eric Schmidt, “that somehow socialism’s going to creep back.” The hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin called attention to a poll, whose frightening results were projected on a screen, showing that 44 percent of millennials would prefer to live in a socialist country.

Read more: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2019/05/06/nort-m06.html