This political report for the week of February 8–14, 2026, is compiled based on coverage from the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS.org).
Demonstrators hemmed in by NSW Riot Squad Police at Sydney Town Hall, February 9, 2026
1. Imperialism and War
Preparations for War Against Iran
The United States has repositioned substantial military assets—including the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group, additional aircraft and logistics infrastructure—to prepare for what officials describe as a “sustained, weeks-long” military campaign against Iran. This build-up accompanies tightened sanctions and continued diplomatic manoeuvring, with high-level Trump–Netanyahu conclaves coordinating strategy and escalatory rhetoric toward Tehran. The repositioning signals an expectation of reciprocal strikes and prolonged regional confrontation, occurring alongside sharp transatlantic diplomatic tensions at the Munich Security Conference.
This military mobilisation represents imperialist decision-making divorced from democratic accountability, driven by competition for regional dominance and resource control. War preparations will deepen social misery both in Iran and across the region while accelerating global polarisation. The working class internationally must mount independent anti-war mobilisations: strikes, mass actions and political organisation to block military adventurism and the domestic austerity that invariably accompanies rearmament spending.
Complicity in Israeli Genocide
Israeli policies in the West Bank have escalated dramatically, with expanded settlement construction, tightened movement restrictions and explicit annexationist measures designed to “bury the idea of a Palestinian state.” German officials, including Parliament President Klöckner, visited Israel in what amounts to tacit endorsement of genocidal policies, signalling Berlin’s political alignment with Israeli security doctrine. Meanwhile, Australian police violently suppressed mass protests opposing Israeli President Herzog’s state visit to Sydney, deploying riot squads, horse charges and kettling tactics that left demonstrators—including filmmaker James Ricketson—bloodied and arrested. Labor governments imposed protest bans and extended police-state powers to protect visiting war criminals.
These actions confirm that European and allied governments are active accomplices in imperialist aggression. The suppression of dissent through state violence exposes the class character of bourgeois democracy: when challenged on fundamental questions of war and genocide, ruling elites deploy repression regardless of party labels. Workers must oppose their own governments’ participation in imperialist crimes through international solidarity and industrial action, not appeals to the very state institutions orchestrating repression.
Militarisation and Inter-Imperialist Rivalry
Germany is transforming a regional airport into a military fortress as part of NATO’s eastern-flank expansion, deepening preparations for imperialist confrontation. The Munich Security Conference revealed sharp US–EU tensions over strategy, burden-sharing and confrontations with Russia and China, exposing fissures within NATO alliances. Social-democratic parties across Europe are converting wholesale to pro-war positions: Germany’s SPD is drafting a programme stressing military readiness and “national strengthening,” while conscription plans advance despite youth opposition organised by socialist student groups.
Inter-imperialist rivalry intensifies the danger of global conflict as capitalist powers compete for markets, resources and geopolitical advantage. Workers must oppose their own governments’ militarism and build international solidarity to prevent war profiteering and the conversion of Europe into a staging ground for imperialist confrontation.
2. Authoritarian Consolidation and State Repression
Criminalisation of Dissent
Türkiye imprisoned 77 members of the Socialist Party of the Oppressed (ESP) and placed six Left Party members under house arrest, with charges relying on informant testimony that conflated legal party activism with terrorism. Evidence presented in court included routine political literature such as copies of The Communist Manifesto. In Australia, new “prohibited hate group” laws echo 1951 Cold War-era attempts to ban communism, while Queensland’s LNP government matched Labor by banning “prescribed phrases” at protests. Princeton University abruptly cancelled a scheduled discussion by Norman Finkelstein on Gaza, implementing new policies to limit campus dissent and free speech.
These measures demonstrate how bourgeois states weaponise counter-terror and hate-speech legislation to criminalise legal socialist organising and suppress opposition to imperialist policy. The expansion of police-state powers is bipartisan: Labor and conservative governments alike deploy repression to defend capitalist interests. The defence of democratic rights requires mass working-class mobilisation and political independence, not reliance on bourgeois courts or appeals to the same state apparatus orchestrating repression.
Immigration Enforcement as State Terror
ICE operations have intensified across the United States, with mass workplace raids targeting Amazon Flex drivers in Michigan, meatpacking workers in Colorado facing deportation threats to break strike authorisations, and routine abductions dwarfing media-sensationalised individual kidnapping cases. The Department of Justice moved to gut asylum rights through regulatory changes designed to accelerate deportations. At the Dilley detention centre, a toddler’s near-fatal medical neglect case exposed life-threatening conditions and systematic denial of care. Palestinian detainee Leqaa Kordia suffered a delayed medical emergency after one year of detention at a Texas ICE facility.
Immigration detention operates as a racist, punitive apparatus designed to discipline precarious labour and fragment working-class solidarity. Deportation threats function as employers’ weapons to intimidate workers and prevent collective action. The defence of immigrant workers requires workplace solidarity committees, mass mobilisation against detention regimes and political organisation that links immigrant rights to broader working-class struggles against state repression.
Police Violence and Authoritarian Measures
Minnesota police rioted against protesters outside the Whipple Federal building, deploying indiscriminate baton charges and mass arrests. NSW riot police violently attacked demonstrators opposing Herzog’s visit, with eyewitness accounts documenting kettling, horse charges and denial of medical attention to injured protesters in custody. Massive security operations in Milan deployed snipers and heavy policing against protests opposing Trump administration presence at the Winter Olympics, though dockworker strikes delayed arms shipments and athletes publicly criticised ICE.
State violence is escalating to protect imperialist policy and criminalise dissent. The international coordination of repression—from Australia to the United States to Europe—reveals the class function of bourgeois states under crisis. Defensive mobilisation requires united working-class action and democratic organising, not appeals to the institutions wielding violence.
3. Austerity and Economic Warfare
Corporate Restructuring and Worker Attacks
Stellantis recorded a $26 billion charge tied to its electric-vehicle strategy reversal and simultaneously delayed plant reopenings, cut dividends and pushed buyout schemes affecting American workers. UPS is preparing a second driver buyout program while planning 30,000 layoffs in 2026, shifting labour costs despite sustained profitability. BYD’s Xi’an high-voltage electrical equipment factory imposed steep cuts to piece-rate bonuses that reduced many workers’ take-home pay below 2,000 yuan monthly, provoking wildcat strikes met with police repression.
Corporate crisis is weaponised to intensify exploitation: immense private wealth accrues to billionaire owners while workers face precarious pay, forced exits and degraded conditions. Buyout programmes and “voluntary” redundancies are designed to weaken collective strength and force exits that erode bargaining power. The strategic response requires coordinated rank-and-file mobilisation, rejection of unilateral management schemes and international solidarity to resist the global race to the bottom.
Public Service Destruction
The UK lost WHO measles elimination status due to falling vaccination rates and deliberate public-health neglect—a direct outcome of neoliberal austerity that prioritises profit over population health. New Zealand’s capital faces environmental disaster from a massive sewage leak, exposing capitalist underinvestment in essential infrastructure. Los Angeles authorities moved to dismantle federal oversight of homelessness as the crisis deepens, shifting responsibility to avoid redistributive demands. A UN report warned of global “water bankruptcy” affecting billions, with scarcity and contamination exacerbated by private control of resources and climate breakdown.
The rollback of public health, infrastructure and essential services is rooted in the capitalist drive to divert social resources toward private accumulation and war preparation. Restoring public goods requires mass working-class pressure to force socialised control, democratic planning and international cooperation—issues only resolvable through political struggle against capitalist property relations.
Trade War and Economic Coercion
Trump threatened to block the opening of the Gordie Howe International Bridge as part of escalating economic warfare against Canada, weaponising infrastructure to extract concessions. New Zealand’s coalition government fractured over the India Free Trade Agreement, with populist objections masking the reality that such deals serve corporate profit and intensify wage competition, privatisation and precarious labour.
Economic warfare is an extension of imperialist diplomacy. Free-trade agreements deepen exploitation and cross-border wage competition while populist nationalism channels working-class anger into reactionary scapegoating. Workers on both sides of borders must unite internationally to resist bourgeois brinkmanship and oppose both neoliberal trade regimes and chauvinist diversion.
4. Class Struggle and Bureaucratic Betrayal
Healthcare Workers’ Resistance
Nurses at NewYork-Presbyterian overwhelmingly rejected a tentative agreement that the New York State Nurses Association attempted to force through via an illegitimate snap vote, continuing their strike under rank-and-file defiance. The Kaiser healthcare workers’ strike expanded as 3,000 pharmacy and laboratory workers joined 31,000 already on strike, significantly widening disruption. San Francisco’s 6,400 educators struck for the first time since 1979, drawing mass rallies and broad community support before union bureaucrats and Democratic Party figures brokered a tentative agreement that concedes austerity and fails special-education demands.
These struggles expose the gulf between rank-and-file militancy and union apparatus. Bureaucratic sellouts are imposed to protect political ties with the Democratic Party and stabilise capitalist rule. The NYSNA’s snap-vote manoeuvre, the attempt to isolate Kaiser strikers and the intervention of Nancy Pelosi to contain San Francisco educators all demonstrate that union leaderships function as barriers to sustained class struggle. Winning safe staffing, liveable wages and healthcare as a social right requires democratically elected strike committees, strike pay drawn from union assets, expansion of strikes across facilities and sectors, and political independence from both union bureaucrats and bourgeois parties.
Industrial Militancy and Betrayal
Refinery workers denounced the United Steelworkers’ national pattern deal as a sellout prioritising corporate interests, with BP Whiting workers facing isolation if concessions are accepted. The UAW hailed a Volkswagen Tennessee contract as “historic” amid rank-and-file criticism that gains are modest and concessions linger. Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks rank-and-file activist, launched a campaign for UAW president demanding abolition of the Solidarity House bureaucracy and creation of workplace committees. In Norway, a union organised a sham strike that imposed financial burdens on members while failing to press management, forcing workers to pay for bureaucratic theatre.
National pattern agreements and bureaucratic compromises fragment struggle and normalise concessions. Union apparatuses routinely betray workers by containing mobilisation, isolating militants and deferring to management. The necessary alternative is democratic coordination across plants, refusal of bureaucratic imposition and preparation for escalated, coordinated strike action under workers’ control.
International Worker Struggles
Tens of millions of Indian workers joined a one-day national strike against the Modi government’s labour “reforms” and removal of employment guarantees, though participation remained politically confined by Stalinist-linked federations channelling dissent toward bourgeois opposition parties. Peru saw mass protests uniting transport workers, students and families of state-repression victims against austerity and violence. Colorado meatpacking workers authorised strike action over dangerous conditions despite ICE deportation threats. High school students in Carson, Royal Oak and Detroit suburbs staged walkouts protesting ICE raids, authoritarianism and war, joining broader youth mobilisations.
These struggles demonstrate the international scope of working-class resistance and the potential for cross-generational, cross-border solidarity. However, episodic protests and one-day token strikes cannot substitute for sustained, politically independent organisation. Without rank-and-file leadership breaking from nationalist and reformist containment, such mobilisations risk canalisation into bourgeois electoral channels or bureaucratic dead-ends.
5. Elite Criminality and Political Decay
Revelations tying Lord Peter Mandelson to Jeffrey Epstein networks have engulfed Keir Starmer’s Labour government, producing resignations and police inquiries. Jeremy Corbyn called for a Chilcot-style inquiry while insisting much remain shielded on “national security” grounds, demonstrating the political bankruptcy of Corbynism: seeking establishment solutions that protect state secrets and preserve bourgeois stability rather than mobilising independent working-class opposition. Leaked Epstein files implicate Trump and other political figures, with testimony at the Bondi hearing exposing cover-ups and secret “domestic terrorist” lists targeting dissidents. The FBI identified billionaire Leslie Wexner as a co-conspirator in 2019 but took no action.
The Mandelson-Epstein scandal exposes intimate links between political elites and the financial oligarchy, revealing how the ruling class operates with systemic impunity. Parliamentary inquiries and legalistic remedies cannot break oligarchic power because state institutions exist to shield ruling-class crimes. Only mass working-class mobilisation and independent political organisation can hold elites accountable and overturn the structures protecting them.
6. Political Bankruptcy of Reformism
Corbynism and Pseudo-Left Opportunism
Internal battles within Your Party saw factional purges and contrasting programmes, with Zarah Sultana’s Grassroots Left emphasising parliamentary reform and alliances with NGOs, unions and identity-based coalitions. Corbyn’s historical record of accommodation to Labour’s Blairite right and Sultana’s reformist trajectory both reproduce illusions that have repeatedly failed the working class. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s appearance at the Munich Security Conference signals her full integration into establishment foreign-policy circles, providing pseudo-left cover for imperialist strategy.
Corbynism’s “broad church” historically subordinated the left to Blairite interests; Sultana-style reformism proposes parliamentary solutions that will capitulate under capitalist crisis. Figures like AOC function to contain working-class anger within bourgeois institutions. Objective economic developments—globalisation, financial oligarchy, declining profitability—have rendered social-democratic reformism impotent. Only revolutionary organisation rooted in workplaces, independent of bourgeois parties and grounded in international socialist strategy, can defend social rights.
Stalinist Betrayal
The Communist Party Marxist–Kenya published a diatribe openly defending Stalin and endorsing Stalinist historical falsifications while aligning with reactionary bourgeois regimes. The Turkish Communist Party held a mass Ankara rally glorifying Stalinist figures and promoting revisionist Soviet narratives. In Venezuela, Morenoite currents formed alliances with Stalinist parties supporting bourgeois nationalist regimes through electoral manoeuvres.
Praising Stalin today is not abstract historiography but a political programme that betrays working-class independence by subordinating socialist aims to bourgeois nationalism and petty-bourgeois interests. Stalinist tendencies function as props for capitalist regimes, providing pseudo-left legitimacy for reactionary policies and undermining international solidarity. Trotskyism remains the necessary continuity of revolutionary Marxism against both Stalinist bureaucratic liquidation and nationalist illusions.
Electoralism and Municipal Dead-Ends
DSA-aligned councilmember Nithya Raman entered the Los Angeles mayoral race presenting symbolic progressive rhetoric while actual policy remains confined within bourgeois constraints. New York City Mayor Mamdani announced symbolic tax-the-rich rhetoric while cutting homelessness support, prioritising market interests. The military-aligned Bhumjaithai Party won Thailand’s election through defections and right-wing consolidation, reflecting the bankruptcy of nominally “democratic” bourgeois parties.
Electoral manoeuvres cannot substitute for independent workplace organisation. Symbolic reforms and progressive branding deflect from fundamental class conflict while subordinating working-class demands to capitalist institutional limits. Parliamentary routes have been exhausted; only mass organisation and direct working-class action can secure social rights.
7. The Revolutionary Alternative
The week’s events confirm a central reality: global capitalist crisis produces simultaneous assaults on living standards, democratic rights and international peace. Imperialism drives toward war in the Middle East while intensifying repression domestically. Austerity destroys public services and infrastructure. Corporate restructuring weaponises crisis to deepen exploitation. Elite criminality operates with systemic impunity.
Against these attacks, working-class resistance is mounting: nurses rejecting bureaucratic sellouts, educators striking, refinery and meatpacking workers authorising action, youth walking out against ICE terror, millions in India protesting labour destruction. Yet episodic militancy remains fragmented and politically contained by union bureaucracies, reformist parties and pseudo-left opportunism.
The strategic answer is the independent, international organisation of the working class around a Trotskyist programme: democratically elected rank-and-file committees in every workplace and school; coordination across industries, borders and continents; political independence from all bourgeois and reformist parties; and the construction of a mass revolutionary party to expropriate the oligarchy, end imperialist war and place social power in workers’ hands. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and the Socialist Equality Parties organise this political work. Workers seeking to connect their struggles to organised resistance can join at https://www.wsws.org/en/special/pages/sep/us/join.html.
This political report for the week ending 07 February 2026 is compiled based on coverage from the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS.org).
President Donald Trump smiles after signing a spending bill that ends a partial shutdown of the federal government in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Feb. 3, 2026, in Washington. [AP Photo/Alex Brandon]
The week ending February 7, 2026 witnessed an intensification of inter-imperialist rivalry, the acceleration of domestic repression in the United States, and a global surge in working-class militancy met with systematic betrayal by trade union bureaucracies. From preparations for regime change in Iran to mass strikes in healthcare and education, the international crisis of capitalism manifested in parallel assaults on democratic rights, living standards, and public services. This report synthesizes key developments across four domains: imperialist war preparations and geopolitical realignment; the consolidation of authoritarian rule and state repression; capitalist austerity and economic warfare; and the eruption of class struggle against union bureaucratic containment.
I. Imperialism and War: Escalation Toward Iran and Regional Realignment
European Powers Line Up Behind Regime Change in Iran
European governments openly aligned with Washington’s escalation toward regime change in Tehran. The EU placed Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on its “terror” list while European leaders—including Germany’s Friedrich Merz and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer—publicly backed US threats and prepared rhetoric for a “transition” in Iran. This coordination followed prior US and Israeli strikes and represents strategic repositioning by European imperialism to secure access to energy resources and geopolitical influence.
Core analysis: The WSWS situates European actions as integral to imperialist rivalry and the scramble for markets and spheres of influence. Liberal imperialism cloaks predatory aims in “humanitarian” language, but the underlying logic is capitalist competition driving preparations for inter-imperialist war. Only an international working-class anti-war movement grounded in revolutionary socialist politics can halt the slide toward regional and global conflagration.
Turkey Attempts Mediation as NATO Ally
As US preparations for possible military action against Iran escalated, Turkey sought to mediate between Washington and Tehran. Ankara’s diplomacy aimed to limit regional destabilization while protecting Turkish geopolitical and economic interests, revealing the contradictions of a junior NATO power attempting to maneuver within imperialist rivalry.
Core analysis: Turkish mediation is not peaceful diplomacy but a junior imperialist power managing fallout from US militarism. Imperialist competition, not negotiation, drives the crisis; only international working-class anti-war mobilization can block regional war.
Merz’s Gulf Tour: Alliance with Dictators for German Great Power Politics
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz toured Gulf monarchies—Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE—meeting personally with Mohammed bin Salman and pledging strategic partnerships, arms deals, and energy cooperation despite documented human rights crimes. The visit frankly asserted German great-power ambitions subordinating all ethical concerns to capitalist and geostrategic interests.
Core analysis: Imperialist states ally with dictators to secure energy and markets. Workers must oppose rearmament and foreign-policy adventurism through an international socialist program that rejects nationalist accommodation to imperialism.
II. Authoritarian Consolidation and State Repression
Trump Administration’s Assault on Democratic Norms
Federal Election Seizure Plans: President Trump publicly urged federal takeover of state election administration and directed FBI operations in Fulton County, Georgia, threatening to “nationalize” elections in targeted cities. These moves signal preparation to rig or cancel the 2026 elections.
Core analysis: This represents an overt break with democratic norms by sections of the capitalist state preparing for dictatorship. The principal obstacle to a coup is the working class; the necessary response is independent political mobilization through rank-and-file organizations and preparation for general strike, not reliance on the Democratic Party.
Federal Purges: The administration announced sweeping purges of federal civil service employees, replacing career officials with political loyalists to centralize control—measures framed as rooting out “disloyalty.”
Core analysis: Politicized purges characterize authoritarian consolidation, removing institutional checks on presidential power. Defense of democratic rights requires independent working-class organizing and mass political resistance.
Racist Provocations: Trump posted a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, one in a series of overt racist provocations from the White House designed to mobilize racist sentiment, terrorize minorities, and divide the working class.
Mass Surveillance Infrastructure
The Trump administration expanded mass-surveillance networks—databases, facial recognition, cross-agency sharing—to track immigrants and political protesters, integrating private tech contractors into state repression apparatus.
Core analysis: Surveillance is a political tool to suppress dissent and enforce social control for the oligarchy. Defense of democratic rights requires independent working-class mobilization and dismantling surveillance apparatuses through mass action.
Immigrant Repression and Detention Center Horrors
Measles Outbreak at Dilley: A measles outbreak tore through the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, confining hundreds of asylum-seeking families and children. Overcrowding, poor sanitation, and rationed medical care created conditions for rapid spread amid a nationwide measles resurgence (2,267 confirmed cases in 2025) following mass purges at HHS and CDC.
Core analysis: The outbreak demonstrates Trump’s program of criminalizing and caging migrants while dismantling scientific public health, subordinating life to profit and political repression. Both Republican and Democratic parties share complicity in detention regimes and public-health defunding.
Vindictive Deportation: After protests forced the release of five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos from Dilley, DHS filed a motion to expedite deportation proceedings against his family—vindictive state repression designed to terrorize immigrants and suppress dissent.
ICE Workplace Raids: ICE conducted workplace raids including at an Amazon facility in Hazel Park, Michigan, weaponizing enforcement to intimidate immigrant and non-immigrant workers alike, deepen labor discipline, and facilitate corporate flexibility.
University Republican Club Calls for Assassinations
The Illini Republicans at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign posted on Instagram celebrating political killings and calling for assassination of opponents; the administration refused discipline, citing “protected speech.”
Core analysis: This evidences deepening fascist and white-supremacist currents fostered by capitalism resorting to political violence. The university’s selective “free speech” shields reactionary violence while repressing left protests. Defense of democratic rights requires independent working-class mobilization against both fascism and the bipartisan state protecting it.
Repression of Nurses and Protesters
New York Nurses Arrested: At least 13 striking nurses were arrested outside Greater New York Hospital Association headquarters on Day 25 of their strike, with NYPD riot units deployed amid pressure from Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Governor Kathy Hochul to end the action through emergency orders facilitating out-of-state replacements.
Core analysis: The arrests demonstrate state readiness to use force defending corporate healthcare interests. Union bureaucracy’s containment strategy isolates nurses; expansion of the strike, full strike pay, and national coordination through rank-and-file committees are essential.
Mamdani’s Betrayal: DSA Mayor Embraces Police State
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani praised an NYPD shooting of a 22-year-old Bangladeshi man experiencing a mental-health crisis and endorsed Governor Hochul’s strike-breaking measures, revealing continuity with pro-police policies despite earlier populist branding.
Core analysis: DSA-style figures integrate into the capitalist state, converting electoral radicalism into administrative collaboration with police and oligarchy. The working class must not be misled; independent organization and rank-and-file control are essential.
III. Austerity, Economic Warfare, and Capitalist Crisis
US Economic Warfare Against Cuba and Venezuela
Cuba Blockade: The US energy blockade threatened Cuba with humanitarian “collapse” as the UN Secretary-General warned of imminent crisis. Washington’s executive order threatened tariffs on countries supplying Cuba with oil; Mexico and other suppliers faced pressure to cease shipments, precipitating blackouts and shortages.
Core analysis: The blockade constitutes genocidal imperialist coercion aimed at regime overthrow, with complicity from regional bourgeois governments and nationalist-left leaders who capitulate. Only international working-class solidarity can oppose imperialist economic warfare.
Venezuela Privatization: Following the US abduction of Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s interim authorities rapidly overhauled hydrocarbons law, opening oil to foreign control and subordinating resources to US and corporate interests.
Core analysis: This exposes the failure of chavismo and bourgeois-nationalist projects that cannot defend resources or working-class gains under imperialism. Only working-class revolution and international socialist policy can break imperialist domination.
Corporate Layoffs Accelerate to Great Recession Levels
January job-cut announcements by US corporations tripled, with large tech, media, and retail firms leading the wave. The increase signals renewed corporate restructuring and mass unemployment approaching Great Recession scale.
Core analysis: Layoffs flow from falling profitability and overaccumulation; corporate efforts to restore margins enforce political choices subordinating labor to capital. The response must be mass industrial organization, strikes, and rank-and-file committees defending jobs and fighting for nationalization under workers’ control.
Washington Post Slashes Newsroom: The Washington Post eliminated roughly one-third of its newsroom (over 300 jobs), closing entire desks while billionaire owner Jeff Bezos’s wealth surged. This media purge is part of capitalist restructuring and concentration of cultural power under the oligarchy, using “efficiency” rationales to mask political decisions shrinking independent journalism.
1,200 GM Layoffs in Canada: General Motors ended the third shift at its Oshawa plant, laying off approximately 1,200 autoworkers as part of production rationalization.
Austerity Across Multiple Fronts
Australia: The Labor government drove up housing prices through developer-friendly policies, cut arts funding (forcing Writers Victoria to close), raised interest rates deepening household debt crises, and approved National Cabinet measures removing tens of thousands of children from disability support. Labor also pressed ahead with demolition of Melbourne public housing towers, displacing residents under privatized redevelopment schemes.
UK: A major charity reported deepening poverty under the Starmer Labour government, documenting rising food insecurity, housing stress, and benefit shortfalls. Starmer’s administration implements austerity while claiming respectability.
SNAP Cuts: Trump administration changes to SNAP eligibility set 2.4 million people at risk of losing food assistance by 2034, shifting the burden onto working people to finance corporate and military priorities.
Homeless Death in Kalamazoo: A homeless man froze to death in Kalamazoo, Michigan while the city allocated $515 million to build a new arena—a stark juxtaposition of social neglect and pro-business public spending.
Kaiser Permanente Medicare Fraud
Kaiser agreed to a $556 million settlement over allegations of inflating Medicare Advantage risk scores, generating roughly $1 billion in alleged overpayments—while claiming inability to meet demands from striking healthcare workers.
Core analysis: “Non-profit” healthcare corporations are profit-driven entities using public funds for private gain. Fraud settlements are routine costs of business while frontline workers and patients suffer austerity.
IV. Class Struggle and Union Bureaucratic Betrayal
Healthcare Workers’ Strikes
Kaiser Strike Enters Third Week: The strike by 31,000 Kaiser healthcare workers continued into its third week, with 4,000 pharmacy and lab workers (UFCW) preparing to join. Management pursued legal and PR strategies while union bureaucracy sought localized talks fragmenting the struggle.
New York Nurses: 15,000 nurses remained on strike facing threats of permanent replacement, with escalated repression (arrests, state emergency orders) and union bureaucracy retreat toward concessions.
Boston Nurses: Despite an overwhelming strike vote, the union bureaucracy left 650 nurses at Boston Medical Center Brighton working, fragmenting leverage and isolating the struggle.
Core analysis: Healthcare strikes contain the embryo of a national movement defending public health, but unions seek containment. Only rank-and-file organization could transform disputes into unifying working-class struggles. The fight centers on whether workers accept permanent understaffing or build nationwide, worker-led movements.
Education Workers’ Mobilization
San Francisco Teachers’ Strike: 6,400 educators in San Francisco Unified School District voted overwhelmingly to strike over chronic understaffing, poverty wages, unaffordable healthcare costs, and class-size caps—the first district-wide walkout since 1979.
Core analysis: The strike occurs amid obscene regional inequality driven by tech billionaires and Democratic-party austerity. Union bureaucratic entanglement with Democrats must be broken; independent rank-and-file committees should link educators across districts for statewide and national action.
Ann Arbor: Educators worked under expired contracts amid massive cuts and restructuring.
Australia: The WSWS called for building rank-and-file committees among educators and students to oppose mass job cuts, course closures, and integration of universities into the military-industrial complex under the Universities Accord.
Industrial Workers’ Struggles
Birmingham Refuse Workers: Over a year into indefinite strike action, Birmingham loaders and drivers opposed pay cuts up to £8,000 and abolition of safety roles, facing intimidation, court injunctions, agency labor, and £33 million council deployment to break the strike—backed by the Starmer government declaring a “major incident.”
Core analysis: This is a test case for Starmer’s austerity drive and labor bureaucracy’s capacity to contain conflict. The dispute can only be won through independent rank-and-file organization, democratic worker control of strategy, and national solidarity exposing government use of state power to enforce austerity.
USW Refinery Sellout: The United Steelworkers announced a tentative national agreement for 30,000 refinery workers offering 15% over four years with no binding protections against AI or job cuts; rank-and-file anger erupted over the perceived betrayal.
Core analysis: The WSWS denounced the USW bureaucracy’s sellout and called for immediate formation of elected rank-and-file refinery committees to reject the deal, coordinate national strike, and use union assets to sustain prolonged action.
Royal Mail: The Communication Worker Union’s Martin Walsh attacked rank-and-file initiatives calling for nationwide fightback against the Optimised Delivery Model and asset-stripping, collaborating with EP Group management.
German Public Transport: Verdi leadership limited warning strikes over pay and conditions, negotiating incremental deals rather than escalating militant potential.
Pattern of Bureaucratic Containment
Teachers’ Unions Suppress Resistance: Teachers’ union bureaucracies issued directives forbidding participation in anti-fascist walkouts and protests, framing suppression under “student safety” and contractual pretexts.
Core analysis: Union bureaucracies act to preserve capitalist order by containing rank-and-file militancy and preventing cross-sector solidarity. Democratic rank-and-file committees are essential to defend educational professionals’ rights and broader anti-dictatorship mobilizations.
International Labour Developments
Mediterranean Dockworkers: Dockworkers across Mediterranean ports planned coordinated protests opposing use of port infrastructure for military logistics and arms shipments.
German Hospital Workers: Strikes and protests spread across regions over understaffing, wage stagnation, and cost-cutting as patient safety deteriorates.
University of Sheffield Lock-out: Management locked out staff adhering to action short of striking, withholding pay—an unprecedented enforcement of unpaid labor to punish industrial action.
V. Elite Criminality and Systemic Corruption
Epstein Files Expose Ruling Class Impunity
The DOJ released millions of Epstein-related documents revealing extensive elite contacts; the Trump White House sought to minimize revelations while DOJ downplayed prosecution prospects and redactions selectively protected prominent individuals. Materials implicated UK figures including Peter Mandelson and Prince Andrew, threatening Starmer’s “clean-government” stance.
Core analysis: The files expose systemic criminality and class impunity at capitalism’s summit. The ruling class protects its own through legal cover-ups and media manipulation. Justice cannot be delivered by capitalist courts or parties; accountability requires mass political mobilization of the working class and dismantling oligarchic power.
Financial Oligarchy and Fed Appointment
Wall Street figures rallied to secure Kevin Warsh’s nomination to lead the Federal Reserve, demonstrating fusion between state power and financial oligarchy. Central-bank appointments serve capitalist interests by stabilizing conditions for private profit rather than defending working-class living standards.
VI. Political Bankruptcy of Reformism
Colombian President Petro’s Capitulation
Colombian President Gustavo Petro visited the White House for talks with Trump days after military threats related to Venezuela, signaling sharp realignment with pledges of collaboration, intelligence sharing, and economic cooperation.
Core analysis: Petro’s capitulation confirms the bankruptcy of bourgeois nationalist “lefts” attempting reforms within imperialist frameworks. His turn toward Washington facilitates US neocolonial objectives and suppresses independent working-class alternatives.
Costa Rica Election
A Trump-aligned, right-of-centre candidate won Costa Rica’s presidency, displacing traditional pink-tide forces and marking electoral weakness of reformist nationalist-left projects.
Core analysis: This exposes the failure of nationalist or reformist regimes to defend working-class interests; only independent socialist politics rooted in the working class can offer an anti-imperialist alternative.
Conclusion
The week’s developments confirm the WSWS analysis: capitalism’s crisis is driving simultaneous escalation toward imperialist war, consolidation of authoritarian rule, intensification of austerity, and explosion of working-class resistance. The central political question is leadership: will struggles be contained and betrayed by union bureaucracies and bourgeois parties (including their pseudo-left appendages), or will workers build independent, democratically controlled rank-and-file committees capable of coordinating international resistance?
The necessity of the hour is the construction of an international socialist movement of the working class, organized independently of all capitalist parties and union apparatuses, and guided by the program and perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Only such a movement—linking healthcare workers, educators, refinery workers, dockworkers, students, and immigrant communities across national boundaries—can halt the drive to dictatorship and war, defend democratic rights and living standards, and open the road to socialist transformation of society.
[1] “Oppose Trump’s criminal invasion of Venezuela! Release Maduro!” WSWS, 4 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/04/avdu-j04.html>
[2] “US imperialist bandits parade kidnapped Maduro in show trial,” WSWS, 6 January 2026
[3] “Trump and Miller’s ‘iron law’ of imperialist barbarism,” WSWS, 7 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/07/erjx-j07.html>
[4] “After Venezuela attack: White House threatens Venezuelan acting president, Cuba and Greenland,” WSWS, 5 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/05/crzb-j05.html>
[5] “Trump and Miller’s ‘iron law’ of imperialist barbarism,” WSWS, 7 January 2026
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] “US imperialist bandits parade kidnapped Maduro in show trial,” WSWS, 6 January 2026 , <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/06/zyve-j06.html>
[9] “Latin America’s bourgeois governments bow to US attack on Venezuela,” WSWS, 6 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/06/slwp-j06.html>
[10] “Oppose Trump’s criminal invasion of Venezuela!” WSWS, 4 January 2026
[11] “After Trump’s attack on Venezuela: Germany’s Left Party supports European imperialism,” WSWS, 7 January 2026, <https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/01/07/sfqt-j07.html>
[12] Ibid.
[13] “Trump and Miller’s ‘iron law’ of imperialist barbarism,” WSWS, 7 January 2026
[14] Ibid.
[15] “Oppose Trump’s criminal invasion of Venezuela!” WSWS, 4 January 2026
This report synthesises and analyses the main political, geopolitical and economic developments covered by the World Socialist Web Site in the week ending 31 January 2026. It locates events within the deeper dynamics of class struggle, imperialism and the global capitalist crisis, and draws the immediate political conclusions and tasks for the international working class.
1. Imperialism on the march — preparations for new wars
The central story of the week was the open escalation of US imperialism. The Trump administration’s mounting threats and military deployments toward Iran were documented and analysed as preparations for a major new act of aggression, not isolated bellicose rhetoric. The WSWS outlined the scale and danger of the US build-up of forces, the carrier strike group deployments and the propaganda pretexts being assembled to legitimise strikes on Iran (Trump administration threatens new war against Iran). The UN Security Council posturing and Washington’s invocation that “all options are on the table” were exposed as part of a regime-change strategy that follows Washington’s recent attack on Venezuela and its abduction of President Maduro (Washington menaces Iran at UN Security Council; After Venezuela, Trump targets Iran).
From an international-class perspective, WSWS emphasises that these moves are expressions of imperialism’s strategic imperative to control resources, markets and trade routes (notably oil and gas), to attempt to subordinate rivals such as China and to shore up domestic political authority through foreign adventurism. The analysis rejects humanitarian or “democratic” pretexts and situates the drive to war in the logic of capitalist rivalry and the breakdown of lawful institutions.
2. Repression at home — war and dictatorship as two sides of capitalist rule
The week reinforced the WSWS argument that war abroad and repression at home are inseparable. Coverage tied the Trump government’s domestic assaults—paramilitary policing, the killing of migrants and threats to invoke the Insurrection Act—to the same oligarchic interests driving foreign aggression (New Year Fund appeal on the rise of dictatorship and war). The ruling class’s resort to exceptional measures is explained as an attempt to impose social discipline and to defend the profits and privileges of the financial oligarchy amid global economic turmoil.
3. Intensifying class conflict — strikes and workplace resistance worldwide
While imperialist tensions dominate geopolitics, the working class continued to push back across continents. WSWS’s regular “Workers Struggles” reports registered growing militancy: Belgian rail workers launched a five-day national strike against austerity and pension attacks; French bank employees struck over pay and restructures despite record bank profits; and hospital, education and municipal workers staged sustained actions in the UK, Italy and Africa (Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa). In Asia and the Pacific, mass actions by gig workers, ambulance crews and casino staff testified to mounting resistance to wage cuts, precarious contracts and privatisation moves (Workers Struggles: Asia and Australia).
These labour struggles reflect the material pressures produced by austerity, inflation and corporate profit-seeking. They demonstrate the objective potential power of the working class, but WSWS warns that this potential is being squandered by union bureaucracies that isolate workers and broker sellouts.
4. Material forces driving the crisis
WSWS analyses the above dynamics as rooted in the global capitalist crisis: mounting sovereign and private debt, falling rates of profit, currency instability and the scramble for strategic raw materials. The ruling elites respond with a two-pronged strategy—intensify exploitation at home through austerity and wage suppression, and secure imperial advantage abroad via military force. The result is the simultaneous escalation of poverty, layoffs and militarism.
5. Political implications and class tasks
Build political independence: WSWS insists that workers must break from bourgeois parties and pseudo-left forces that either collaborate with imperialism or reduce resistance to parliamentary petitions. The only credible barrier to war and austerity is the organised power of the working class.
Organise rank-and-file committees: To counter union sellouts and unify struggles across workplaces and borders, the WSWS calls for the formation of rank-and-file committees and an International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees.
Defend democratic rights: Immediate campaigns must be mounted to oppose police militarisation, arbitrary detention and censorship; the fight for democratic rights is inseparable from the fight against war and austerity.
Political education and leadership: WSWS stresses the urgent need to rebuild revolutionary political leadership rooted in Marxism. Initiatives such as Socialism AI and WSWS educational work are presented as tools to equip workers and youth with theory and organisation.
6. Action guidance
Workers should link strikes and local struggles to an international political strategy: refuse austerity bargains that trade away living standards; demand immediate protections for democratic rights; and build cross-border solidarity committees to coordinate industrial and political action. To connect understanding with organised resistance, the WSWS urges workers to join efforts to build an independent socialist movement and to consider affiliating with the Socialist Equality Party’s organising work: https://www.wsws.org/en/special/pages/sep/us/join.html
— World Socialist Web Site / International Committee of the Fourth International
Ruth T McVey, The Rise of Indonesian Communism (Cornell University Press 1965) (Read on Google Books)
George McTurnan Kahin, Nationalism and Revolution in Indonesia (Cornell University Press 1952) (Read on archive.org)
Robert B Cribb, Gangsters and Revolutionaries: The Jakarta People’s Militia and the Indonesian Revolution, 1945-1949 (University of Hawaii Press 1991) (Read on archive.org)
