By Larry Holmes
July 3, 2026

Larry Holmes is the first secretary of Workers World Party.

Dear revolutionaries and militants of the working class,

The biggest significance of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. is that the world dominated by the U.S. Empire is ending. This is like a giant dam breaking, a dam that had at once been a catalyst for change but has also stifled it. The impact of this is as enormous as it is unpredictable.

It could be that what the world needs, what revolutionaries have dreamed about and dedicated our lives to, is no longer unthinkable in the foreseeable future. This is the time for revolutionary forces everywhere to ask themselves, “What is our new political orientation for the post-U.S. Empire world that is coming into being?”

What in this new world has changed?

If there was any doubt that U.S. imperialism was in an advanced state of irreversible decline, Iran has put any doubts to rest. It remains to be seen whether the war is really over, but Iran’s victory over the U.S.’s deadly war machine and that of its junior partner in genocide, Israel, is a turning point. We cannot say for certain that a better world is in birth anytime soon. But the possibilities of that today are far greater than what they were just a few years ago.

In this new world, China is at the center of a Global South-led rebellion against the U.S. Empire. And because the U.S. Empire is the center of world finance capitalism, that makes the decline of the U.S.Empire tantamount to the decline of capitalism. We have entered an advanced phase of end-stage capitalism. Most workers are struggling to meet basic needs, and many are falling short of this. And everything’s about to get much worse.

The magnitude of the capitalist economic crisis that is spitting fire everywhere is like a colossal earthquake boiling to a full eruption. The nearly entirely debt-based capitalist economy has created the biggest debt bubble in history. That bubble is about to burst, and it is going to bring down the global capitalist economy.

The capitalist establishment is not in good shape either. The Trump regime is still dangerous, but it is imploding politically. It doesn’t matter if the Democratic Party gains more power in the midterm elections; it can’t fix any of the ruling class’s problems.

In every part of the world, from every class and political perspective, one question resonates louder and louder: What will replace the world order that is collapsing? Some characterize what is taking place as a transition to a multipolar world. This is true, but it is just that — a transition, i.e., it’s transitory. Will the transition favor capitalism, or will events pave the way for a genuine rebirth of the worldwide struggle for socialism?

China’s strategic role in the global struggle

Some of the heavy lifting that has made a new world possible has already been done. With all of its contradictions, China’s direction is creating the conditions for the development of socialism for its nearly 1.5 billion people.

Moreover, China’s intervention in the world, especially initiatives like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Belt and Road projects are making it more difficult for U.S. imperialism and its fading world structures to dominate and bully everyone. Towards this end, China has called for a new global governance initiative.

There are limitations to this. The economic development relations between China, the Global South and the rest of the world are not based on agreements between countries to move in an anti-capitalist or socialist direction. These relationships and projects flow out of a desire to prevent U.S. imperialism from controlling or undermining sovereign development.

In this early period of the new world situation, there’s a lot going on. So-called “middle powers” in every part of the world are maneuvering to fill part of the void left by a crumbling empire, and this has little to do with socialism.

Even in decline, U.S. imperialism is still a desperate, dangerous, dying monster capable of unleashing war and terror both militarily and economically on the world. The danger of new and wider wars has not abated. The empire is trying to recolonize the entire Western Hemisphere. Cuba is squarely in its crosshairs.

The State of Israel is plummeting towards extinction, but it is likely to strike out violently before it dies. The U.S. rupture with Israel is significant, but it’s too early to determine how that will develop.

The European imperialist powers are unraveling even faster than the U.S. Astonishingly, some in the European ruling class want to go to war against Russia. War is irrational, nihilistic and suicidal, but these adjectives describe the capitalist ruling class.

Where does all of this leave the working-class movement, especially its most radical sections?

Many if not most of us may think that it’s premature to project such a bold idea as a new, global movement for socialism, because the working class and its organizations are not prepared for this. That sentiment is understandable, but on the basis of world events, this needs to be rethought.

Don’t we have the right, moreover the obligation, in the light of unprecedented world changes, to ask ourselves how this affects our priorities going forward?

We’ve taken no poll, but the guess would be that the outlook, priorities and aspirations of most of the working-class movement and the left is still profoundly out of sync with world events. The focus, rightly so, has been on defending the most oppressed against fascist repression, and this is essential and must continue. And of course, we must intensify the organization of workers and communities to defend themselves against the system and fight for their immediate needs.

But this does not necessitate the conclusion that bigger goals are not relevant at the moment, so we must not bite off more than we can chew. And yes, workers are going to prioritize the fight for what they need right now. But workers, more than ever before, also understand the need to fight for a future free of want, to fight for the things that they need to preserve life. And they don’t want this just for themselves. They want it for the world, and they are willing to fight for it.

Socialism vs. capitalism, anti-imperialism and what’s happening beyond the borders of the U.S. is not just of concern to a relatively small number of people. The masses are thinking about these things and what their relations are to all of this is. And that thinking is not static; it is dynamic and evolving like everything in existence is.

There are many reasons that people voted for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) candidates in the recent New York City elections. But the most revealing thing about these elections is that the main reason was not local issues, but support for Palestine and repulsion against Zionist genocide. Those of us who believe that workers are only moved by things that affect them directly should take heed; that was never true and is certainly not true now.

Karl Marx enlightened the working class with his scientific theory of historical materialism, which shows us that the constantly evolving productive forces of the world change everything. They change the relationship of workers to each other. They change the working class, make the workers more international in their outlook and consciousness. This doesn’t diminish the historical significance of geography, language or culture, but it diminishes the separation that workers feel from each other, because they live and work a mile away or ten thousand miles away.

The need for a worldwide movement for socialism may seem like an old and tried idea, but now it is a new idea based on new developments and conditions. This will and must also affect the consciousness of revolutionaries whose outlooks are also evolving.

Helping to build a global revolutionary movement for socialism won’t be easy. It will take all of our energy to help develop the alliances, the united fronts, the strategies, the struggles and the kinds of organizations that such a movement will require. However, serious revolutionaries have to consider this huge task, because as revolutionaries, we are obliged to understand and dedicate ourselves to what is in both the short-term as well as the long-term interests of the workers and oppressed of the world.

Will the capitalist crisis ignite the class struggle?

The next very big question is whether the deepening capitalist economic crisis will awaken the masses of workers and propel them into a massive class struggle rebellion against capitalism. China and governments of the Global South have opened the main front against U.S. imperialism. Will the working class be able to overcome its weaknesses and the weaknesses of its organizations, of the labor unions for example, and open up a second front?

In this regard, we revisit the revolutionary Marxist position that the working class is a revolutionary class capable of depositing capitalism into the dust pan of history. In spite of the weaknesses, we adhere to this Marxist position, fully aware that events will test our views. Our views are not based on wishful thinking, false optimism or nostalgia for earlier periods. They are based on the revolutionary theory of change.

We understand that powerful social forces, like the working class, can be relatively dormant for a long time. Then conditions change the working class, infuse it with new militant forces and energy, and the simmering anger that is smoldering just under the surface of the working class reaches the point of ignition, explodes into mass, militant class struggle and in doing so changes the class struggle equation in favor of the workers and against the capitalist class.

We also understand that this process does not happen without revolutionary, militant leadership and that spontaneity is inevitable but in and of itself cannot sustain and grow the class struggle. That requires the right leadership and organization. Doing everything that we can to help this process will be decisive.

Why the struggle for socialism must be global 

Why do we propose a revolutionary, global struggle for socialism, as distinct from a purely national struggle for socialism? Because, while the priority of the working class is to deal with its immediate enemy class at home, especially now it is politically, strategically and practically impossible to fight capitalism in the exclusive and limited context of a given nation state.

Today, “Workers and oppressed people of the world unite!” is not merely rhetoric mostly applicable to sometime in the future. Conditions demand this strategy not later but right now. The reality of the present is that nearly 90% of the world, the Global South, is rising up against U.S. imperialism and winning, while the ruling class in the imperialist centers, particularly the U.S., is doing everything it can to detach the workers located in these centers from the entire world and have workers across the globe fighting each other instead of the class enemy.

It should be acknowledged that the struggle of the Global South has different takes, different forms, ranging from the armed resistance of the Palestinians and Iran to the economic blocs that include capitalist governments.

But this contradiction does not alter the fact that imperialism has staked its survival on dividing the workers of the world — precisely because events are pushing the workers of the world closer together everyday.

Moreover, the Global South is not only defined by geography. The migrant workers from the Global South, especially the most recent migrant workers who have been forced to leave where they were born and come to the U.S. or Europe, are a conscious extension of the Global South.

Part of the purpose of the war on migrant workers is to prevent migrant workers from rising to the leadership of the workers’ struggle. To understand this is to understand why Trump and the billionaires behind him want to turn the U.S. into a racist, misogynist, transphobic, white nationalist fortress.

Workers everywhere are strategic units in the class struggle. But it is a mistake to be only focused on the workers in one’s own country to the exclusion of the overwhelming majority of the workers all over the planet. To do this plays into the hands of a tiny class of global billionaires. At critical junctures, the success or failure of the capitalists’ divide-and-conquer strategy determines success or failure for the working-class struggle.

Why the struggle for world socialism has to be part of the global resistance to empire 

The world struggle is centered in the Global South where nearly 90% of the world’s population lives. And the character of that struggle is to finally break free of U.S. hegemony and the vestiges that are not yet dead of colonialism and neocolonialism. The working class everywhere is strategic in the global class struggle, but this is not the time to forget that the mass of the workers on the planet are not physically centered in the U.S. and Europe. Moreover, the more recent migrant workers who live in the big imperialist countries are not separate from, but rather extensions of the populations of the Global South.

The most militant labor and anti-racist forces in the U.S. South consider this region to be part of the Global South for historical reasons. Working-class internationalism is not just a nice idea to talk about on May Day, though May Day is very important. Internationalism must be integral to our strategy, our organizing and our demands every single day and in every single struggle.

Socialist consciousness that does not openly and boldly declare that it is global only distorts history, denies the present and the future and serves the interest of capitalism and imperialism.

The most important task of a revolutionary, global movement for socialism is to fight and smash the attempts to divide the working class. It must stand with, work with and support every resistance struggle, from Latin America and the Caribbean to Africa to West Asia and all of Asia. It must be in concrete solidarity with global resistance, but even more, it must be a part of the resistance.

The “No Kings” protests have been very important to the anti-Trump forces. But the refusal of the organizers to include the demand for an end to genocide in Gaza, or even any mention of Palestine, was harmful to the struggle and an example of the anti-Trump bourgeois forces’ goal of excluding the rest of the world from the struggle. The collapse of support for Zionism and the skyrocketing support for Palestine illustrates how pathetically out of step the bourgeois anti-Trump forces are.

Why social democracy is on the rise – and how do we view it?

While fighting for reforms under capitalism is inevitable, necessary and a huge part of the class struggle, none of that changes the fact that capitalism cannot be reformed. It must be done away with. If anything has been learned over the past half century of neoliberalism and imperialist globalization, it is this reality.

Social democracy is on the rise in the U.S., not just in New York City, but in every part of the country. This is, among other things, a reflection of how workers, especially young workers, hate capitalism. It is good that workers in large numbers are voting for socialism.

There is a sense that the recent electoral victories of candidates backed by the DSA in New York City, Denver and elsewhere have really shaken the ruling class — the leaders of both the capitalist political parties, but more so the Democratic Party and pro-Zionist backers of Israel. All of this is very welcome.

Our problem with social democracy, of which there are different variants, is that everything — including organizing the workers, waging militant class struggle, calling for an end to capitalism, really fighting the imperialist forces that control the Democratic Party — is unimportant to them. Keeping alive the myth that capitalism can be reformed and that the Democratic Party can be pushed to the left is central to their goals.

To be clear, we’re not talking about the people who voted for DSA candidates or even many members of DSA who want the organization to be more anti-imperialist. We are referring to the forces that control the organization and its resources.

There will be – and there needs to be – a political struggle on the left between the politics of social democracy and the politics of revolutionary socialism and class-struggle internationalism and anti-imperialism. This struggle will be integral to the development of the working-class, socialist forces, and we should prepare for it. This should not be interpreted as taking a position that revolutionaries under no circumstances should work with DSA forces. But it does underscore the need for revolutionary forces to strengthen their ranks and sharpen their positions and their strategies.

The main lesson seven months after Zohran Mamdani became mayor of New York City is that, under capitalism, the mayor of any city, especially the finance capital of the world, no matter how well intentioned, is virtually powerless to accomplish anything for the poorest workers apart from things that are small, symbolic or very temporary and subject to reversing. Though Mamdani remains popular right now, it is almost inevitable that, sooner or later, this reality will lead to dismay and demoralization among his supporters. The job of the mayor of New York City is to serve the interest of finance capital, period. This is not a criticism; it is a statement of objective fact.

The superrich who run everything are not going to concede anything of lasting importance to Mamdani. The deeper problem is that since Mamdani took office, the tendency of those who supported him, including labor unions, has been to sit back and wait for him to deliver on the promises he made. This is a very bad lesson for the working-class movement.

Mamdani’s election should have been a signal to organize mass struggles, workers’ strikes, citywide tenants’ strikes, fightback community assemblies, occupations, etc., as a way of forcing the ruling class to concede to the demands of the workers. In the absence of this, we are reminded that elections and elected officials – minus the workers struggle – result in a letdown and that the capitalist system relies on the electoral struggle to undermine the organizing of workers to engage in class struggle.

And, unless the imperialist ruling class abandons the Democratic Party, which they are not likely to do, the social democrats will either be completely co-opted by the bourgeoisie or, in a few cases, pushed out of the party. The Democratic Party cannot be reformed any more than the capitalist system can be.