25, 50 and 75 Years Ago

April 26, 2021

April 29, 1996

The following greetings were sent to the Korean people by Jack Barnes, national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party.

As Washington and Seoul step up their military threats and provocations, we stand with the Korean people in support of your unconditional determination to win national sovereignty and reunification. The true aggressor on the Korean peninsula for the last fifty years has been U.S. imperialism, backed by Washington’s client regime in Seoul as well as imperial Tokyo.

Washington’s war drive extends to the socialist revolution in Cuba as well. The U.S. rulers know they have failed in all their attempts over more than thirty-five years to bring the workers and farmers of Cuba to their knees.

Our party pledges to continue to tell the truth about Korea and join with other workers and young people in championing the struggle for reunification.

April 30, 1971

The Nixon administration’s latest “inflation alert” is mainly directed against steelworkers who will be negotiating new contracts beginning July 1.

There is not one shred of justification to the demagogic attack on steelworkers that the wage increases they are seeking are inflationary. The central causes of the inflation are the monopolistic pricing policies of the dominant U.S. corporations, of which the steel industry is a paramount example, and the government’s massive deficit financing of the Vietnam war.

This inflation is in reality an indirect tax that falls most heavily on working people.

Workers not only need to catch up with the price rises that occurred during the term of their old contracts. They need protection against future price rises. The steelworkers will be demanding a return of a cost-of-living clause in their contracts.

April 27, 1946

We celebrate this May Day amidst a powerful resurgence of worldwide struggle against capitalist exploitation and rule.

Here in the United States the organized industrial workers have met the Big Business onslaught with a mighty series of militant strike actions. The masses of Europe are desperately seeking a release from capitalist barbarism.

Armed uprisings for independence are being fought out in Indonesia and Indochina. Strikes, mass demonstrations, and large-scale mutinies in the Indian Navy and armed forces testify to the strength of the liberation movements within the British Empire. The peoples of Puerto Rico and the Philippines are demanding complete freedom from Wall Street domination.

All these struggles have a common source in the revulsion and protest of the toiling masses against the terrible consequences of World War II.