Translated by Aye Argerich
This Statement for May Day by the International Current Socialism or Barbarism marks the 140th anniversary of the heroic struggle of the Chicago Martyrs. In 1886, a massive strike took place in that U.S. city centered on the demand for an eight-hour workday. In response, the bourgeois “justice” falsely accused eight labor leaders of planting a bomb; five of them were sentenced to death (one took his own life before being executed), while the other three were imprisoned.
This working-class commemoration takes place in a world in complete upheaval. The international situation is highly specific: we find ourselves in the midst of an interregnum, as the far-right experiment currently dominating the West is being called into question.
This situation stems from a crucial fact. Far-right governments are running up against the limits imposed by class struggle and popular resistance. As a result, their attempts to impose an even more voracious form of capitalism and trample on hard-won democratic gains are being checked.
At the international level, for example, Trump failed in his attempt to overthrow the regime of the ayatollahs in Iran. While imperialist military aggression (carried out in collusion with Netanyahu’s genocidal government) has suffocated legitimate internal resistance against that country’s theocratic regime, it is an objective fact that the White House’s failure in the Middle East has opened a crisis within the international far right and within Trumpism itself.
This foreign policy setback has had repercussions within the United States, fueling social discontent with the Trump administration, whose popularity is currently at its lowest point.
These trends had already been visible months earlier, largely driven by widespread rejection of the White House’s racist and xenophobic anti-immigrant policies. Case in point: Minnesota, where the Trump administration was dealt a major blow as grassroots organizing by local communities overwhelmed the state apparatus and forced ICE agents to back down.
Several months have passed since then, yet the U.S. administration has not launched another large-scale raid to “hunt” migrants, aware that doing so could trigger a nationwide wave of resistance against ICE (Trump is mindful that the 2020 Black Lives Matter uprising played a decisive role in his electoral defeat that same year).
Instead, the U.S. government has shifted tactics and is now attempting to manipulate the November elections. To that end, it is carrying out an operation to gain control over the electoral process in at least eight states, one by one.
The setbacks are not limited to Trump; they are also affecting other figures of the international far right. In Europe, Viktor Orbán suffered a crushing defeat in Hungary’s elections. Although the winner was a conservative right-wing candidate, the fact that he was not from the far right was seen as a relief by broad sectors of the population, who had grown tired of Orbán’s authoritarianism and reactionary policies.
In Italy, Meloni’s government has been on the defensive for several months, a situation that worsened after its defeat in the March referendum, in which it had hoped to pass a judicial reform. Meanwhile, the future of France’s National Front remains uncertain.
In Latin America, Milei’s government in Argentina is going through a difficult period, from which it is attempting to recover. At the same time, a section of the bourgeois political establishment is increasingly uncomfortable with his chaotic handling of state affairs, contributing to growing social discontent in the country. In Brazil, polls indicate a statistical tie between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of the October elections.
We must also point to the conservative and treacherous role of center-left parties and coalitions, which operate exclusively through institutional channels and fail to call the masses into the streets. In contrast, the far right combines parliamentary and extra-parliamentary action. Far-right governments systematically test the limits of bourgeois democracy (In the case of Bolsonarism, they also mobilize supporters, although their ability to do so has declined in recent years). Meanwhile, reformist forces and bureaucratic leaderships limit themselves to confronting them through institutional means, and worse, they actively seek to prevent social discontent from erupting in the streets.
Even with everything stacked against the mass movement, what we are seeing is a period in which sections of the movement are beginning to respond and push back. The large “No Kings” protests against Trump reflect this trend. Likewise, the wave of strikes in Italy in solidarity with Palestine had a major impact. In 2025, they brought the country to a standstill on several occasions, drew support from up to 60 percent of union members, and mobilized millions.
At the same time, another important development is the emergence of a new workers’ movement. In recent years, the platform worker sector has grown massively—a new branch of production aimed at deepening labor precarity and subjecting workers to algorithm-driven management under the “whip” of technology. In response, these workers have begun to develop new forms of organization to confront these attacks, using technological tools that can serve both emancipatory and exploitative purposes (as is also the case with AI).
One example is the upcoming Second International Congress of Gig Workers, to be held in Los Angeles, with delegations from nearly every continent and from major U.S. cities, some of which came under the siege of Trump’s ICE operations.
We must also highlight the grassroots organizing process unfolding in Brazil, where delivery workers (known in Portuguese as entregadores) have begun building unions and organizing strikes (known as breques in Portuguese) at both the federal and state levels, sometimes bringing tens of thousands of workers into the streets. Our international current is proud to be part of this foundational organizing process among delivery workers in Brazil, as well as in Argentina, where we are fighting for the recognition of the grassroots Union of App-Based Delivery Workers (in Spanish Sindicato de Trabajadores de Reparto por Aplicación, SiTraRepA).
In this context, the International Current Socialism or Barbarism (SoB) issues this statement on the occasion of the 140th anniversary of May Day. We will take part in May Day events across various countries, standing up for the demands and principles of the international working class against the far right and advancing an anti-capitalist perspective independent of reformist and bureaucratic leaderships.
We salute our working-class brothers and sisters around the world and extend our solidarity from Los Angeles, Paris, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Costa Rica, and other cities and countries where we will take part in May Day actions.
