The WSWS is posting here both the video and text of the speech by Socialist Equality Party (US) National Secretary Joseph Kishore to the International May Day 2025 Online Rally.

This rally is being held amidst an extraordinary intensification of the world crisis of capitalism, as the ruling classes turn to fascism, dictatorship and war. 

Nowhere is this development more advanced than in the United States. One hundred days into his second term, Donald Trump is seeking to transform the American presidency into an unchecked instrument of dictatorship.

Trump embodies the criminality of American capitalism, the marriage of oligarchy and cultural degradation, the personification of the political underworld that now rules from the White House.

In just the first three months of his administration, Trump has defied court orders, deployed federal agents to illegally abduct immigrant students, arrested judges, waged a war against political dissent, and declared his intention to deport US citizens to concentration camps abroad.

Scenes associated with the most brutal dictatorships now unfold daily. Immigrants deported en masse under the Alien Enemies Act, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident torn from his family and imprisoned in El Salvador “by mistake.” Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student seized on the street by masked agents, for writing an op-ed against the Gaza genocide; Momodou Taal at Cornell forced to leave the country for challenging Trump’s executive orders; and green card holder Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia, arrested without a warrant and facing deportation for his political views.

A memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly declared that Khalil should be removed from the country for his “past, current, or expected beliefs.” This is “thought crime,” first formulated by the Nazis and now embraced by the Trump White House.

At the same time, the Trump administration is escalating the global wars of American imperialism—from the continuation of the genocide in Gaza, now in its final stage of ethnic cleansing, to preparations for war against Iran, China and beyond. Trump’s trade war launched under the banner of “Made in America” is the economic front of a much larger campaign for world domination. 

We are witnessing the violent realignment of the capitalist state to correspond to the oligarchic character of American society. Under the direction of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is carrying out the mass firing of federal workers and the dismantling of entire agencies. Social programs, including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, are being slashed. Science and public health are under relentless attack.

Last year, the 19 richest households in the US increased their wealth by $1 trillion. That’s enough to give every worker in America a $7,000 raise. It could double the budget for public education. It could end homelessness overnight. Instead, this vast wealth is being funneled into war, deportation camps, the stock market and the pockets of the rich.

A new way forward is necessary. The fight against Trump can only be waged in opposition to the Democratic Party, which has enabled Trump every step of the way. The Biden administration and its right-wing agenda of war and reaction paved the way for Trump’s re-election. Its principal focus was the escalation of war against Russia in Ukraine, while at home it presided over historic levels of inequality.

It was Biden who armed and financed the Israeli regime’s genocide in Gaza and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. It was Biden who began the mass repression of student protesters opposing the genocide. And it is the Democrats who have responded to Trump’s assault on the Constitution not with resistance, but with collaboration—welcoming Trump into the White House after his inauguration, pledging cooperation and ensuring the uninterrupted funding for his regime.

As for figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes, they talk of oligarchy, but not of capitalism. Their program consists of calls for campaign finance reform, as if the ruling class, turning to dictatorship, can be restrained by tinkering around the edges of a bankrupt social and economic system. Above all, they want to convince workers and young people to keep faith in the Democratic Party. 

It is impossible to fight oligarchy without breaking its power. And that means the expropriation of the billionaires—the seizure of their wealth and the socialist reorganization of society in the interests of the working class. What is required is not moral appeals or political maneuvers within the state apparatus, but the mobilization of the working class in mass, revolutionary struggle. 

And that struggle must be based on internationalism. Workers in the United States are part of the international working class, the most powerful social force on the planet. All over the world, the same conditions exist: mass poverty, war, dictatorship. And in every country, the ruling classes are trying to drag workers into conflict with one another.

In the United States, this poisonous nationalism is being promoted by the trade union bureaucracy. This includes those who present themselves and are presented as “reformers,” like UAW President Shawn Fain, Biden’s most ardent cheerleader who is now openly backing Trump’s tariffs and preparing to dragoon workers behind the war machine.

Exactly two weeks ago we marked the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which inaugurated the American Revolution and the struggle against the British monarchy. We also commemorated the 160th anniversary of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, who led the Second American Revolution and carried through the abolition of slavery through the expropriation of the slaveholders.

The great task of our time is to carry out the Third American Revolution—the socialist revolution, as part of a world revolution—to overthrow the dictatorship of the financial oligarchy, abolish capitalism and establish a workers’ government based on social equality and democratic control of economic life.

To carry this forward, the working class needs its own party, armed with a program, a strategy and the lessons of history. That party is the Socialist Equality Party, which is part of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement.

Join the Socialist Equality Party! Take up the fight for socialism, for equality, and for the future.