It is now seven weeks since the police attacked students from the Ayotzinapa teacher training college and then kidnapped 43 of the survivors and handed them over to a drug cartel. The brutal incident in the town of Iguala, Guerrero, acted as the proverbial last straw, opening up a wave of mass protests which continues to grow and spread.

Private ownership of the means of production has hit a dead end on a world scale. The system is dying on its feet, and this inevitably has profound political and social consequences in the country par excellence of capitalism. Francis Fukuyama, who, upon the fall of the USSR, famously declared “the end of history,” now says that America “suffers from the problem of political decay in a more acute form than other democratic political systems.” In plain English: capitalism and its institutions are in big trouble.

More than a month after the killing of Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old black youth, Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot him multiple times despite Brown having raised his arms in surrender, remains free and safely in hiding. The St. Louis region is tense in anticipation of the grand jury's ruling on whether or not to file charges against Wilson. Brown's shooting has drawn attention to the chilling fact that an average of two black men are killed by police every week in the United States. Michael Brown's killing, however, is not just another repetition of this tragic cycle. In many ways, it was "the straw that broke the camel's back," opening up a new stage in the changing

What if they held an election and nobody came? In some ways, the 2014 midterm election was very much like this. Just 36.6 percent voted, only 13% of them under age 30, and as many as 70 million eligible voters are not even registered. The main capitalist parties—the Democrats and Republicans—do not deal with real issues related to the lives of the overwhelming majority of the population. This is true bourgeois democracy. That is, democracy for the top 1% or 2%, but not for the rest of us!

We republish below the transcript of a speech delivered by​ WIL member Martin Michaels ​on ​November 1 in Minneapolis, MN​,​ at the March Against​ ​Corruption.​ ​

Ottawa was rocked on Wednesday by news that a lone gunman shot, and killed, a Canadian Forces reservist on Parliament Hill, before storming Parliament itself. This attack came just two days after a similar incident in Quebec. The fact that these two individuals recently converted to a fundamentalist form of Islam, and apparently expressed support for ISIS, has raised fears that Canada is now facing a wave of terrorist attacks.

Yesterday hundreds of thousands marched in Mexico city and tens of thousands more in dozens of other cities across Mexico to protest at the kidnapping of 43 student-teachers from Ayotzinapa. They were clear in pointing the finger squarely at the Mexican state. The actions were part of a widespread nationwide 48 hour student strike which continues today.

Join members of the International Marxist Tendency and the Marxist Student Association for this year's North East Regional School on 1 November. Speakers from Belgium and Canada will speak on the Arab Revolution and the Student and Youth movements throughout the Americas. More info below.

The undersigned organisations join in the call by students from the Rural Normal of Ayotzinapa and the National People's Assembly for a day of action on October 22 and we extend internationally. We appeal for the organisation of protest actions at Mexican embassies and consulates around the world that day.

It is now a month since the beginning of the movement of students at the National Polytechnic Institute (IPN) in Mexico. This is a huge movement involving tens of thousands of students in dozens of schools, mass assemblies with thousands of participants, which has forced the national government to make important concessions in order to prevent a general explosion of the youth movement.

The horrendous incident in which police officers opened fire on students killing 6 people and injuring 17 and then kidnapped another 43 and handed them over to a drug cartel, has brought out sharply the depth of the rottenness of the Mexican capitalist state, to what degree its structures are linked with those of the drug cartels, and finally, how they stop at nothing in suppressing anyone they perceive as a threat to their interests.

Many Americans are justifiably horrified by the atrocities being perpetrated by the ISIS gangsters. But imperialist intervention, which led to this wreck in the first place, is no solution. There is no short-term way out. Only a socialist revolution can transform the region and the world.

Today’s youth, the so-called millennials, face a bleak future under capitalism. They carry the highest student debt in history and have entered “adulthood” at a time when housing prices have skyrocketed and the labor market has imploded. More than half of recent graduates are unemployed or underemployed, often in low-wage jobs having nothing to do with their degrees. Nonetheless, they must make monthly payments on an average of $20,000 in student loans.

There is a lot activity and buzz around the struggle to raise the minimum wage in the United States. Here we provide an article by Tom Trottier of the US Socialist Appeal that explains the role of wages under capitalism and what has actually been achieved so far.

The 100th anniversary of the Komagata Maru incident has brought into focus the history of Canada’s immigration policy. The anniversary of this mass deportation has been marked by coverage and specials in the mainstream press, by statements from politicians, as well as remembrance ceremonies, particularly in the Sikh-Canadian community.