The response to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has exposed the immense anger at the for-profit healthcare system. Across the country, people are sharing devastating stories of medical debt, denied care, and lives destroyed by corporations that treat healthcare as a commodity, not a right.
This anger is justified—but individual acts of violence will not resolve the crisis. What is required is the conscious, collective struggle of the working class to transform society.
Rosa Luxemburg, writing amidst the revolutionary upheavals of 1905 Russia, warned that terrorism arises from "loss of faith in the possibility of a political mass movement." The alternative, Luxemburg explained, is the independent mobilization of the working class, united across borders and armed with a socialist program.
This is the perspective advanced by the World Socialist Web Site: to explain the root causes of capitalist crises and to develop a revolutionary alternative.
The crisis in healthcare is one expression of a broader systemic collapse. The homicidal response of the ruling class to the COVID-19 pandemic, sacrificing over a million lives in the US alone to protect corporate profits, is a damning indictment of capitalism. The election of Donald Trump, returning to power with the complicity of the Democrats, marks an escalation of the ruling class's assault on the working class. Trump's second term will bring intensified war abroad, social counterrevolution at home, and the suppression of democratic rights.
This crisis is not confined to the United States. Across the globe, ruling elites are turning to authoritarianism. At the same time, a powerful social force is emerging: the international working class. From strikes in the US and Europe to mass protests in the Middle East, workers are entering into struggle against inequality, exploitation, and war.
The WSWS fights to unite these struggles and build revolutionary leadership. Every day, we expose the lies of the corporate media, analyze the crises of capitalism, and advance a socialist program. As we wrote in response to the killing of Thompson: "The ruling elite in America has proved itself incapable of providing even the most minimal protection of life and health. The answer lies in ending the privately owned healthcare corporations and establishing fully socialized medicine."
To achieve this, we need your support. The WSWS is expanding its coverage, developing new multimedia tools, and deepening its intervention in the struggles of the working class. But this work requires resources—financial resources.
Make the largest donation you can to the WSWS New Year Fund today, and consider setting up a monthly donation if you have not already. Help us arm the working class with the program and perspective it needs to fight for socialism and a world based on equality and human need, not profit.
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