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This 4 July 2026 marked the 250th anniversary of the signing of the American declaration of independence. Celebrations of the 250th anniversary of the country’s founding took place across the USA and even across some of the USA’s more subservient neo-colonies. Flashing billboards celebrating the event could be seen in Lebanon and south Korea.
While it continues to be brandished and lauded by the US ruling class as signalling the birth of true freedom and democracy for all the civilised world, the declaration’s noble-sounding words have long-since had a hollow ring in the ears of the oppressed peoples of the world. As of course they did from the first to the enslaved, the genocided and the propertyless members of the US population.
Who hasn’t heard such phrases as “all men were created equal”, “inalienable rights” and “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” trotted out when they were deemed useful to some nefarious purpose of US imperialism – only to be quietly dropped (or redefined) when they became inconvenient?
British colonial rule was well established in the then 13 colonies of north America under a system of mercantilism whereby the colonies existed solely to enrich the ‘motherland’ through the looting of their rich resources, and to provide a market for Britain’s expanding industries.
The British rulers enforced a strict monopoly over their colonial markets, and compelled adherence by local businesses to laws and trading rules that maintained the status quo and limited the scope for development of the US bourgeois class.
As a result, the lion’s share of the profits to be made from the looting of North America’s tremendous natural wealth was funnelled into the coffers of merchants, landowners, bankers and shareholders in Britain – a revenue stream held firmly in place via the institutions and legal framework enforced by ‘the Crown’ (ie, by British administrative and military rule).
As the American colonial population grew, antagonisms began to develop between the burgeoning homegrown bourgeoisie and its dominant counterpart in Britain. As time went by and its members accumulated more wealth, they came more and more into conflict with the strict regime of British colonial control.
US bourgeois expansion was further restricted by the British ban on colonists trading with other nations, which kept the prices of American exports low, kept the scope of its manufactures narrow, and raised the prices of the many imported goods on which the colonial population relied.
Expansion by American colonists westward across the continent was also restricted by British interests, which blocked settlement expansion. The taxation system was used to further exploit the colonies, and, much as had the English Parliamentarians under the rule of Charles I or the French revolutionaries under the regime of Louis XVI, the US bourgeoisie grew increasingly frustrated at having no say in how taxes were levied or used.
The Stamp Act of 1765 put in place a requirement that no printing should be carried on ‘unstamped’ (ie, untaxed) paper – a rule that covered everything from legal documents, magazines and newspapers to playing cards. The Townshend Act 1767 (named after the then chancellor of the exchequer) levied fresh taxes on many key imports including leaded glass (increasingly sought after for townhouse and commercial building), paper and tea.
Developing tensions between London and the colonies resulted in a growing movement against colonial despotism, under the famous slogan: “No taxation without representation.” As class conflicts continued to grow, so did the movement for total independence from Britain, which in turn led to the revolutionary war and ultimately to the foundation of the United States of America in 1776.
The Founding Fathers who led the revolutionary war and signed the declaration of independence include well-known figures such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. While many of the revolutionaries, both in the leadership and amongst the wider population, were inspired by revolutionary movements and writers from Britain and France, all those who penned the declaration belonged to the wealthy elite of American landowners, merchants and slave plantation owners.
Thus, as was the case in the English and French revolutions before them, while their cause was a progressive one insofar as it sought liberation from British colonial rule, it did so in the interests not (as it claimed) of ‘all men’ but of the property-owners. Likewise, it fought not for universal ‘freedoms’ and ‘equality’, but for the freedom and equality of bourgeois men.
The enslaved population accounted for one-fifth of the population at the time of the revolution. Indeed, most of the freedom-loving Founding Fathers were slaveowners. The ‘inalienable rights’ trumpeted in the declaration thus did not apply to the slave population, to native Americans, to women, or to the propertyless working masses.
The replacement of one set of exploiters by another has, of course, been the aim of every revolutionary movement up until the time of the Paris Commune and the October Revolution, which for the first time brought into view the prospect that humanity might finally achieve liberty, democracy and genuinely equal access to all the things that make life fulfilling and worthwhile.
Nevertheless, by moving the wheel of history forward, by breaking the fetters of feudal or colonial regimes, the bourgeois revolutions that ushered in our present capitalist era were both necessary and progressive, opening the road for the vast development of humanity’s productive forces, which in turn is the necessary precondition for our further advance to socialism and communism.
What is not true is that these revolutions were the ultimate end-point of our history, or that they established genuine freedoms for all, as their myth-makers would have us believe. Under the banner of ‘equality for all’, a new ruling class replaced the colonial regime, leaving workers, enslaved and indigenous peoples subject to intense exploitation and ever-growing inequality.
Votes for white women were only won across the whole territory of the USA in 1920, while truly universal suffrage only arrived after the civil rights movement in 1965 – since which time, a plethora of conditions have been introduced to deny the vote to millions of citizens. Forty-eight states deny the vote to some 4.4 million convicted felons (overwhelmingly poor, disproportionately black and Latino). In some states, the right to vote is lost upon non-payment of court fines or fees.
So much for universal rights and freedoms!
Today’s descendants of the 18th-century bourgeois who led the progressive anti-colonial revolution are the arch-reactionary ruling monopoly financier class, and their scope of operation is no longer confined to the USA but has spread to every corner of the unfree world.
The same class that 250 years ago protested the unequal nature of the colonial regime, today enforces far more onerously unequal relationships over its own neocolonial dominions.
Taking the place of its former colonial master, the US ruling class now leads the world imperialist bloc in exploiting the peoples, pillaging the resources, dominating the markets and subjugating the nations of the world through direct military and indirect financial and regulatory means – including tariffs, IMF and World Bank ‘loans’ (and conditions), control of international institutions like the United Nations, and through the deep penetration of the media, academic and NGO machinery of targeted nations.
All of which is backed up – as was British global domination before it – by a vast military made up of direct and indirect (proxy) forces.
Today, it is US imperialism that faces revolutionary challenges to its hegemony, as nations in every corner of the globe are struggling to break free, or to maintain their hard-won independence from the yoke of the exploiters.
Today, it is the USA that is reacting with hysteria as its global hegemony is threatened from multiple directions. Iran is the latest nation to be targeted for having had the nerve to break free and to maintain its independence despite 75 years of US interference and sabotage.
Ever since the overthrow of the reviled regime of Shah Pahlavi and establishment of the Islamic republic in 1979, the imperialist powers have used every possible means to extinguish the revolutionary government and to cut off its support to the struggles of other middle-eastern nations for liberation.
Today, it is not the USA that stands for the liberty and dignity of all but Iran, where the people’s courageous unity in the face of vicious imperialist aggression has earned them worldwide respect and admiration. With millions regularly taking to the streets, often in direct defiance of US bombs, the nation’s determination to maintain its sovereignty has thrown the hypocrisy and brutality of the US regime into stark relief.
The funeral of martyred leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini in early July was attended by between 12 and 15 million Iranians (around 15 percent of the entire population), displaying once again the depth of their support for the leadership in opposing US, British and Israeli attempts to subjugate their nation.
Meanwhile, the reality of life in the birthplace of the Fourth of July independence declaration is stark. After 250 years of unfettered capitalist development, millions of Americans face poverty, hunger and homelessness.
Many have no access to healthcare, decent homes or steady jobs, while the children of the poorest Americans are often penned up in failing schools that more nearly resemble prisons than establishments of learning. The postwar Keynesian consensus has entirely broken down and dog-eat-dog capitalist relations reign supreme.
Whatever happened to “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”?
After 250 years, the US bourgeoisie has passed from infancy to maturity and on into senility, and now it faces its inevitable end not with grace but with incoherent rage. The closer the US ruling class gets to the end of its period of global domination, the more desperate and frantic it becomes to postpone that evil day – by any means necessary.
Support for fascist regimes, nefarious operations, colour revolutions, propaganda lies, diplomatic coercion, economic siege and open military warfare: as Donald Trump’s charmless henchmen are fond of declaring with swaggering braggadocio that fools nobody: “All options are on the table!”
Despite the desperate need of its own citizens for a programme of systematic investment in US industry, infrastructure and public services, the public purse remains directed solely towards maintaining profitability for the billionaire financiers and to bolstering US imperialism’s waning dominance abroad.
The insatiable war drive of these vampires is further disrupting supply chains and is drastically inflating the cost of energy and other essentials. It is also prompting ever-greater resistance on the part of the targeted peoples, whose refusal to submit exacerbates all imperialism’s economic woes.
As a result, the global economic crisis of capitalism is being deepened with each move that was supposed to open up an escape route, and the already plummeting living standards of workers all over the world are tumbling further and faster still.
Where once American workers rallied behind their own bourgeoisie in the hopes of attaining dignity and prosperity, two and a half centuries later it is clear that only a socialist revolution can finally make good on the promises of liberty, equality and fraternity that fell from the lips of the revolutionary bourgeois during the period of their rise.
Meanwhile, all those who are today struggling to free themselves from the shackles of imperialist bondage need and deserve the full support of every worker in the west. Just as revolution in the USA dislodged the repressive and reactionary machinery of British rule over its American colony, so revolutions and revolutionary forces are today emerging that aim to dislodge the repressive and reactionary machinery of Anglo-American imperialist rule all over the globe.
If the fight of the oppressed peoples is to be victorious, the home populations in the imperialist countries must also be mobilised to join the struggle against our common foe. For those of us living in the belly of the imperialist beast, the struggle we face today is no longer one to dislodge one set of exploiters and replace them with a new one, lightening the workers’ load in some ways but still leaving them fundamentally shackled by the chains of class exploitation and control.
Today, our struggle is the fight to finally put an end to all exploitation of nation by nation and man by man; it is the struggle for socialism.
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ShareItamar Ben-Gvir called for killing dozens of Palestinians nightly, described Gazans as less than human, and demanded settlements throughout the Strip.
Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has called for Israel to kill dozens of Palestinians every night in Gaza, while openly advocating the establishment of Israeli settlements throughout the Strip and the mass emigration of its Palestinian population.
The far-right minister made the remarks during a podcast hosted by Rom Braslavski, a former Israeli captive who was released by Hamas in October 2025.
Ben-Gvir criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for scaling back military operations in Gaza amid US efforts to advance President Donald Trump’s plan for the territory.
“I think we should be doing 30 to 40 targeted assassinations per night,” Ben-Gvir said, according to the Financial Times.
He made clear that he was not referring exclusively to Palestinians whom Israel considers an immediate military threat.
“Not just those who pose an immediate threat. There are people there who don’t deserve to live,” he said. “They are not even people.”
His remarks come amid continuing Israeli attacks on Gaza despite the ceasefire that entered into force in October 2025.
More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023, including approximately 1,200 since the ceasefire took effect, according to Palestinian official figures.
Ben-Gvir went further, openly setting out a vision in which Israel would establish settlements across the entire Gaza Strip and Palestinians would be encouraged to leave.
Asked about Gaza’s future, the minister said he envisioned “all Gaza” belonging to Israel.
“I imagine settlements not just in Gush Katif but throughout Gaza, and encouraging emigration, the more the better,” he said.
Gush Katif refers to the bloc of Israeli settlements in Gaza that Israel dismantled when it withdrew its settlers and permanent military presence from the interior of the Strip in 2005.
Ben-Gvir has repeatedly demanded the re-establishment of settlements in Gaza and the removal of its Palestinian population.
In the same interview, he drew a distinction between Palestinians he wanted to see leave Gaza and those he described as “terrorists.”
“And for the terrorists, there should be no emigration,” he said. “We should just kill them one by one.”
The Gaza Center for Human Rights condemned Ben-Gvir’s remarks on Sunday, describing them as explicit evidence of an intention to forcibly displace Palestinians from Gaza.
The center said his call for intensive nighttime attacks capable of killing dozens of Palestinians, combined with his assertion that people in Gaza are “not human” and do not deserve to live, constituted “blatant incitement to genocide.”
It argued that the comments could not be treated as an isolated outburst, pointing to Ben-Gvir’s repeated demands for Palestinian displacement and Israeli settlement of Gaza.
The organization also cited his July 2026 declaration that “Gaza is ours” and his longstanding campaign to introduce the death penalty for Palestinian detainees.
According to the center, the significance of the remarks is heightened by Ben-Gvir’s position within the Israeli government and his authority over Israel’s police and prison systems.
It said the statements provide evidence of an intention to destroy Palestinians as a national group and should be examined as potential direct and public incitement to genocide under international law.
The Gaza Center for Human Rights called on the international community to impose sanctions on Israeli officials responsible for such statements and halt support that could facilitate their implementation.
It also urged the International Criminal Court to include Ben-Gvir’s remarks among evidence examined as part of its investigation into the situation in Palestine.
The comments come as accusations of genocide against Israel have expanded well beyond Palestinian organizations. Human rights organizations, genocide scholars and a UN commission have concluded or alleged that Israel’s conduct in Gaza amounts to genocide. Israel has rejected the accusations.
According to the latest figures cited by the Gaza Center for Human Rights, Israel’s war on Gaza has killed 73,391 Palestinians and wounded 174,280 since October 7, 2023.
The rhetoric also follows Ben-Gvir’s increasingly public promotion of punitive measures against Palestinian detainees.
As national security minister, he has repeatedly boasted about worsening conditions inside Israeli prisons amid extensive reports of starvation, abuse, torture and deaths in custody.
His Jewish Power party has spearheaded legislation imposing the death penalty on Palestinians convicted of killing Israelis in what Israel defines as acts of terrorism, without applying an equivalent punishment to Jewish Israelis who kill Palestinians under comparable circumstances.
During the podcast, Braslavski asked whether he could personally execute Palestinians sentenced to death under the legislation.
Ben-Gvir responded enthusiastically.
“I will move heaven and earth and I promise you to do everything so that this happens,” he said. “It is one of my greatest dreams to see you there.”
August 2 is an anniversary that no one wants to celebrate but one that needs to be remembered. On that day in 2010, six Black teenagers from two families drowned in the Red River in Shreveport, Louisiana. It was a day that would break your heart.
Maude Warner (left), mother of the Warner children, and Rena Blalock, mother of the Stewarts, release a lantern during the 15-year remembrance of the drowning of the Shreveport Six at Southern Hill Park, Aug. 2, 2025. (Photo: Henrietta Wildsmith)
The children and their families went on an outing to barbecue and cool off on a hot summer’s day. One of the children, Dekendrix Warner, stepped from a shallow sandbar into water 28 feet deep and started thrashing around.
The teenagers responded to Dekendrix’s yells for help and jumped in to try to save him. But they could not swim. All began to drown. The teenagers fought hard to save each other. No one could help, because family members and bystanders could not swim either. Screaming for help, the teenagers started going under.
“It was nothing I could do but watch them drown one by one,” said Marilyn Robinson, a friend of the family. (Fox News Aug 3, 2010)
Takeitha Warner (13), JaMarcus Warner (14), JaTavious Warner (17), Litrelle Stewart (18), LaDarius Stewart (17) and Latevin Stewart (15) all drowned that horrible day. Dekendrix Warren (15), was saved.
Black children drown at a rate almost three times higher than white children, according to Make a Splash Foundation, which provides scholarships for survival swim lessons. “Drowning is the leading cause of accidental death among children ages 1-4 and remains a major threat through age 14.” (makeasplashfoundation.co, 2026)
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 37% of Black adults don’t know how to swim, compared to 15% of the U.S. population. USA Swimming reports that 69% of Black children cannot swim compared to 41.8% of white children. Black people are three times more likely to die from drowning than white people. Some 60% of Black people never took swimming lessons.
Why is this? In the 1940s and 1950s, many public pools were built across the United States. The Works Progress Administration built hundreds of pools. Some were big enough to hold thousands of swimmers at a time! One included a zoo, community center and parks.
Some pools did not allow interracial swimming. To prevent Black people from swimming with white people, the Parks Department could close down. In many cities, if laws prohibiting segregation meant that the pool had to be open to Black people, white people would stop going to the pool.
In the town of Montgomery, West Virginia, a new pool was built in 1942, but it was unused for four years. Black people there were demanding equal access. White leaders formed a private “Park Association,” and the city leased the pool to this group for one dollar. Now the pool was “private” and as such could be kept segregated.
In segregated Montgomery, Alabama, the government drained the pool rather than allow it to be shared by Black and white people. The government poured concrete into the pool and covered it over with grass.
In response to desegregation laws, public pools across the country were closed down by white supremacists. The 2021 book “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGee described one example like this: “Built in 1919, the Fairground Park pool in St. Louis, Missouri, was the largest in the country and probably the world with a sandy beach, an elaborate diving board and a reported capacity of 10,000 swimmers.”
When a new city administration changed the park’s policy in 1949 to allow Black swimmers, the first integrated swim ended in bloodshed. On June 21, 200 white residents surrounded the pool with “bats, clubs, bricks and knives” to menace the first 30 or so Black swimmers. The “white mob that grew to 5,000 attacked every Black person in sight.”
Due to this racism, the Black community did not have access to pools, swimming lessons and water safety instruction.
The fight for the right to swim
After a Dec. 14, 1974, march on Boston of 25,000 people to “Say No to Racism,” the NAACP called for a march in July of 1975 to Carson Beach in
South Boston. Even though Carson Beach was just yards from their apartments in the Columbia Point housing project, a center of the Black community of Dorchester, Black people could not go there, because they were vulnerable to attacks by racist gangs and the police. If they did go, it was at night.
Called together by the NAACP, the march organizers were a coalition of civil rights groups, Workers World Party and many others. A few thousand people marched from Columbia Point along the beach to the Carson Beach area. When they reached Carson Beach, police stopped them from going further.
The fight began. The white racists threw stones. Black people defended themselves. Ten people were arrested and 40 injured.
Building a workers’ world means building a world where people of all nationalities are encouraged to learn how to swim and have water safety lessons. Swimming should be part of a mandatory curriculum for elementary, middle and high school students.
