Four lectures with contemporaneous analysis of the 2000 and 2004 US Presidential elections. Through a detailed historical analysis, North establishes that behind the breakdown of democracy in the United States lies the deterioration of the global economic position of American capitalism, and the development of unprecedented levels of wealth concentration and social inequality. The turn to aggressive militarism abroad, and the vast expansion of police state measures during the Bush administration arose not from the "terrorist threat," but from the extreme sharpening of social and class tensions within American society itself. Learn More

In this essay WSWS writer Tom Mackaman examines the significance for the working class of the 1981 strike by PATCO air traffic controllers in the US.

The mass firing of the PATCO strikers by US President Ronald Reagan marked the definitive end of the period of relative class compromise and social reform that had prevailed in the US and other advanced industrial countries since the end of World War II. From that moment on, the capitalist class has carried out a relentless offensive to roll back the gains the working class realized over decades of struggle.

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