July 2025 – A Critique of Crisis Theory

Last month, June 2025, saw the twelve-day U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. On July 4, U.S. Independence Day, Donald Trump signed his “Big Beautiful Bill.” The bill means class war at home, and the twelve-day war against Iran points to more imperialist war abroad. This month, we examine the class war at home and the capitalist war economy.

Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill is a massive attack on the working class, science, art, education, and human culture in general. We could write volumes about this wretched thing, but we will zero in on the attack on the working class. The spearhead is the attack on the Medicaid program. To grasp its importance, it helps to understand Marx’s theory of wage labor and surplus value.

Henryk Grossman was born to Jewish parents in 1881 in what is now Krakow, Poland. (1 ) The Austrian-Hungarian Empire ruled Krakow at the time. As a high school student, he became politically active and joined the Social Democratic Party of Galicia. The Social Democratic Party of Galicia was dominated by followers of Józef Piłsudski (1867-1935), the future nationalist dictator of Poland. Galicia is a geographic region spanning what is now southeastern Poland and western Ukraine. It is not the community in Spain of the same name.

In 1905, Grossman was part of a split of Jewish workers from the Social Democratic Party of Galicia, which formed the Jewish Socialist Party of Galicia.

After the Russian Revolution, he joined the newly formed Polish Communist Party, which sought to unite both the Polish and Jewish workers of Poland in a united revolutionary party of the working class.

Month: July 2025

Class War at Home, Imperialist War Abroad

Henryk Grossman and Long Cycles