The WSWS reports and comments:

[T]he writers' strike has lasted long enough that it now takes place under conditions of the threatened unraveling of the US and world economy. The slide into slump is one of the social realities that writers and their supporters have to begin to consider seriously. Capitalism is in immense crisis. Writers cannot guarantee decent living and working conditions for themselves in isolation from the rest of the working population. Only a decisive break with the Democratic Party and the emergence of a new mass social movement, anti-capitalist and internationalist in outlook, can confront this new reality.

On a variety of blogs and web sites, writers have offered their own analyses of the recent DGA settlement, many of them negative. But the comments are politically extremely limited. The writers, like other sections of the American working population, will try out many individualistic and pragmatic solutions in the face of their difficult situation. A socialist perspective is still far from many minds, or there is a reluctance to accept it.

However, whatever prejudices and illusions there may be among the writers and their supporters, economic and social reality will have its say. It is going to deliver some very harsh blows. In the end, there will be no avoiding the great class and political questions of the day.

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The situation is far worse today than it was decades ago. The film studios and television networks are subsidiaries of transnational corporations, for whom the decisions could hardly be more cut and dried. Whatever fails to earn immediate profits and helps drive up share prices will be axed.

At the same time, the growth of genuine solidarity among writers, actors and others will inevitably tend to generate more socially critical and left-wing artistic work. A process of radicalization has begun, with serious implications.

All in all, the interests and the trajectories of the writers and the entertainment conglomerates are mutually exclusive.