As the academic year begins in Australia and New Zealand, the International Students for Social Equality (ISSE) will be holding meetings during the university orientation weeks on the “The Global Economic and Political Crisis and the Perspective for Socialism”. The O-Week events will be followed in March with meetings on “In Defence of Leon Trotsky”. ISSE members will also be distributing several thousand copies of a four-page brochure, outlining the programmatic basis of the ISSE and urging students in both countries to join and establish clubs on their campuses.
The current economic and political convulsions in Europe are a graphic indication that far from resolving the crisis, the huge government bank bailouts following the 2008 financial meltdown have only prepared the conditions for another crash, along with ever-more brutal attacks on the jobs, wages and living conditions of workers around the world. The meetings during O-Week will discuss the underlying causes of the global crisis, and the political ramifications and implications for the international working class.
The ISSE meetings in March will discuss and promote the recently published book, In Defence of Leon Trotsky, by David North, chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site and national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States.
In Defence of Leon Trotsky is a powerful refutation of a recent publication, Trotsky: A Biography, by Oxford University history professor, Robert Service. Service’s biography attempts to falsify the life, ideas and personality of the most outstanding revolutionary figure of the twentieth century. It follows two other biographies of Trotsky, written by British historians Ian Thatcher and Geoffrey Swain and published in the past few years, which similarly attack Trotsky and falsify the historical record and legacy of the 1917 Russian Revolution. The aim of all three works is to blacken Trotsky’s name and turn young people away from a serious study of the internationalist and socialist program and perspective for which he fought.
We encourage all students and young people to help advertise and attend these important ISSE meetings. We append below links to David North’s essays and speeches in reply to Robert Service.
The Global Economic and Political Crisis and the Perspective for Socialism
University of New South Wales
Wednesday, February 24, 11 a.m.
Room G031,
Quadrangle Building
(The meeting will be followed by a screening at 1p.m. of Herman Axelbank’s classic documentary “Tsar to Lenin”)
University of Newcastle
Wednesday, February 24, 2 p.m.
General Purpose Building
Room GP212/214, on Level 2
University of Sydney
Thursday, February 25, 1 p.m.
Quadrangle Building,
Philosophy Room S249
RMIT-Melbourne
Thursday, February 25, 5 p.m.
Student Union Meeting Room 8.3.18
(Opposite the gym), Building 8
City Campus
Victoria University-Wellington
Thursday, February 25, 4.30 p.m.
Meeting Room Number 1
Student Union Building
In Defence of Leon Trotsky
University of New South Wales
Wednesday, March 10, 2 p.m.
Room 209, Morven Brown Building
University of Newcastle
Wednesday, March 10, 2 p.m.
NUSA Office Meeting Room, near the Bar on the Hill
RMIT-Melbourne
Thursday, March 11, 12.30 p.m.
Student Union Meeting Room 8.3.18
(Opposite the gym), Building 8, City Campus
Victoria University-Wellington
Thursday, March 11, 12.30 p.m.
Meeting Room Number 1, Student Union Building
University of Sydney
Thursday, March 18, 1 p.m.
Quadrangle Building, Professorial Board Room
The ISSE recommends:
In the Service of Historical Falsification: A Review of Robert Service’s Trotsky
[11 November 2009]
Historians in the Service of the “Big Lie”: An Examination of Professor Robert Service’s biography of Trotsky
[15 December 2009]
In defence of Trotsky’s “immense and enduring historical significance”
[4 February 2010]