The Socialist Equality Party (Australia), and its youth wing, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), are holding an online lecture tonight entitled “The Russian Revolution and its significance for today.” The meeting will be at 7 p.m. Australian Eastern Daylight Savings time. Click here for time conversions.

The lecture is the second in a series being delivered by leading World Socialist Web Site writer Nick Beams on the subject “Capitalism’s war on society: Why you need to fight for socialism.”

To take part, download the GoToMeeting app and click here before the meeting begins. Alternatively, you can call +61 2 8355 1050 on your phone, before entering access code 670-326-765.

Beams will outline the contemporary significance of the Russian Revolution, the first time the working class overthrew capitalism and began the reorganisation of social and economic life in its own interests.

He will outline the burning relevance of this event for the situation confronting millions of people today. It is clear that capitalist governments are incapable of, and uninterested in, protecting the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people amid the coronavirus pandemic. Their criminally-negligent response, along with decades of public spending cuts, has created a global health crisis. At the same time, governments are handing out massive sums of money to major corporations, as they lay off workers and cut conditions.

The situation underscores the pressing need for a revolutionary movement of the working class aimed at the socialist transformation of society on a global scale.

Beams, who has played a leading role in the world Trotskyist movement for over 45 years will refute the claims that the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union represented the continuity of the October Revolution. He will explain that it embodied a counter-revolutionary and nationalist reaction to the revolutionary struggles of the working class, based on the interests of a privileged bureaucratic caste.