On Saturday, December 4, the Socialist Equality Party will hold its first ever public meeting in Vancouver, Canada’s third largest city.
The national secretary of the SEP (Canada), Keith Jones, will speak on “The breakdown of world capitalism—a socialist perspective for the working class.”
Recent events, including the EU “bailout” of Ireland and the rumblings of an international trade and currency war, underscore that the world capitalist system is ensnared in its greatest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The financial turmoil that began in September 2008 with the sudden failure of Wall Street icons has metastasized into a global economic breakdown.
Around the world, workers now confront the drive of big business and its hirelings in government to make them pay for this crisis through job and wage cuts and the dismantling of public services.
This has provoked militant resistance including in Greece and Spain. But everywhere working people come up against the fact that the trade unions and the ostensible left parties are part and parcel of the capitalist system. They are instruments for the suppression of the class struggle, nothing more and nothing less.
In Canada, the immediate response of the NDP and the trade unions to the eruption of the economic crisis was to attempt to form a Liberal-led coalition government committed to implementing Harper’s $50 billion corporate tax cut plan and waging war in Afghanistan. In the two years since, the unions have imposed sweeping concessions on auto workers, miners, and other workers.
Workers and youth need a new perspective for struggle. Jones will outline the international socialist program for which the SEP fights. All are welcome.
The Breakdown of Capitalism: A Socialist Perspective for the Working Class
Vancouver
Saturday, December 4, at 2:30 PM
Learning Resource Centre
Britannia Library
Britannia Community Services Centre
1661 Napier Street
The Britannia Community Services Centre is located below the Britannia Branch Library in the Britannia Centre, just off Commercial Drive at Napier.
The building housing the library and services center is at the south-east corner of the Britannia Centre complex. To see it, you will need to walk about half a block in from the street.