This year marks the 15th anniversary of the World Socialist Web Site, the most widely read socialist publication on the Internet. It is the voice of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International, and publishes daily in more than 15 languages including French. At a time when so many “left” and liberal publications have made their peace with the political establishment, the WSWS has refused to compromise its principles.
When the WSWS was launched on February 14, 1998, the corporate media was proclaiming the irreversible triumph of capitalism and “the end of history.” A new era of peace and prosperity had supposedly dawned. What followed, however, was the unending “war on terror,” the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, a devastating collapse in working class living standards, unprecedented attacks on democratic rights, and, in the face of these events, profound cultural and intellectual disorientation.
France is a major centre of world reaction and its governments, whether of the conservative right of Nicolas Sarkozy or the bourgeois “left” of François Hollande, in alliance with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have imposed mass poverty and the destruction of basic social and democratic rights in Greece and Spain, threatening the whole of Europe as well as France. Under Hollande, France is the most aggressive and faithful ally of the US in prosecuting imperialist war in the Middle East, Asia and beyond, and the repression of mass uprisings such as those seen in Egypt, Tunisia and Greece.
As the revelations of Edward Snowden have shown, the French bourgeoisie is well advanced in the world development of mass state surveillance and the framework of the police state.
The ruling class is once again preparing dictatorial forms of rule. The working population, for its part, must prepare for the forthcoming class struggles. The most important prerequisite is the construction of a new party that will enable the working class to intervene independently in political events. The dramatic events in Egypt show that the working class can secure its interests only with its own revolutionary party.
This meeting will review the political and theoretical basis for the WSWS and its roots in the struggle for revolutionary socialism. In reviewing this history, it will address the most fundamental question in contemporary politics: the struggle to build a socialist movement of the working class in a new epoch of war and revolution.
Unite the working class internationally against:
- Imperialist war—Syria, Mali, Libya
- Austerity and mass unemployment
- Police state rule
- For the Socialist United States of Europe
Meeting details:
15 h Sunday, September 29 at AGECA 177 rue de Charonne 75011
Paris Métro: Alexandre Dumas (ligne 2), Bus: 76
Main speaker: Peter Schwarz, secretary of the International Committee of the Fourth International and member of the WSWS International Editorial Board