The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Socialist Equality (IYSSE) are holding public meetings in Sri Lanka. Entitled “World Socialism Against Imperialist Barbarism,” the meetings will commemorate the 75th anniversary of the assassination of Marxist revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky.

On August 21, 1940, Trotsky died in Mexico from wounds inflicted the previous day by an agent of the GPU, the then secret police of the Soviet Stalinist bureaucracy. The assassination occurred in the context of a historically unprecedented wave of political reaction with fascist regimes holding power in Germany, Italy and Spain and the eruption of World War II in 1939. The war was the result of the systematic sabotage of the revolutionary struggles of the working class by Social Democratic and Stalinist parties in the years that preceded its outbreak.

In assassinating Trotsky, the Stalinist bureaucracy delivered a devastating blow to the international working class. As the co-leader with Lenin of the Russian revolution in October 1917 and leader of the struggle against later degeneration of Soviet Union under the Stalinist bureaucracy, Trotsky embodied vast political experience and an unequalled record of struggle for socialist internationalism. His writings and theoretical and political conceptions still speak with immense power to the problems of the contemporary world.

The global financial crisis which erupted in 2008 continues to deepen, heightening imperialist rivalries and posing the danger of a Third World War, the use of nuclear weapons and the reversal of all the social and democratic gains of the working class.

The only alternative to imperialist barbarism is the struggle by the working class for socialist internationalism and the revolutionary abolition of the capitalist profit system. The assimilation of Trotsky’s analysis and program is essential. The SEP/IYSSE meetings provide a vital opportunity for workers, youth and students to understand and discuss this perspective.

Colombo New Town Hall
December 20, 3.00 p.m.

Jaffna Library Hall
December 27, 3.00 p.m.