The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is establishing a club at the University of Melbourne and will be holding our Inaugural General Meeting (IGM) on Thursday, October 13. The IGM will be followed by a report and discussion on the urgent need to develop conscious political opposition to the growing dangers of a US-led imperialist war against China in Asia, and against Russia in Europe. We appeal to every student who opposes militarism, nationalism and the related assault on the living standards and democratic rights of the working class to attend the IGM and join and fight to build the IYSSE at University of Melbourne.

Since 2014, the efforts of the IYSSE to form a club at the University of Melbourne have been blocked four times by the Student Union Clubs and Societies Committee on various spurious grounds. Only a continuous and determined campaign to win support among students for our club, on the basis of defending the democratic rights of all students to affiliate clubs of their choice, has led the C&S Committee to accept our right to affiliate.

We now urge you to ensure that the IYSSE is affiliated by attending our Inaugural General Meeting and guaranteeing that we reach the necessary quorum. If you oppose militarism and war, take a stand!

For 25 years, the US and its allies have used military force to subordinate resource-rich and strategic territories to their interests. Those countries that have been bombed or invaded include Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Serbia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen and Syria. Millions of men, women and children have lost their lives, and millions more turned into desperate refugees.

The sights of US imperialism are now firmly set on the nuclear-armed states of China and Russia. Over the past five years, Washington, with the full support of the Australian government, has been building up its military forces in Asia and engaging in ever more provocative actions against the Chinese regime. In both US and Australian strategic circles, the growth of China’s economic and geo-political weight is viewed as an unacceptable challenge to American domination over the region. And as for Russia, the US and major European powers are determined to destroy its residual military power, seize the geographical expanse it inherited from the former Soviet Union, and transform it into a virtual US colony.

Successive Labor and Coalition governments have fully involved Australia in US war games and military preparations in the South China Sea. So integrated is the Australian military with its US counterpart in Asia that it would be immediately involved in any clash with China.

The IYSSE, the youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), opposes the drive to war and the assault on the living standards and democratic rights of the working class. We fight for the unity of the working class and young people around the world and for an international anti-war movement based on the socialist principles of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

The future that capitalism offers the younger generation in every country is one of mass poverty and unemployment, the destruction of core democratic rights and war. That is why millions of young people are becoming politicised and beginning to turn toward the struggle for socialism.

This political shift has so far found expression in the widespread support for the self-avowed “democratic socialist” Bernie Sanders, who called for a “political revolution” in the US against the “billionaire class.” But the real role of Sanders, as the IYSSE and World Socialist Web Site warned from the outset, was to channel mass political disaffection among workers and youth into the dead-end of the Democratic Party. This bitter experience underscores the necessity of building a revolutionary leadership of the working class that will differentiate genuine socialism from its various counterfeits.

As well as regular meetings and campaigns against war and austerity, the IYSSE will host regular lectures and seminars to clarify the lessons of the historical experiences of the 20th century. In 2017, our club will organise a series of events marking the 100th anniversary of the 1917 Russian Revolution—the greatest social overturn in history, which was responsible for ending the carnage of World War I and changing the world. The IYSSE will expose the lies and falsifications that have surrounded these events for decades, and acquaint students with the struggle waged by Leon Trotsky and his supporters against Stalinism and its betrayal of the revolution.

We urge you to participate in the fight for socialism and against war by joining the University of Melbourne IYSSE!

IYSSE Inaugural General Meeting
Thursday, October 13, 1.00 p.m.
Graham Cornish Meeting Room B
Union House, Level 2 (on the right at the top of the stairs)