The Socialist Equality Party (Australia) is holding an online lecture this Tuesday on the contemporary significance of the struggle waged by Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition against the Stalinist betrayal of the Russian Revolution. The event is one in a series of six lectures being delivered on the history of Trotskyism.
The lecture will review the political fight launched by Trotsky, the co-leader of the revolution, beginning in 1923. The Left Opposition was founded in that year to oppose the increasing suppression of inner-party democracy, the growing influence of a burgeoning state bureaucracy and to fight for policies that would strengthen the social base of the revolution, the industrial working class.
It will explain the significance of Stalin’s adoption, in 1924, of the program of “socialism in one country,” which was a repudiation of the internationalist foundations of Marxism and of the revolution itself. The turn to nationalism was to have disastrous consequences, resulting in the defeat of mass struggles by the working class in Britain, China and Germany, and intensifying the isolation of the Soviet Union.
The lecture will outline the internationalist perspective elaborated by Trotsky and the Left Opposition, which was later to serve as the foundation of the Fourth International and the contemporary socialist movement. It will elaborate the intense relevance of the program of world socialist revolution, amid a global crisis of capitalism and the emergence of international struggles by the working class, exemplified by the current upheavals against police violence.
The lecturer will be Cheryl Crisp, a long-standing member of the Trotskyist movement. Crisp, who has played a leading role in the SEP and its predecessor organisation since 1972 is the assistant national-secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia).
The event will be held on Zoom at 7 p.m. (Australian Eastern Standard Time). Time conversions are available here. To participate, download the app or join on a web browser, and click on this link before the lecture begins: