The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) held an online public meeting on Sunday October 31, pushing ahead with its campaign to inform and mobilise young people and workers against Australia’s new anti-democratic electoral laws.
The working class must have a political voice, which the ruling class through its latest legislation is seeking to stifle. The opposition to the dictates of big business and its political servants needs to be guided by a socialist program that puts the social needs of working people—above all their health and lives—ahead of the private profits of the wealthy few. The SEP alone fights for this perspective.
Our party fights:
● For a scientific program to eradicate the coronavirus pandemic against the criminal, “herd immunity” policies of the ruling elite.
● For an end to militarism and war.
● Against all forms of nationalism and racism and for the unity of the international working-class.
● For the social rights of the working class, including quality, free education and healthcare for all, and a decent, full-time job with permanent conditions for those able to work.
● For a workers’ government and socialism, that is a society in which the working-class democratically controls the wealth that it produces, not the banks and the billionaires.
Fill out this form to apply to join the SEP as an electoral member. The membership fee is $5 (waged) or $2 (unwaged/student).
Amid the global resurgence of COVID-19, anti-democratic bills have been rushed through Australia’s parliament to suppress opposition to the criminal “reopening” drive by the capitalist class.
The program of the Socialist Equality Party is of a principled, not a conjunctural and pragmatic, character. It is based on an analysis of the crisis of world capitalism and an assimilation of the strategic revolutionary experiences of the working class and the international socialist movement.
The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party was adopted by the Founding Congress of the SEP in Sydney in 2010. It traces the historical events and strategic experiences of the working class and Marxist movement spanning more than a century.
Supported by the Labor Party, the government barred entry to more than 400 asylum seekers, mostly from Afghanistan, and transported them to a remote Pacific island to be detained indefinitely.
The depraved abuses flowed inevitably from the nature of the war itself—a brutal operation to crush all resistance to the imposition of US control over the country.
The election outcome exposes the bankrupt claims by the unions and the pseudo-left that the rise of the extreme right can be opposed by supporting pro-business centre-left parties such as the Australian Labor Party.
While the Commission’s motivations are reactionary, its report demonstrates that the unions are nothing but labour management businesses whose role is to destroy workers’ conditions.
Watch: Meeting commemorates decades-long Australian Trotskyist Barry Jobson
At a meeting on January 17, Socialist Equality Party speakers reviewed Barry Jobson’s contribution to the fight for socialist internationalism, in the context of the deepening crisis of Australian and world capitalism.
Bitter international experience leaves no doubt that if the school reopening drive goes unchallenged, the result will be serious illnesses and deaths of children and their educators.
While governments and the media present the reckless reopening as the dawning of a new age of “freedom,” tens of thousands of school students and teachers are being exposed to the deadly virus and the hospital systems remain on the precipice of collapse.
In the space of less than a month, lockdowns have been overturned and most safety restrictions lifted in the two most populous states, even though they continue to be hit by COVID outbreaks.
As the ruling class and all of its political representatives allow the virus to spread, in order to protect profit interests, the working class must intervene to defend safety and lives.
This is the main resolution that was discussed and adopted unanimously at the Fifth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia) held on August 14-16, 2020.
The SEP’s recent National Congress committed to “intensifying the fight for the unconditional freedom of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange” and the defence of all persecuted journalists and whistleblowers.
The attempted US extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange resumed yesterday with the opening of a hearing into a US government appeal. It is a legal abomination in pursuit of a heinous crime.
“I like the David and Goliath metaphor. There’s this blind giant that’s fighting against a tiny man locked inside a prison cell. Eventually the giant is going to destroy itself. It’s showing that all of these institutions are corrupt.”
Hardly any media outlets have even asked whether the Australian authorities knew about the US plans to murder or kidnap an Australian citizen and journalist.
Australian and New Zealand demonstrations demand freedom for WikiLeaks founder and US whistleblower
Workers and retirees, as well as youth and students attending the Socialist Equality Party’s February 2020 rallies in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Wellington responded powerfully to speakers’ calls for them to deepen their involvement in the fight to defend WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and US whistleblower Chelsea Manning.
The lectures, now all available online, reviewed some of the fundamental lessons of the protracted struggle by the Trotskyist movement for socialist internationalism.
Membership in the Socialist Equality Party is based on agreement with its Statement of Principles. The principles of the SEP incorporate the essential experiences of the revolutionary upheavals of the twentieth century and the corresponding struggle waged by Marxists for the program of world socialist revolution.
Crisp was a founding member of the Socialist Labour League, the forerunner of the SEP, in 1972, and has played a leading role in the Trotskyist movement in Australia for more than four decades. She was elected National Secretary at the Fifth National Congress of the SEP in 2020.
Max was elected to the position of assistant national secretary at the 2020 SEP National Congress. He writes regularly for the WSWS on issues facing asylum seekers and their inhumane treatment at the hands of Australian governments. He completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Newcastle, majoring in Aboriginal Studies.
The SEP’s National Congress resolved to build the IYSSE among working-class youth, as well as university and high school students, on the basis of the revolutionary traditions of Trotskyism.
Held amid a COVID-19 lockdown, the meeting reflected the growing radicalisation among youth and students.
The IYSSE has been subjected to unprecedented acts of political censorship at a number of universities around Australia.
The meeting, attended by students, youth and workers, reviewed some of the lessons of Leon Trotsky’s life and political work.
