The global pandemic, the class struggle, and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party
This resolution was adopted unanimously by the Sixth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party in the US, held July 19–24, 2020.
Capitalism has failed in the United States and the entire world. The Socialist Equality Party is organizing the working class in the fight for socialism: the reorganization of all of economic life to serve social needs, not private profit.
Socialism means the abolition of all forms of inequality and exploitation. The fight for socialism is at the same time a fight against war, authoritarianism, environmental degradation and all the consequences of capitalist society.
Socialism must be fought for and won by the working class itself. It will be achieved only through a revolutionary movement that has as its aim the establishment of workers' power.
Socialism, moreover, cannot be realized in one country. All the great problems confronting mankind are global problems that require global solutions.
The fight for socialism, therefore, requires the unity and collaboration of workers in every country on the basis of a common program and perspective. The Socialist Equality Party works in political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.
This page contains some of the key documents and statements on the history and program of the SEP.
The program of the Socialist Equality Party is of a principled, not of a conjunctural and pragmatic character. It is based on an assimilation of the strategic revolutionary experiences of the working class and the international socialist movement.
The SEP traces its political ancestry to the fight for Trotskyism in the US that was initiated in 1928, when veteran revolutionary James P. Cannon, along with Canadian revolutionary Maurice Spector, declared their support for Trotsky's fight against the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union.
The international Trotskyist movement has a long history of principled struggle against Stalinism, reformism and bourgeois nationalism. In the United States, the fight for Trotskyism was carried forward by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), founded in 1938 under the leadership of Cannon, and then the Workers League, which was founded in 1966 after opposing the national opportunist degeneration of the SWP.
The Workers League, in political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International, based its perspective on the revolutionary role of the American working class in opposition to all forms of nationalism and revisionism, as well as the pro-capitalist politics of the trade union bureaucracy. The Workers League played a significant role in many of the major battles of the working class in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Workers League was transformed into the SEP in 1995, which was followed by a similar transformation of all the sections of the ICFI.
The Congress of the SEP is the highest body of the party. The SEP held its Founding Congress in 2008 and meets every two years to discuss and adopt resolutions on party policy and elect the party leadership. This section includes reports and resolutions from the SEP Congresses.
This resolution was adopted unanimously by the Sixth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party in the US, held July 19–24, 2020.
This resolution was unanimously adopted by the Socialist Equality Party Congress, held from July 22–27, 2018.
This report was delivered by David North, the national chairperson of the Socialist Equality Party (US), to open the Fifth National Congress of the SEP, held July 22-27, 2018.
This resolution was unanimously adopted by the Socialist Equality Party Congress, held July 22–27.
The Socialist Equality Party in the US held its Fourth National Congress from July 31 to August 5 in Detroit, Michigan.
This resolution was passed by the Fourth National Congress of t he Socialist Equality Party (US), held from July 31-August 5 in Detroit, Michigan .
This resolution was passed by the Fourth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), held from July 31-August 5 in Detroit, Michigan.
This is the main resolution of the Third National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), adopted unanimously on August 5, 2014.
The pandemic is a “trigger event” that manifests in a highly concentrated form the contradictions of the global capitalist system and is unleashing long-suppressed forces of social transformation.
More than one year since COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic, the disease is once again surging around the world.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a turning point in world history, an event comparable in scale and impact to the Great Depression and the two world wars.
The catastrophic loss of life in the US is the outcome of deliberate decisions made by the ruling class and its political representatives to prioritize profit over lives.
On Saturday, April 3, the WSWS hosted an international online meeting to mark the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune of 1871.
The meeting examined Luxemburg’s role as a Marxist theoretician and political leader, and discussed the significance of her legacy to the contemporary struggle to build a Marxist leadership.
David North and Eric London speak on the significance of the latest revelations, in the context of the decades-long Security and the Fourth International investigation by the ICFI into Trotsky’s assassination by Stalin’s GPU.
This essay is based on the transcript of the remarks made by David North, the chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site and national chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US), in opening an online discussion held January 17 on the significance of the fascist assault on the Capitol in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021.
Fifteen years after the United States launched the “war on terror,” the entire world is being dragged into an ever-expanding maelstrom of imperialist violence.
Behind the backs of the American and world population, the United States is preparing an escalation of military tensions with China with potentially incalculable consequences.
The Times is covering up not only the US-NATO devastation of Libya, but also its own role as chief propagandist for the 2011 war of aggression.
The act of aggression against Syria and the global escalation of US militarism constitute the foundation of bipartisan unity between Biden and the Republican Party.
The newly released Forbes list reveals that in 2020, as COVID-19 was sweeping the world and killing millions, billionaire wealth skyrocketed as never before.
One year since the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern,” the response of the ruling class to the pandemic has led to the deaths of more than 2.2 million people.
A new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that in the first half of 2020, life expectancy dropped by more than one year as COVID-19 ripped through the population.
The Lancet, one of the world’s premiere medical journals, argues that the dead from COVID-19 in the US should be added to the toll of “missing Americans” whose deaths were attributable to the rise of social inequality over the past four decades.
Testimony this past week revealed that top officials within the military delayed deploying National Guard troops during the January 6 insurrection for one hundred and ninety-nine minutes.
The elevation of an increasingly fascistic tendency in American politics is rooted in the reality of capitalism and the homicidal policy of the ruling class in response to the pandemic.
The video that opened the impeachment trial leaves no doubt that what occurred on January 6 was a coup d’état whose aim was the establishment of a presidential dictatorship.
The Democrats deliberately protected Trump’s co-conspirators, including the Republican House and Senate members who sought to overturn the election and those forces within the state who worked with Trump to orchestrate a stand-down of federal forces.
The crushing defeat for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union at Amazon’s Bessemer, Alabama plant exposes the extent of workers’ alienation from the pro-corporate unions.
The treachery of what is falsely called the “labor movement” is one of the chief factors behind the scale of the death and suffering of the pandemic.
The struggle unfolding in Chicago is of monumental significance and must become the spearhead of a broader movement of the entire working class in a nationwide political general strike, which would send shock waves throughout the world and provoke similar struggles globally.
The government and corporations are demanding a return to work in the midst of a pandemic, which is claiming thousands of lives every week. Their drive for profits takes priority over the health and safety of workers and their families.
The testimony over the last three days has confirmed what millions of workers around the world already know: George Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020 was a brutal police murder in cold blood.
The fight against police violence must be connected to the struggles of the working class, in the United States and internationally, against inequality, war and the capitalist system.
The ubiquity of police violence in the US, with approximately 1,000 people killed every year, is bound up with the extreme growth of social inequality and class tensions.
The crackdown on demonstrators by Trump’s fascistic border agents is the latest move in his administration’s years-long assault on democratic rights in the United States.
This resolution was passed by the Fourth National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), held from July 31-August 5 in Detroit, Michigan.
The American ruling class has systematically destroyed Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador for over a century, forcing millions to flee their homes.
The scenes playing out across the US-Mexico border disqualify the US government from ever lecturing the world on “human rights.”
The mass shootings in Atlanta, Georgia this week, whose victims were predominantly Asian American, have thrown into tragic relief the surge in anti-Asian violence in the United States amid the demonization of China by the US government.
This resolution was unanimously adopted by the Socialist Equality Party Congress, held July 22–27.
Assange’s kangaroo court extradition hearing has seen the UK, which boasts of being one of the world’s oldest democracies, sink to the level of a tinpot dictatorship.
Yesterday’s hearing in London made clear, if any further proof was needed, that the prosecution of Assange is a shameful and degrading show trial, intended to railroad an innocent man to prison or death.
Judge Vanessa Baraitser has decreed that Assange will remain behind bars and that his extradition show-trial will proceed in May, even as the coronavirus pandemic spreads rapidly in British prisons.
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 20th century and the corresponding struggle waged by Marxists for the program of world socialist revolution.
David North has played a leading role in the international socialist movement for forty-five years. He is presently the chairperson of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and the national chairperson of the Socialist Equality Party (United States).
His many published works include: The Heritage We Defend; The Crisis of American Democracy; In Defense of Leon Trotsky; The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century; The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left and A Quarter Century of War.
Joseph Kishore has held the position of national secretary of the SEP (United States) since 2008. He joined the SEP in 1999 after becoming politically radicalized by the Clinton administration’s war against Serbia. Over the past two decades, he has written hundreds of articles for the World Socialist Web Site and as national secretary has directed the party’s intervention in the struggles of workers and youth.
Lawrence Porter joined the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party, in 1972. He has played a leading role in the Trotskyist movement in the US for several decades. He was elected assistant national secretary of the SEP at its founding congress in August, 2008.
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is the student and youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party. It fights to unite students and young people for peace, equality, the rights of the working class and socialism.