Election Day 2008: The class issues

4 November 2008

Today is Election Day. By the time the polls close this evening as many as 140 million people will have cast their ballot to select a new president and determine the composition of the US Senate and House of Representatives. While tens of millions of Americans go to the polls, the outcome of the election will be awaited with intense interest by billions of people all over the world. This is not because they view the US president as the “leader of the free world,” a title bestowed by the media on the occupant of the White House. Rather, it is because they know from bitter experience that the American president, as leader of the most powerful imperialist country, is capable of pursuing policies that will wreak havoc in their lives and for the planet as a whole.

The revolutionary implications of the decline of American capitalism

14 October 2008

World Socialist Website National Editor Barry Grey delivered the following report to the Founding Congress of the Socialist Equality Party on August 9, 2008. (See “Socialist Equality Party holds founding Congress”). The World Socialist Website and SocialEquality.com have previously published two documents adopted by the Congress: “The Socialist Equality Party Statement of Principles” and the “Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party.”

The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party

29 September 2008

The Socialist Equality Party (US) today begins the publication of The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party. The document was discussed extensively and adopted unanimously at the Founding Congress of the SEP, held August 3-9, 2008. (See "Socialist Equality Party holds founding Congress") SocialEquality.com (and the World Socialist Web Site) will serialize the publication over two weeks.

Use the links below to study the historical document and learn more about the origins of the Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International, that is, the international socialist movement. Contact us for information on how to join the Socialist Equality Party (US).

Socialist Equality Party Statement of Principles

25 September 2008

The Socialist Equality Party (US) today begins publication of the documents from its founding Congress, starting the SEP Statement of Principles. The Statement of Principles was unanimously adopted by the Congress, held August 3-9, 2008.

Socialist Equality Party Holds Founding Congress

19 September 2008

The founding congress of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the United States, held on August 3-9 in Ann Arbor, Michigan, represents a milestone in the history of the Fourth International and the development of the revolutionary socialist movement.

The founding congress was the outcome of theoretical, political and organizational work within the United States and internationally that spanned more than a decade. The predecessor of the SEP, the Workers League, initiated the process of transforming itself into a party in June 1995. It shared the view of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) that the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the irrevocable discrediting of Stalinism, together with the political bankruptcy of the social-democratic and reformist parties and trade union organizations, would lead to a fundamental change in the relationship between the Trotskyist movement and militant sections of the working class and youth, radicalized by the deepening crisis of American and world capitalism.

Statement by SEP presidential candidate Jerome White

17 September 2008

The bankruptcy of Wall Street firm Lehman Brothers and the forced takeover of Merrill Lynch are the latest demonstrations of the collapse of American capitalism. All the lies and propaganda about the supposed infallibility of the “free market” are being discredited. The people of the US and the world are confronting a financial catastrophe on a scale not seen since the Great Depression.

What is revealed in this crisis is not merely the recklessness, incompetence and greed of America’s financial elite, but the failure of capitalism—an economic and political system that subordinates the needs of society to profit and personal enrichment.

Election Statement of the Socialist Equality Party

13 September 2008

The Socialist Equality Party announces today that it has selected Jerome White and Bill Van Auken as its candidates for president and vice president in the 2008 US elections. White, 49, and Van Auken, 58, have decades of experience in the socialist movement and the struggles of the working class. They are both regular writers for the World Socialist Web Site.

Between now and Election Day, the SEP will make the case for socialism. It will explain the necessity for and encourage the development of mass popular struggles against capitalism and militarism. The SEP will point out that the fundamental issues facing working people—economic crisis, social inequality, war, and attacks on democratic rights—can be addressed only through a break with the Democrats and Republicans, the corporate-controlled parties of big business. The SEP will call on American workers to reject the national chauvinism promoted by these pro-imperialist parties and embrace a program of international working class solidarity.

White and Van Auken will explain that there is no solution to the crisis of American society within the framework of capitalism. The SEP calls for the reorganization of economic life along socialist lines. The satisfaction of human and social needs, not the drive for profit and the accumulation of the personal wealth of the richest one percent of Americans, must be the goal of economic policy. Capitalist private ownership of the productive forces of society and the dictatorship of the corporate oligarchy must be replaced with a socialist system, based on public ownership and popular democratic control over the main productive forces and resources.

Notes on the political and economic crisis of the world capitalist system and the perspective and tasks of the Socialist Equality Party

By David North, currently National Chairman of the Socialist Equality Party (US), 11 January 2008

The following report was given by David North, national secretary of the SEP, at a national aggregate meeting held January 5-6 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Click here for PDF version.

1. 2008 will be characterized by a significant intensification of the economic and political crisis of the world capitalist system. The turbulence in world financial markets is the expression of not merely a conjunctural downturn, but rather a profound systemic disorder which is already destabilizing international politics. As always, the weakest links in the chain of imperialist geo-politics are the first to break. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, the eruptions of civil wars in the Congo and Kenya, and the renewed tension in the Balkans over Kosovo are indicative of the increasingly explosive state of world politics.

2. Sixteen years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, an event which supposedly signaled the definitive and irreversible triumph of global capitalism, the world economy is in shambles. The bursting of the housing market bubble in the United States, which had been fueled by uncontrolled speculative investments in sub-prime mortgages, has resulted in global losses of hundreds of billions of dollars for international banks and other financial institutions. The murky alphabet soup of financial instruments—i.e., SIVs (structured investment vehicles), CDOs (collateralized debt obligations), etc.—had been devised to “securitize” sub-prime mortgages, conceal their dubious character, and spread risk among a large number of institutions. The result is an international financial crisis which, in the words of one analyst, has called into question the viability and legitimacy of the Anglo-American system of capitalism. The Financial Times writes that “faith in 21st century financial innovation has since evaporated. The events of last year showed with brutal clarity that risk dispersal does not always prevent financial shocks, but may fuel contagion instead...” (January 2, 2008)

Stop the US war drive against Iran!

Statement of the World Socialist Web Site Editorial Board, 17 February 2007

The World Socialist Web Site condemns the military and political provocations with which the Bush administration is laying the foundations for an attack on Iran. We call on all working people and student youth to oppose the brutal and insane warmongering of the Washington pyromaniacs. A politically conscious class-based movement—unconnected to and independent of the pro-imperialist parties of big business and the political establishment—must be built if war is to be averted.

This is no time for complacency and illusions. Barely three months after the American people went to the polls and delivered an overwhelming popular repudiation of the war in the Middle East, the Bush administration is not only escalating its military operations in Iraq, but recklessly plunging towards a new war against neighboring Iran.

For an international mobilization of workers and youth against the war in Iraq

Statement of the World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International, 22 January 2007

The World Socialist Web Site and the International Committee of the Fourth International call on all socially conscious workers, students and youth throughout the world to dedicate 2007 to the development of an international mass working class movement against the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Bush administration has ordered 21,500 more combat troops to Iraq to suppress opposition to the US occupation, signaling a major escalation of a war that has already claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and killed more than 3,000 American troops and several hundred from Britain, Italy, Poland, Spain, Ukraine and other “coalition” countries.

Bush has made clear he not only intends to turn American firepower against the teeming neighborhoods of Baghdad and the population centers of the rebellious Anbar Province, he is also preparing new wars of aggression, as demonstrated by the US naval buildup in the Persian Gulf and Washington’s diplomatic offensive to line up allies in the Middle East against Iran and Syria.

Bush’s order to “seek out and destroy” alleged support networks in Iraq for “insurgents and terrorists” sets the stage for stepped-up provocations and militay incursions into the two countries.