80 years of the Fourth International
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is hosting an important meeting on campus: “Eighty years of the Fourth International: The class struggle, revolution, and socialism in the 21st century.” We encourage students, young people and workers to attend the event, in the Student Services East building, room 1401. North is chairperson of the Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, published by the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement. He is the national chairperson of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States. There is great interest in socialism in the US, but little understanding of what the struggle for socialism entails. This meeting will elaborate our perspective on the relevance of the fight for socialism in the 21st century, and how socialism can be achieved. The capitalist media is trying to channel pro-socialist sentiment toward the Democratic Party, and to portray it as a mildly reformist program that involves no fundamental change in the allocation of wealth, let alone the overthrow of existing property relations. This is a “socialism” that can even attract the support of thoughtful and socially conscious investment bankers. But genuine socialism can only be realized by the conscious political mobilization of the American and international working class in the greatest revolutionary struggle in history. The working class must prepare itself for this struggle by learning the lessons of the revolutions and counter-revolutions of the last century. Either the working class carries out the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism or it will be subjected to fascistic dictatorships and catastrophic wars. The political alternatives that stands before humanity today is not between mild reforms or the status quo, but between revolutionary socialism or capitalist barbarism.