The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Australia is sponsoring a major lecture titled “The fight of Trotskyism against the pseudo-left.” Nick Beams, a leading member of the Socialist Equality Party for more than five decades and senior writer for the World Socialist Web Site, will deliver the lecture.
It will be presented in person on Sunday, April 28, in Sydney and live-streamed to an online audience. Details below:
WHEN: 2 p.m. (AEST) Sunday, April 28
WHERE: Belmore Senior Citizens Centre, 38 Redman Parade, Belmore, NSW Register here
Can’t attend in person? Register for the Zoom livestream at this link.
The lecture is the culmination of a series of meetings held by IYSSE clubs at universities in Australia and internationally. They have addressed the crisis of political perspective that confronts the mass opposition to the Israeli genocide in Gaza.
Despite six months of mass demonstrations, the slaughter proceeds, with the full support of the imperialist powers, including the Australian Labor government. The perspective advanced at the rallies and, more broadly, however, is for a continuation of endless protests aimed at appealing to and pressuring governments to end their support for the genocide.
This is a dead end and serves to line students, young people and workers up with the very political forces responsible for the historic war crimes. The bankrupt protest politics cover over the fact that the genocide is one front in a developing world war, including US-backed Israeli attacks against Iran, a proxy war by Washington and its allies against Russia in Ukraine and advanced preparations for a catastrophic conflict with China.
This context underscores the fact that what is required is a mass political movement of the working class, directed against all of the imperialist governments and the capitalist system that is responsible for war. This perspective, the only means of averting the drive to a nuclear war, is advanced by the SEP and the IYSSE alone.
To build a genuine socialist anti-war movement, it is necessary to expose all the political forces peddling protest politics. That includes the pseudo-left organisations, such as Socialist Alternative, Socialist Alliance and Solidarity in Australia. While seeking to neuter the opposition to Israel’s genocide, these groups openly support other fronts of the imperialist push, especially the war against Russia in Ukraine.
Beams will explain that to understand the role of these tendencies and defeat their pernicious influence requires an examination of their historical evolution and the class interests they represent. Having emerged through right-wing splits from the Trotskyist movement, which rejected the revolutionary role of the working class and the fight to build a socialist leadership within it, the pseudo-left has developed into a new constituency for imperialism. It represents the interests of a privileged layer of the upper middle-class, tied to Labor, the unions and the existing political setup.
The lecture will provide the political weapons required by young people and workers who want to take up the fight for a genuine socialist and revolutionary perspective against the genocide and the broader eruption of militarism and war. We urge you to attend and to tell your friends and family about the meeting.