The International Youth and Students for Social Equality is the student and youth movement of the world Trotskyist movement, the International Committee of the Fourth International.
We insist that all the great problems confronting humanity in the 21st century—war, poverty and social inequality, the drive toward fascism and dictatorship by governments internationally—are the outcome of capitalism and can only be addressed through the taking of political power by the working class and its establishment of a socialist society, founded on genuine equality.
In order to fight for socialism today, young people must understand the history of struggles of the working class in the 20th century. As part of its fight to build a global movement against imperialist war, the IYSSE is educating youth in the history and principles of Trotskyism, the Marxism of the 21st century. On this page, you can explore our program, history, campaigns and coverage. To get in touch, click the button below.
To get in touch with us, and become involved with the IYSSE in your country or area or to help build a new IYSSE, fill out the form. You will also begin receiving the IYSSE newsletter.
Student and faculty groups at New York University called a rally last week to demand that NYU lift the “persona non grata” status it imposed on dozens of pro-Palestinian students and faculty for protesting at Bobst Library one week earlier.
GMU president Gregory Washington cynically conflated the raid on two student activists engaged in constitutionally protected activities and the arrest of a terror suspect.
The pseudo-left group combines multiple strains of bankrupt middle-class politics, including open support for imperialist war, the promotion of the anti-Marxist Frankfurt School and of the Pabloite Spartacist League.
UM, a leading architect of DEI programs, is accommodating itself to the incoming fascistic Trump administration, which is spearheading an “America First” ideological offensive that falsely links identity politics with Marxism.
With around 1,500 students–divided between five lecture halls at three locations, which were connected via livestream, the gathering was the largest general assembly at the university in years.
The move to suspend and deport Taal is part of a broader assault on democratic rights under conditions of escalating global war.
The World Socialist Web Site denounces the enormous escalation of state attacks on protesters, including the mass arrests at Columbia, Yale University and New York University, justified on the basis of lies and slander.
The IYSSE calls on all students: Protest against the authoritarian police regime at Humboldt University! Defend freedom of opinion, assembly and study! Come to our next meeting and vote IYSSE for the Student Parliament!
Students have reacted with outrage at the university and police attempts to silence dissent on the campus.
The disciplining of the youth, for wearing a keffiyeh, was clearly directed by the NSW Labor government.
At a press conference called by the Tahrir Coalition, the IYSSE at the University of Michigan issued a statement headlined: “Drop all charges against the UMich 11! Drop the complaint against SAFE! Defend free speech and assembly!”
On October 15, following hearings, Ann Arbor police rescinded trespass citations that they had issued to block four SEP/IYSSE members from going on campus.
Get regular updates from the IYSSE
This lecture provides a political and historical analysis of the genocidal war now being conducted by the Zionist regime in Israel against the Palestinians. It explains the relationship between the contemporary struggle against imperialism and the international socialist program of the Left Opposition, founded by Leon Trotsky 100 years ago in October 1923.
The unfolding genocide in Gaza is the realization of “the descent into the abyss” of which James P. Cannon warned in his Open Letter, published 70 years ago last week.
This letter was sent by WSWS International Editorial Board Chairman David North to a friend who requested North’s opinion on a recent online discussion held at a US college on the Russia-Ukraine war.
The role that Snyder is playing in justifying the imperialist proxy war against Russia in Ukraine and the alliance of US imperialism with the Ukrainian far right make it imperative to investigate his book more closely.
The record of the International Committee of the Fourth International is the most powerful refutation of the lie of the “unprovoked war” in Ukraine. This timeline documents the most essential episodes in the decades-long eruption of US imperialism since the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the response of the ICFI to these wars.
This book documents the response by the International Committee to the eruption of US imperialism in the wake of the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The essays, lectures and statements are essential reading for youth seeking to understand the historical background to the war in Ukraine, and the Marxist approach to the fight against war.
Germany’s Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) are aggressively recruiting war volunteers among young people.
The growing attacks on public education in Brazil and internationally are part of a shift by the world’s ruling elite towards dictatorship at home and war abroad.
Last week, the House of Representatives voted to make enrollment in the US Selective Service database automatic, prompting a flood of worried statements by young people and parents on social media about the reimposition of the draft.
The effort to criminalize support for the Palestinian people has been especially vile on college campuses.
War abroad means war at home. The imperialist war against Russia and preparations for a new world war are bound up with a massive re-allocation of social resources away from education, health care, and social services, to war, and the self-enrichment of the financial oligarchy. The IYSSE therefore connects the struggle to defend the social, cultural and democratic rights of the working class and youth to its fight against imperialist war. We demand: Trillions for jobs, education and healthcare, not for war!
The claim that “there is no money” is a lie. In Michigan, where the Democrats fully control the state government, corporate handouts—particularly to the automakers—amount to billions.
Teachers, parents and community members in Ann Arbor gathered this week at city-wide meeting speaking out against layoffs and attacks on public education.
The banks, hedge funds, investment companies and other Wall Street parasites are raking in billions of dollars in profits from the immiseration of tens of millions of student loan borrowers and their families—perhaps a third of the US population in all.
The cuts at WVU are part of a systematic effort to divert all social resources to the war effort and the enrichment of the financial oligarchy.
Columbine High School appeared to be, at least in the view of its administrators and the county school board, such a lovely place for young people to grow up and learn. In its official profile, the institution boasted of its "excellent facilities" and "long history of excellence in all areas." Nothing seemed to be lacking--Honors and Advanced Placement classes, foreign language instruction in Spanish, French and German, and an artistic program that included ceramics, sculpture, acting, choir and no less than five bands and one ensemble. There were even "Cross-categorical programs for students with significantly limited intellectual capacity." And, of course, there was no shortage of athletics.
The IYSSE urges young people to look honestly at our society. What does the phenomenon of mass violence say about the health of modern-day capitalism?
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality has been speaking to students on the social and political roots of mass violence in the US.
As police attempted to cover up their complicity in the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, thousands of students protested unending gun violence in mass walkouts.
The American ruling elite, its politicians and its media outlets, have nothing insightful or useful to say about this most recent calamity.
Whatever the individual psychological issues which afflicted and possibly motivated Salvador Ramos to kill, they do not explain the routine outbursts of mass violence which plague American society.
One year has passed since the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, which killed 17 people and sparked nationwide protests by students and youth against gun violence.
The GEO/AFT, which is politically dominated by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), used the university’s threat to fire strikers who fail to return to work by the start of the fall term on Monday, August 28, to browbeat the student workers into accepting the university-dictated sellout contract.
The leaders of the three unions at Rutgers University want to impose the inadequate tentative agreements without giving workers time to study them.
The University of California Rank-and-File Strike Committee is fighting to oppose the UAW bureaucracy's efforts to sabotage the powerful four-week strike by 48,000 UC academic workers.
With RPI inflation rate running at 14.2 percent to October, the University and College Union’s pay claim is well below inflation.
The current strike by over 1,600 part-time faculty at The New School in New York City is winning wide support from workers and students throughout the city and across the country.
Over 1,600 part-time faculty members went on strike at the New School in New York City Wednesday morning, joining 48,000 University of California graduate student workers who began their strike at the beginning of the week at 10 UC campuses across the state.
“You have taken a courageous stand against the powerful corporate and political forces that run the University of California system,” Will Lehman, a candidate for UAW president, said, “and your struggle deserves the broadest support from all workers and youth.”
Throughout their struggle, Columbia University student workers confronted two hostile forces: the university administration, run by millionaires with close ties to the Democratic Party, and the United Auto Workers.
The COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 was a trigger event in world history. For generations of young people, it has become a defining element for how they view capitalist society. Because of the criminal response by the ruling class to the pandemic, generations of young people are being subject to reinfections with a dangerous pathogen that has serious long-term health consequences. The IYSSE insists that money be allocated, not to war, but to fund efforts to eradicate COVID, development new vaccines and medical treatments, and fund free health care for all. To learn more about the science of the pandemic and the ICFI’s Global Workers’ Inquest, click the button below.
This report was delivered by Evan Blake, the coordinator of the Global Workers’ Inquest into the COVID-19 pandemic, to the December 10, 2022, rally by the IYSSE to stop the war in Ukraine. It includes essential information about the nature of the COVID-19 virus and what must be done to end the pandemic.
The findings come as recent CDC sero-prevalence data indicate nearly 100 percent of American children have been infected with SARS-CoV-2.
The study’s implications are staggering, as it finds that long past infection, people remain at risk for a broad array of serious, life-threatening health events impacting over half their body systems.
This review will document what is known about the science and impacts of Long COVID, the lessons that should have been drawn from previous post-viral illnesses, and the refusal of world capitalism to address this massive and ongoing social catastrophe.
A major study published today found that each COVID-19 reinfection causes cumulative damage to patients and significantly increases their risk of death, hospitalization, and Long COVID.
The shocking information revealed in this study emerges just days before school districts across the US reopen their doors to tens of millions of students, teachers, and other school staff for fully in-person learning.
Demonstrating the immense toll the pandemic has taken on the mental health of young people, a University of Calgary study of 80,000 youth across the globe discovered that rates of anxiety and depression among young people have doubled since the pandemic began in 2020.
The IYSSE is the youth and student movement of the Trotskyist movement. In our work, we place a central emphasis on the study of history. In opposition to the denigration of objective truth, history and science, in academic departments, we insist that in order to change the world, young people must first of all understand it. But it is impossible to understand this world without a knowledge of history and Marxism. The Trotskyist movement, which was founded in 1923 by Leon Trotsky in the struggle against Stalinism, has emerged, over a century of struggle, as the sole continuity of the program, theory and principles of Marxism. An understanding of this history is the essential precondition for the struggle for socialism today. We urge you to explore the many topic pages on the WSWS on various aspects of the history and politics of the Marxist movement.
This book contains several essays and lectures written by David North over the past four decades on the historical role and politics of Leon Trotsky. They are informed by one central conception: That the political, theoretical and historical legacy of Trotsky remains the critical and indispensable foundation for the struggle for socialism in the 21st century.
Young people today have grown up in the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy in 1991, yet their entire lives were shaped by this epochal event. This topic page documents the response by the Trotskyist movement to the collapse of Stalinism, the false claim that the end of the USSR represented the “end of history” and the explosion of US militarism in the decades that followed.
In 2019, the New York Times published the 1619 Project, which falsely claimed that all of US history had been based on racism. This topic page documents the extensive exposures and interviews produced by the WSWS in response to this systematic falsification of American and world history. It is essential reading for all those seeking to oppose identity and racial politics from a Marxist and socialist standpoint.
This book contains a number polemical essays that examine the complex interaction between history, philosophy and politics. They provide an excellent introduction to the theory, history and politics of Marxism, which David North counterposes to contemporary anti-Marxist philosophical tendencies related to the Frankfurt School and postmodernism that dominate academic departments.
This is the speech by World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North given on Sunday, August 20, honoring the life and political legacy of Leon Trotsky.
The penetration of GPU agents into the Fourth International played a fatal role in the assassination of Trotsky.
Born on Nov. 28, 1820, Engels was the co-founder of scientific socialism with his friend Karl Marx, who was two-and-a-half years his senior. Two hundred years later, their life’s work is of burning contemporary relevance.
An appraisal, on the occasion of the eightieth anniversary of Trotsky’s assassination, of the work of the great theoretician and strategist of World Socialist Revolution during the final year of his life.
This volume contains four lectures delivered to a series of meetings held on the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Tom Henehan, on October 15, 19, November 23 and December 14, 1982.
Today marks the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of Tom Henehan, a member of the Political Committee of the Workers League—the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party in the US. We are republishing here a tribute delivered by David North at a meeting in 1997.
On March 18, 1871, the armed working class districts of Paris rose up and established the first workers state in world history, the Paris Commune.
We are publishing here the text of a lecture delivered Saturday, March 11 by David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site. This is the first in a series of five international online lectures being presented by the International Committee of the Fourth International to mark the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution.
