2011 Conference: The Fight for Socialism Today

The Socialist Equality Party, World Socialist Web Site, and International Students for Social Equality last month held three regional conferences on "The Fight for Socialism Today". The conferences were held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on April 9-10; in Los Angeles, California on April 16, and in New York City on April 30.

The first months of 2011 have seen a major growth of working class struggle around the world. In the Middle East and North Africa, the self-immolation of a young working class youth--in protest over unemployment and poverty--sparked mass uprisings that brought down two US-backed dictators in Tunisia and Egypt. In the United States, a powerful movement of workers and youth is emerging, currently centered in Wisconsin, against brutal budget cuts and the destruction of workers' rights.

There is a growing mood of resistance and opposition throughout the United States and internationally. For far too long, the interests of the vast majority of the population have been sacrificed to increase the wealth and profits of the corporate and financial elite. The economic crisis of 2008 was followed by the handout of trillions of dollars to the banks. Now, the same corporations and their political representatives are demanding that workers pay through the elimination of basic social programs and services.

As they start to fight back, workers confront the problem of leadership and organization. The political system in the US is just as unresponsive to their interests as the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain. In states throughout the country, the Democratic Party, in alliance with the trade unions, is implementing cuts that will have no less devastating an impact on workers than the cuts that have provoked mass opposition in Wisconsin. As for Obama, he is currently in close discussion with the Republicans over how much and which social programs will be slashed, even as corporate profits soar thanks to the policies of his administration.

The war of the ruling class at home is accompanied by the expansion of war abroad. After escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Obama administration, with the support of France and Britain, has launched a new intervention in Libya, with incalculable consequences. This new war has received the full support of the supposedly "left" supporters of the Democratic Party, who have done everything they can to contain mass opposition to militarism within the framework of the two-party system.

This coordinated attack by the ruling class testifies to the failure of the capitalist profit system. The subordination of workers’ living standards and the essential social needs of a modern and immensely complex society to the capitalists' insatiable drive for profit and the accumulation of personal wealth is no longer tolerable.

A new leadership must be built. These conferences will be devoted to a discussion of the organizational forms and political program needed for the working class to fight back.

The following document was adopted by the First National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US), held August 11-15, 2010 in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

The Economic Crisis and its Social Impact

The world capitalist system is ensnared in its greatest crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The financial turmoil that began in September 2008 with the sudden failure of Wall Street icons has metastasized into a global economic breakdown. For decades the apologists of capitalism have proclaimed that American-style “free enterprise” is the most perfect form of economic organization. They ignored the many signs of the approaching crisis, while the corporate-controlled media celebrated the reckless financial speculation and irresponsible self-enrichment that define the business activities and personal lifestyles of the ruling class. When the disaster finally struck in 2008, the US government intervened with a desperate infusion of hundreds of billions of dollars to save the banking system from collapse. The president of the United States publicly acknowledged that the survival of the capitalist system was at risk. The emergency bailout protected the wealth of rich investors but failed to contain the crisis.

The Obama administration’s claim that it has “broken the back” of the recession is a self-serving lie, told by cynical politicians who are convinced that the people can be made to believe anything. The reality of growing social distress is not so easily concealed. Approximately 26 million people in the United States are jobless or unable to find full-time work. Half of those counted on the official unemployment rolls have been out of work for six months or longer. This is the highest long-term unemployment rate since the 1930s. Young people, burdened with debts that they accumulated to pay for their education, graduate from college unable to find decent-paying jobs, or any work at all.

Foreclosures are driving one million workers out of their homes every year. The income of American workers, which had been in decline since the early 1970s, is now plunging. There has been a wave of wage-cutting since the onset of the recession. Millions of working class families cannot make ends meet. Those unable to pay their bills on time are treated with inhuman brutality. In cities like Detroit, the utility corporations routinely cut off gas and electricity to impoverished workers, leading to the deaths of scores of people throughout the country.

Virtually every state and local government is gripped by financial crisis. The response of the corporate elite is to demand austerity. The politicians who only yesterday bailed out the banks now proclaim that “there is no money” for essential social programs. Pension plans are being reneged on, schools shut down, and innumerable social services that are vital for the well-being of local communities drastically scaled back or eliminated. In the guise of “reform,” access to health care is being made subject to ever greater restrictions.

The attacks on the working class in the United States are part of a global process. The economic breakdown that began in September 2008 is comparable to the Wall Street crash of 1929. Now, as 80 years ago, the crisis began in the United States but has spread rapidly into Europe and throughout the world. In September 2008, Wall Street banks and investment houses faced bankruptcy. By the spring of 2010, with the financial solvency of European countries in doubt, one government after another announced its determination to implement painful austerity measures.

In the aftermath of the 1929 collapse on Wall Street, the government and the press repeated endlessly the refrain: “Prosperity is just around the corner.” But the depression that began with the stock market crash and then spread throughout the world lasted more than a decade and led to unprecedented suffering and destruction, to military dictatorships, fascism and world war.

The specter of past tragedies looms ever larger. On the eve of the Second World War, Leon Trotsky, the greatest strategist of revolutionary socialism in the twentieth century, described the world crisis as the “death agony of capitalism.” He warned that “a catastrophe threatens the whole culture of mankind.” His words were vindicated by the horrors that followed. Capitalism survived only by plunging the world into the cataclysm of war. By the time it ended, in 1945, approximately 70 million people had perished.

A new warning must be raised with all necessary urgency. The present crisis will not simply go away. There is no peaceful, let alone easy, way out of the economic and social impasse into which capitalism has led mankind. The program of the Socialist Equality Party—which works in political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International—is not a collection of palliatives and half-measures. The aim of this party and its co-thinkers in the Fourth International is not the reform of American and international capitalism. If anything is to be learned from the tragedies of the twentieth century, it is that the repetition of these horrors in the twenty-first century, on an even bloodier scale, can be prevented only through the revolutionary struggle of the American and international working class for socialism.