David North, chair of the international editorial board of World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the United States, spoke at the launch of two of his books in Sydney and Melbourne last week. These events were part of a visit by North to the SEP in Australia, which played a leading role in the global Trotskyist movement for more than 50 years.
The meetings last Saturday in Sydney and the previous Wednesday in Melbourne were well attended, reflecting growing interest in a socialist and revolutionary perspective.
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The two books that were launched, The Logic of Zionism: From Nationalist Myth to the Gaza Genocide (The logic of Zionism: from the nationalist myth to the Gaza genocide) and Sounding the Alarm: Socialism Against War (Sounding the Alarm: Socialism Against War), provide insight into the global crisis of capitalism, its origins, and a real socialist alternative.
In his opening remarks at the book launch in Sydney, North placed the analysis presented in these books and the current situation in a broader historical context.
It was impossible, he said, to understand the horrors of the Israeli genocide in Gaza without an examination of the tragedies of the 20th century. This included the Holocaust of European Jewry perpetrated by the Nazis, facilitated by the betrayals of Stalinism which had helped the reactionary Zionist movement gain a mass support base. Similarly, the United States and NATO war against Russia in Ukraine had its roots in developments arising from Stalinism's final betrayal, its liquidation of the Soviet Union in 1991, and the restoration of capitalism.
North drew attention to recent attacks on Trotskyism. He cited a work by British academic John Kelly that denounces the Trotskyists' insistence that the alternatives facing humanity are “socialism or barbarism.” Kelly, on the contrary, affirms the continued viability of social reforms within the framework of capitalism.
North highlighted the bankruptcy of these claims, advanced by political adversaries from a socialist and revolutionary perspective. The agenda of the ruling elite, represented in the United States by the fascist Donald Trump, was “elimination of all remaining social reform, repudiation of the Constitution, mass deportations in the United States, unlimited powers attributed to the president… So who can seriously claim that the Trotskyist description of this era as the agony of capitalism is inaccurate?
North emphasized that this agenda, which is not unique to the US ruling elite but is being implemented by capitalist governments around the world, would arouse growing opposition.
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“We live in very serious times today,” he said, noting the immense dangers that exist. However, the globalization of production, the expansion of the working class and technological progress have created unprecedented conditions for the unification of working class struggles on a global scale. The crucial issue, he stressed, is the crisis of revolutionary leadership, which must be overcome by the construction of the ICFI (International Committee of the Fourth International) and its sections, including the SEP in Australia.
After North's introductory remarks, a panel discussion began in which he answered questions about his books posed by SEP (Australia) Secretary Cheryl Crisp and Deputy National Secretary Max Boddy.
Boddy asked why the ICFI launched its annual international gatherings online for May 1 in 2014, the opening reports of which are contained in Sound the Alarm: Socialism Against War.
In response, North highlighted not only the technical possibilities of the Internet, but also the ICFI's identification of a development of imperialist militarism after the global financial crisis of 2008. The Trotskyist movement had identified parallels between this period and that which preceded the outbreak of the First World War.
Boddy asked North to respond to claims, made particularly in academic and scholarly circles, that Marx's analysis was no longer relevant in an age of “diverse identities.”
North emphasized Marx's enduring relevance, including his identification of the “objective basis of socialist revolution”, which continued to be confirmed by current developments. North reviewed how Marxism formed the basis of the greatest revolution in history to date, the October 1917 Socialist Revolution in Russia.
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Crisp noted that one of The logic of Zionism dealt with l’auto-immolation d’Aaron Bushnellwho ended his life to publicly protest against the genocide. Crisp asked North to comment on his polemic against those who had glorified Bushnell's tragic suicide as a viable form of political action.
North drew a parallel with the 1938 murder of a Nazi official in Paris by Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager. Trotsky had been the only one to defend Grynszpan. But he explained, as the ICFI did decades later in the case of Bushnell, that such individual actions did nothing to raise the political consciousness and understanding of the working class, the only way to effect a revolutionary transformation of society.
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In Melbourne, North answered a series of questions from the audience, including how and why Trump won the presidential election, how the fight for equality can be moved forward, and the situation in Israel itself.
In his closing remarks at both events, North urged those in attendance, hostile to deepening capitalist barbarity, to become active participants in the struggle for socialism, by joining the SEP.
Seventy-five copies of the two books launched by North were sold and participants were able to speak with the author, who signed his works at both events. In total, more than $2,300 worth of literature was purchased.
