The Brexit referendum takes place under conditions of a rising tide of social struggle throughout the world. All over Europe, the working class is deserting the old national organisations that have subordinated it to the capitalist order promising “reforms” that have never been honoured. They are looking for a more radical solution to the capitalist crisis. In Greece, France and Belgium this has taken the form of open mass strikes and protests.

The support for a Brexit—both in the form of the openly right-wing “Vote Leave” and of the pseudo-left “Left Leave” campaign—is directed against this social movement. It is an attempt to channel the opposition of the working class into the dead end of nationalism and the straitjacket of the capitalist state. The only way to fight the European Union, an instrument of the major banks and corporations, is an active boycott of the referendum and the unification of the European working class on the perspective of the United Socialist States of Europe.

Peter Schwarz, secretary of the International Committee of the Fourth International and a leading member of the Partei für Soziale Gleichheit in Germany, will speak on this perspective and the historical experience of the German workers’ movement, which paid a terrible price for the subordination of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) to nationalism in the 1930s. The adaptation of the Stalinist KPD to the nationalism of the Nazis contributed significantly to Hitler’s rise to power.

You can listen to the meeting via a live audio stream here from 7 p.m. local time on Tuesday, June 14. No registration is required.

Meeting details:

London

Tuesday, June 14, 7 p.m.
Student Central (formerly ULU)
Malet Street
WC1E 7HY (nearest tube: Euston, Euston Square, Goodge St.)