The 80th anniversary of the founding of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, will be celebrated in December with meetings in Australia and New Zealand. These events will follow powerful rallies that have already taken place in Sri Lanka, and meetings in major cities across the United States.

The keynote speaker will be David North, the chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site and the Socialist Equality Party (US), who, for over 40 years, has been at the forefront of the theoretical, political and practical struggle for Trotskyism waged by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).

The commemoration meetings will take place in Sydney on Sunday, December 2, in Melbourne on Thursday, December 6, and in Wellington, New Zealand on Sunday, December 9. They will enable workers, youth and professionals opposed to social inequality, authoritarianism and war, all products of decaying capitalism, to learn about and discuss the critical political lessons drawn by the Trotskyist movement in the course of eight decades of struggle for socialist internationalism—against Stalinism, Laborism, and every form of nationalist opportunism.

Under conditions of the deepening crisis of global capitalism, the impoverishment of hundreds of millions of people around the world, and the rapidly intensifying US-led preparations for war against China, there is no more important task.

As David North explained in Colombo, Sri Lanka:

“ … it is impossible to fight for socialism in the twenty-first century without studying and assimilating the lessons of Trotsky’s struggle against Stalinism in the twentieth century. This remains the fundamental theoretical and political struggle of the last century, of the most profound and immediate significance to every critical issue of political strategy that confronts workers and all those seeking seriously the correct path of struggle against capitalism in the contemporary world.”

The Socialist Equality Party in Australia, the Socialist Equality Group in New Zealand and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) urge our members and supporters, and all readers of the WSWS in both countries, to attend the meetings and advertise them as widely as possible.

To media representatives who wish to interview David North during his visit to Australia or New Zealand, or to speak with event organisers, please email sep@sep.org.au.

Meeting details:

Eighty Years of the Fourth International (1938-2018):
The class struggle, revolution and socialism in the 21st century

Wellington, New Zealand
Sunday, December 9, 3:00 p.m.
Lecture Theatre 3, Pipitea Campus
Victoria University of Wellington
Rutherford House
(near Wellington Railway Station)
Tickets: $7/$5 concession