Revolution in America: War, economic crisis and the fight for socialism

Three years after the financial crash of 2008, the world economy is entering another tailspin. Mass unemployment and declining wages, drastic cuts in health care and other social programs, the shutdown of public schools and rising tuition—these are all part of the “new normal,” a permanent feature of life in the United States and internationally.

The decade since the attacks of September 11 have been years of unending war, attacks on the most basic democratic rights, and an ever more disastrous economic and social crisis. The terms and events that exemplify the period are testament to the disaster that has been unleashed: wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now Libya; Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, “enhanced interrogation,” and domestic spying; the crash of 2008, bank bailouts, mass unemployment and social austerity.

It is becoming clear to millions of people that there is something fundamentally wrong with the entire system. All efforts to change policy have failed. Obama, the “candidate of change,” has merely demonstrated in the right-wing policies of his administration that a small layer of corporate executives and Wall Street bankers control the entire political system.

Workers and youth need a new program and perspective. The Socialist Equality Party is calling a series of meetings throughout the United States to discuss the socialist response to the capitalist crisis and plan the organization of an independent industrial and political movement of the working class.