The Socialist Equality Group (New Zealand) (SEG)and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) will hold a public meeting at Victoria University of Wellington on Wednesday, October 4 at 5:15 p.m., to discuss the upcoming election, the increasingly imminent danger of world war, and the socialist and internationalist perspective that the working class must adopt. Register here to attend.
The SEG and the IYSSE will intervene in the election to fight for an entirely independent program for the working class based on a socialist and internationalist perspective to answer the descent into world war which looms as an increasing danger. We fight for the mobilisation of young workers and youth throughout the world against what is the real future capitalism has to offer the emerging generations.
None of these questions will be discussed in the official election campaign. Why? The conspiracy of silence by all the parties—National, ACT, Labour, the Greens, NZ First and Te Pāti Māori—is because they all agree on this basic capitalist program.
The election campaign is unfolding amid an historic geopolitical crisis. The US-NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, which has already killed hundreds of thousands of people, is the opening stage in a global conflict involving nuclear-armed powers. Driven by the historic breakdown of capitalism, the US and all the imperialist powers are seeking to redivide the world at the expense of Russia and especially China.
Only the international working class can intervene to stop a third world war, which will be even more catastrophic than the world wars of the twentieth century.
The billions of dollars for military expenditure needed to prosecute this agenda will be paid for by deepening attacks on the working class, whose living standards are already being ground down by inflation, and billions of dollars in cuts to vital public services including health and education.
The homicidal policies that have allowed the COVID-19 pandemic to kill more than 20 million people worldwide prove that the ruling elite will not hesitate to sacrifice tens of millions in a war to defend profits. In New Zealand, more than 3,300 people have died as a result of the Labour government’s criminal decision—supported by the entire parliament and the trade unions—to scrap all public health measures against the spread of COVID.
Throughout the world, millions of workers are being driven into life-and-death struggles against governments and corporations that are reducing them to poverty. Tens of thousands of healthcare workers and teachers have held nationwide strikes in NZ against the Labour government’s freeze on wages and the staffing crisis in schools and hospitals.
This meeting will explain the socialist strategy being fought for by the SEG that is required for these struggle to link up internationally and to fuse with the fight for the elimination of COVID-19 and against imperialist war. The crisis facing workers raises the necessity for new workers’ organisations, in opposition to the trade union bureaucracy that seeks to subordinate workers to capitalism and foments nationalist divisions.
The meeting will expose the pro-imperialist agenda of all the parliamentary parties as well as the pseudo-left supporters of Labour and its allies. It will address the urgent need for the working class to establish its political independence from all these forces by building the New Zealand section of the International Committee of the Fourth International.
We urge workers, students and young people to share this statement, register today and attend our public meeting:
Wednesday, October 4 at 5:15 p.m.
Victoria University of Wellington
AM 103, Alan MacDiarmid Building