The Socialist Equality Party (United States)

Capitalism has failed in the United States and the entire world. The Socialist Equality Party is organizing the working class in the fight for socialism: the reorganization of all of economic life to serve social needs, not private profit.

Socialism means the abolition of all forms of inequality and exploitation. The fight for socialism is at the same time a fight against war, authoritarianism, environmental degradation and all the consequences of capitalist society.

Socialism must be fought for and won by the working class itself. It will be achieved only through a revolutionary movement that has as its aim the establishment of workers' power.

Socialism, moreover, cannot be realized in one country. All the great problems confronting mankind are global problems that require global solutions.

The fight for socialism, therefore, requires the unity and collaboration of workers in every country on the basis of a common program and perspective. The Socialist Equality Party works in political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International, the World Party of Socialist Revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938.

This page contains some of the key documents and statements on the history and program of the SEP.

Historical Foundations of the SEP

The program of the Socialist Equality Party is of a principled, not of a conjunctural and pragmatic character. It is based on an assimilation of the strategic revolutionary experiences of the working class and the international socialist movement.

The SEP traces its political ancestry to the fight for Trotskyism in the US that was initiated in 1928, when veteran revolutionary James P. Cannon, along with Canadian revolutionary Maurice Spector, declared their support for Trotsky's fight against the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet Union.

The international Trotskyist movement has a long history of principled struggle against Stalinism, reformism and bourgeois nationalism. In the United States, the fight for Trotskyism was carried forward by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), founded in 1938 under the leadership of Cannon, and then the Workers League, which was founded in 1966 after opposing the national opportunist degeneration of the SWP.

The Workers League, in political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International, based its perspective on the revolutionary role of the American working class in opposition to all forms of nationalism and revisionism, as well as the pro-capitalist politics of the trade union bureaucracy. The Workers League played a significant role in many of the major battles of the working class in the 1970s and 1980s.

The Workers League was transformed into the SEP in 1995, which was followed by a similar transformation of all the sections of the ICFI.

Read the Historical and International Foundations
2023 SEP Summer School
2022 Congress Resolutions and Reports
Previous Congress Resolutions and Reports

The Congress of the SEP is the highest body of the party. The SEP held its Founding Congress in 2008 and meets every two years to discuss and adopt resolutions on party policy and elect the party leadership. This section includes reports and resolutions from the SEP Congresses.

2021 SEP Summer School Lectures

Part One

Cliff Slaughter: A Political Biography (1928–1963)

Cliff Slaughter died on May 3, 2021, in Leeds, England, at the age of 92. His enduring contribution in the 1960s to the defense of Trotskyism stands in tragic contrast with his subsequent political opportunism and repudiation of revolutionary Marxism.

David North

The lessons of the 2021 Volvo strike

This lecture was delivered at the Socialist Equality Party (US) 2021 summer school, held August 1 through August 6, by Marcus Day, a writer for the World Socialist Web Site .

Marcus Day
Recent online meetings

For a global strategy to stop the pandemic and save lives!

On Sunday, August 22, the World Socialist Web Site hosted an online event featuring leading scientists from around the world. It discussed the realistic and achievable measures that must be taken to eradicate the coronavirus, stop the wave of death and end the pandemic.

150 years since the Paris Commune

On Saturday, April 3, the WSWS hosted an international online meeting to mark the 150th anniversary of the Paris Commune of 1871.

David North, Alex Lantier, Barry Grey, Therese LeClerc

WSWS online meeting

150 years since the birth of Rosa Luxemburg

The meeting examined Luxemburg’s role as a Marxist theoretician and political leader, and discussed the significance of her legacy to the contemporary struggle to build a Marxist leadership.

Peter Schwarz, Ulrich Rippert, David North, Johannes Stern

WSWS online Q&A; with David North and Eric London

Sylvia Ageloff and the assassination of Leon Trotsky

David North and Eric London speak on the significance of the latest revelations, in the context of the decades-long Security and the Fourth International investigation by the ICFI into Trotsky’s assassination by Stalin’s GPU.

David North, Eric London
Principles

Membership in the Socialist Equality Party is based on agreement with its Statement of Principles. The principles of the SEP incorporate the essential experiences of the revolutionary upheavals of the 20th century and the corresponding struggle waged by Marxists for the program of world socialist revolution.

Read the Statement of Principles
Leadership
The International Youth and Students for Social Equality

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is the student and youth movement of the Socialist Equality Party. It fights to unite students and young people for peace, equality, the rights of the working class and socialism.

More about the IYSSE