Vol. 78/No. 22      June 9, 2014

Reports and discussion at the conference will look at the development of capitalist production on a world scale and the international character of the capitalist crisis is drawing workers together, as the circumstances and struggles of toiling humanity converge. And how the world today is one of increasing openness and possibilities for working-class struggle.

The conference will also look at the continuing ramifications of the fact that U.S. imperialism lost the Cold War when the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, no longer able to count on a Stalinist regime to keep workers out of politics and disarm revolutionary-minded forces around the world. This opened space for workers to become actors in politics once again, as demonstrated by working-class struggles in Ukraine and fights for democratic rights in Russia.

The conference will discuss how the Cuban Revolution’s unparalleled record over 60 years sets a moral and political example the world over for advancing the struggle for workers power.

Six different classes at the conference — organized so that conference participants can get to several over three days — will supplement the themes of political reports presented by leaders of the Socialist Workers Party.

Classes will include “There Are No ‘Laws’ of the Transition to Socialism,” which will discuss how after workers and farmers overthrow capitalism, the fight for socialism is rooted in the consciousness and actions of working people carving out greater and greater spheres of the economy from the capitalist law of value. It will discuss the sharp difference between the counterrevolutionary Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the course of the government that arose out of the Cuban Revolution of 1959.

Another will be “Chernobyl, Angola and the Cuban Revolution: the Subjective and Moral Factors in Proletarian Politics.” As the USSR crumbled, revolutionary Cuba put its own needs aside in order to offer free treatment to anyone from Ukraine, Belorussia or Russia who had been affected by the nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. And it sent hundreds of thousands of volunteer fighters from 1975 to 1991 to help the Angolan government fight off the U.S.-backed invasion by apartheid South Africa, regardless of the risk to its own defense.

A third class, “Defending the Party and Its Program: Reading from Two New Books,” will take up material from Socialism on Trial and 50 Years of Covert Operations in the U.S., newly released by Pathfinder Press. These books describe how the propertied rulers in the U.S. used their state and political police to target militant workers, including leaders of the Socialist Workers Party.

A Saturday evening panel will feature reports on the international class struggle and the steps being taken to build the communist movement. The program will feature a report from the Militant newspaper’s second trip to Ukraine and projections for the next steps in expanding the reach of the Militant, Pathfinder books, and the Socialist Workers Party and sister Communist Leagues abroad.

For information, contact Militant supporters in your area, listed on page 8, or write directly to the Militant, 306 W. 37th Street, 13th Floor, New York, NY 10018.  
 
 
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