The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in the United States held its Eighth National Congress from August 4 to August 9, 2024. Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Congress was held online.
The Congress unanimously adopted two resolutions, “The 2024 US elections and the tasks of the Socialist Equality Party,” which elaborates the programmatic basis of the SEP’s presidential election campaign of Joseph Kishore and Jerry White, and “Free Bogdan Syrotiuk!” These resolutions were the subject of extensive and detailed discussion by the delegates throughout the six days of the Congress.
The Congress was an international event, with substantial delegations from all the sections and sympathizing groups of the International Committee of the Fourth International. Greetings were delivered to the Congress by leading members of the ICFI from the UK, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Brazil.
David North was unanimously re-elected by the Congress delegates as the party’s national chairman. The newly elected National Committee re-elected Joseph Kishore as the party’s national secretary.
Kathleen Martin was elected as the party’s assistant national secretary. Lawrence Porter, who served as the party’s assistant national secretary since the SEP’s Founding Congress in 2008, announced his retirement from the position and remains in the leadership of the party. Martin, 32, joined the SEP in 2014 and has been on the National Committee of the SEP since 2018.
The incoming National Committee appointed three co-national editors of the World Socialist Web Site: Barry Grey, Andre Damon and Niles Niemuth.
North placed the work and tasks of the Congress in the context of the history of the party and the extraordinary crisis of the entire capitalist system: “The Eighth Congress is being held under conditions of a massive economic and political crisis of the capitalist system,” he said, stressing that the US presidential election is dominated by two issues: “the escalation of American imperialism toward global war and the breakdown of democracy within the United States.”
This resolution outlines the features of the global capitalist crisis and the political basis of the SEP’s presidential election campaign. “The SEP does not have a separate election program,” the resolution states. “It utilizes the election campaign to develop and popularize the program of the party, which is rooted in and based on the perspective of the International Committee of the Fourth International.”
The Socialist Equality Party (US) condemns the arrest and detention of Bogdan Syrotiuk, a 25-year-old socialist opponent of the fascistic Zelensky regime and the NATO-instigated Ukraine-Russia war, by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and calls for his immediate release. Bogdan is the founder and leader of the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), a Trotskyist youth organization, which has declared its political solidarity with the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).
“It is a characteristic feature of our approach to politics that we do not respond impressionistically,” Kishore explained. “We seek continuously to root our present analysis in the historical development of the capitalist crisis and the assimilation of the lessons of the experiences of the working class as they are consciously reflected in the history of the movement itself.”
The warnings of the ICFI since the first International May Day rally have been confirmed by the eruption of the US war with Russia in Ukraine, the escalation of the conflict with China and the Gaza genocide. This report will seek to present a history of the eruption of global war over this period.
The Socialist Equality Party (US) is fighting to connect the defense of immigrants with a revolutionary economic program capable of addressing the urgent needs of workers of all backgrounds.
The defense of basic democratic rights has become inseparable from the fight for socialism, not only in the US, but everywhere.
The same process that has resulted in the Gaza genocide and the relentless fratricidal carnage in Ukraine has also resulted in the Supreme Court’s declaration that the president is a dictator, who is above the law and who is free to commit crimes with impunity. These are two sides of the same coin.
We will be publishing further reports to the Congress in the coming days.