About the ISSE

The International Students for Social Equality is the student organization of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). The ICFI publishes the World Socialist Web Site, the most widely read daily socialist publication in the world.

To find out more about the ISSE, and to help build a chapter at your school, contact us.

The perspective of the ISSE is outlined in its statement, which begins:

Capitalism is gripped by the greatest economic, social and political crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. All the scourges of the 20th century—mass unemployment, poverty, militarism and the threat of world war—are once again emerging.

This year, for the first time since the end of World War II, the global economy will contract. More than 50 million people will lose their jobs throughout the world as companies shut down or lay off workers. The number of chronically hungry people worldwide is expected to rise by 100 million in 2009, bringing the figure to well over 1 billion.

In Europe, the social gains won over decades of struggle are being wiped out, with wages falling and social programs being gutted.

In America—the heart of world capitalism—shantytowns and food lines have made their appearance. Millions have been laid off and are unable to find a decent job. The conditions of life for masses of people are becoming intolerable.

Why should this be so? Great advances in science and technology, accompanied by an unprecedented global integration of economic life, have created the potential for a new era of human progress. Yet young people confront a world full of war and want, poverty and disease, and assaults on basic democratic rights.

Human progress is blocked by the capitalist system, which subordinates all considerations to the drive for corporate profit and the accumulation of personal wealth by the very rich. Capitalism must be done away with.

The ISSE is an organization of students around the world dedicated to building a socialist movement of the working class—one that will finally realize the potential of the modern epoch, put an end to poverty and war, and lay the foundations for genuine human freedom and equality.

Join the fight for international socialism! Join the ISSE!

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