New Marxist group formed at Pitt

So you say you want a revolution? There’s a new group at Pitt you might be interested in…. So you say you want a revolution? There’s a new group at Pitt you might be interested in.

The International Students for Social Equality met for the first time Sunday in the William Pitt Union to discuss the creation of a student branch at Pitt.

“We’re a Marxist organization,” ISSE member and Pitt graduate student Chris Lewis said. “We want to give a perspective to students that they’re not going to get in a university classroom setting.”

At the meeting ISSE members and interested students discussed the state of the U.S. working class.

The group explained that in a capitalist economy the goal is to have the lowest-priced product and beat out the competition, which often happens at the expense of the worker.

Lewis said that CEO elites are usually more interested in making money than they are in providing benefits and pension plans for their employees.

ISSE also discussed the US foreign policy possibility of an Iranian invasion.

“Who can deny that such an invasion would be a catastrophe for the U.S. army and a crime against humanity,” member Alex Lantier said, pointing out the heavy losses on both sides in Iraq and the increasing internal opposition toward the U.S. occupation.

ISSE member Phyllis Gray added that the same accusations used as grounds to invade Iraq are being said of Iran: that Iranians are hiding weapons and the country is a breeding ground for terrorism.

“The script for Iraq is being set up to play out again in Iran,” Gray said.

Lewis explained how ISSE isn’t for or against U.S. foreign policy and they aren’t for or against the Iraq War. They are for “a democratic movement of the masses” that represents the interests of working people.

“We don’t believe that the U.S. or any country, including Iran, represents the interests of working people,” Lewis said.

“We’re against war, but we’re not trying to fool people by saying our problems will end when the war ends,” he said, “It’s the capitalist system.”

Lewis also said students shouldn’t get stuck in a rut thinking the rigid two-party system in the U.S. is permanent or that there isn’t room for a socialist party on the ballot.

“Awareness is key,” Carnegie Mellon University freshman Nick Doiron said.”A lot of people just vote without finding out the whole story.”

Lewis discussed this idea, saying the U.S. needs an independent party to pursue the working people’s interests.

Gray explained the futility of protestors boycotting products or companies.

“[CEOs] still control the means of production and it’s like sticking a pin in the ankle of a giant,” he said. “It will hardly phase the industrial elites.”

Gray also said that big industries promote war because it’s beneficial for their business. She pointed out how Iraq and Iran are oil-rich regions that figure heavily in the U.S. capitalist system.

The ISSE encourages studying “lessons of the twenty-first century,” including the Russian Revolution.

“People say it was a failure because people are self-serving and Stalin killed millions of people,” Lewis said, “but there was opposition to Stalin and it didn’t have to end the way it did.”

“It’s not the forties with McCarthyism,” he said. “You can say the ‘s’ word,” Tony Bell a supporter of the Socialist Equality Party – said.

The ISSE is an international organization affiliated with the Socialist Equality Party. They are starting a club at Pitt to educate students about the Socialist Equality Party and to foster discussion about current issues in relation to socialist views.