President Donald Trump’s fascist tirades against socialism show the ruling class fears the specter of revolution. “The twilight hour of socialism has arrived in our hemisphere,” Trump declared on February 18.

It is not socialism’s “twilight hour,” but rather its resurgence.

Socialism is becoming increasingly popular, but many are asking themselves: what is socialism?
The capitalist media presents Democratic Party politicians like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as “socialists.” But these members of the pro-capitalist Democratic Party do not call for mass strikes, the expropriation of the wealth of the rich, the nationalization of the corporations, the ending of all US wars and military involvement abroad, and the opening of the borders to give immigrants the right to travel freely.

Challenging the power of the financial aristocracy requires the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system. The fight for genuine social equality requires mobilizing the social power of the billions-strong international working class in a united movement for socialism.
The coming period will see the rebirth of the class struggle on a scale not seen in decades. To prepare, socialists must study the history of the workers’ movement and of Trotskyism, the revolutionary socialist opposition to Stalinism, and the representatives of classical Marxism today.

This lecture will explain what genuine socialism is.

Joseph Kishore is the National Secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (US), the US section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). He is a prominent writer for the World Socialist Web Site, the most widely-read socialist news publication in the world.