[Peace-discuss] Public Forum Invitation: What is Socialism?

[David Green]

 https://www.facebook.com/events/762579180539887/?action_history=null
The localPrairie Green Party and the Bernie Sanders campaign is organizing a forum withlocal scholars and activists to address the politically pertinent question:“What is socialism?”Ourmotivation extends from the current political context; from debates aboutsocialism in relation to the intersections of class, race, and gender; fromdebates about “social democracy” vs. “democratic socialism”; from debates aboutanarchism in the wake of the Occupy movement; from the ongoing struggles of thelabor movement; and from debates about practical challenges to capitalism andsocialist vision as articulated, for example, at jacobinmag.com.Thereferences below are among those that motivated me to suggest organizing thisforum:Erik Olin Wright arguesthat capitalism can be “tamed” and “eroded” in “the only viable options” inbuilding “real utopias.” He defines “tamed” and “eroded” in specific,programmatic ways.Dylan Riley respectfullybut sharply responds to Wright that “The basic problem is that Wright tells usnothing about what is still the central task of any viable strategy forwinning socialism: destroying the entrenched political and economic powerof the capitalist class.”Hillary Wainwright hasrecently asserted that: “I’m repeatedly shocked by the fact that the relevanceof feminism for the rethinking of socialism hasn’t been taken on board, andthat the Left has trudged on as usual, making its usual mistakes, pretty muchas if feminism had never really done more than put women on the agenda. TheLeft adopted policies toward women, but has not carried out a fundamentalrethink of socialism, which is what I felt feminism was enabling us to do.”Bruce Dixon, a writer atthe Black Agenda Report and an activist in the Green Party, has respondedcritically to Ta-Nehisi Coates advocacy for reparations for African-Americans:“I'm a lifelong socialist, somebody whobelieves political mountains can and must be moved. But when proponents ofreparations don't even try to discuss what the needed political coalitionsmight look like, what sectors of society we need to win over to makereparations happen, or how many years or decades all this might take, are theyacting like a political movement, or like something else? What kind ofpolitical movement advances no measures, discusses no plans, takes noresponsibility for advancing its own just cause? The answer is that movementsdon't behave like that at all. But brands do.” 
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