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

[James Kilgore]

Five male speakers, really?

James

James Kilgore
Research Scholar
Center for African Studies
University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)
Author of *Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key
Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time*
<http://www.understandingmassincarceration.com/>


On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 6:39 PM, David Green via Discuss-CommunityCourtwatch
<discuss-communitycourtwatch at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

> https://www.facebook.com/events/762579180539887/?action_history=null
>
> The local Prairie Green Party and the Bernie Sanders campaign is
> organizing a forum with local scholars and activists to address the
> politically pertinent question: “What is socialism?”
> Our motivation extends from the current political context; from debates
> about socialism in relation to the intersections of class, race, and
> gender; from debates about “social democracy” vs. “democratic socialism”;
> from debates about anarchism in the wake of the Occupy movement; from the
> ongoing struggles of the labor movement; and from debates about practical
> challenges to capitalism and socialist vision as articulated, for example,
> at jacobinmag.com.
> The references below are among those that motivated me to suggest
> organizing this forum:
> Erik Olin Wright
> <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/erik-olin-wright-real-utopias-anticapitalism-democracy/>
> argues that capitalism can be “tamed” and “eroded” in “the only viable
> options” in building “real utopias.” He defines “tamed” and “eroded” in
> specific, programmatic ways.
> Dylan Riley
> <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/olin-wright-real-utopias-socialism-capitalism-gramsci-lenin-luxemburg/>
> respectfully but sharply responds to Wright that “The basic problem is that
> Wright tells us nothing about what is still the central task of any
> viable strategy for winning socialism: destroying the entrenched political
> and economic power of the capitalist class.”
> Hillary Wainwright
> <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/hilary-wainwright-feminism-socialism-womens-liberation-england/>
> has recently asserted that: “I’m repeatedly shocked by the fact that the
> relevance of feminism for the rethinking of socialism hasn’t been taken on
> board, and that the Left has trudged on as usual, making its usual
> mistakes, pretty much as if feminism had never really done more than put
> women on the agenda. The Left adopted policies toward women, but has not
> carried out a fundamental rethink of socialism, which is what I felt
> feminism was enabling us to do.”
> Bruce Dixon
> <http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/ta-nehisi-coates-blackwashing-reparations-brand-and-last-refuge-scoundrels>,
> a writer at the Black Agenda Report and an activist in the Green Party, has
> responded critically to Ta-Nehisi Coates advocacy for reparations for
> African-Americans: “I'm a lifelong socialist, somebody who believes
> political mountains can and must be moved. But when proponents of
> reparations don't even try to discuss what the needed political coalitions
> might look like, what sectors of society we need to win over to make
> reparations happen, or how many years or decades all this might take, are
> they acting like a political movement, or like something else? What kind of
> political movement advances no measures, discusses no plans, takes no
> responsibility for advancing its own just cause? The answer is that
> movements don't behave like that at all. But brands do.”
>
>
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