Socialism 2016: Full Schedule

Visit our website at www.SocialismConference.org for full information!

1:00pm CDT

Toussaint L'Overture and the Haitian Revolution

The Haitian Revolution stands as the first and only successful slave revolution of its kind in history. Why were the African slaves successful in the most prosperous and important colony of the French Empire? Who was Toussaint L'Overture, the slave who became a military leader and ruler of the colony that would become the free Black Republic of Haiti?

Suggested Readings:
The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James
Avengers of the New World by Laurent Dubois
Encountering Revolution: Haiti and the Making of the Early Republic by Ashli White
"The Black Jacobins" ISR Review by Ashley Smith
"Revolutions" Podcast, by Mike Duncan

Speakers

Michael Ehrenreich

Michael Ehrenreich is an activist and organizer in Chicago.

Friday July 1, 2016 1:00pm - 2:30pm CDT
DuSable C

Revolutionaries

3:00pm CDT

Capitalism 101

This talk will lay out the basic Marxist understanding of why capitalism works the way it does. It will focus on why the free-market theory of capitalism is wrong, and how class relations under capitalism affect the political struggle between workers and capital.

Speakers

Jonah Birch

Jonah Birch is an activist, a writer, and a contributing editor at Jacobin magazine.

Paul Heideman

Paul Heideman is a graduate student in Sociology at New York University. His work has appeared in Jacobin, Historical Materialism, and International Socialist Review.

Friday July 1, 2016 3:00pm - 4:30pm CDT
DuSable C

Marxist Economics

9:30am CDT

Israel: Apartheid State

Speakers

Lichi D'Amelio

Lichi is a NYC-based activist.

Saturday July 2, 2016 9:30am - 11:00am CDT
DuSable C

Palestine

11:30am CDT

Marxism, Determination, and Freedom

Marx devoted his writing and his life as a revolutionary to the liberation of humanity from the oppression and exploitation of capitalism--to creating a society "in which the free development of each is the condition of the free development of all." At the same time, Marx argued that humanity cannot liberate itself through the power of thought alone: "it is not the consciousness of [human beings] that determines their existence but their social existence that determines their consciousness." This talk will explore the relationship between these two aspects of Marx's thinking. It will address assertions that Marxism is "deterministic" and assess Marx's claim that "human beings make their own history" but not under conditions and circumstances of their own choosing. It will emphasize the relevance of Marx's theoretical analysis to today's political struggles.

Marx, "The German Ideology," "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts: Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy"
Paul D'Amato, "The Meaning of Marxism," chapters 2 and 3

Speakers

Bill Keach

Bill Keach teaches in the English Department at Brown University. He has written frequently for the International Socialist Review and is the editor of Leon Trotsky's "Literature and Revolution" and of Giuliana Sgrena's "Friendly Fire," both published by Haymarket.

Saturday July 2, 2016 11:30am - 1:00pm CDT
DuSable C

Marxism

2:00pm CDT

Slave Rebellions from Stono to Nat Turner

From the earliest years of enslavement in North America, Africans fought back and also debated the best ways to resist. This talk will focus on the most militant form of resistance -- collective revolt -- including the course and consequences of some major revolts and, as far as we can reconstruct them, the ideas that led the rebels to rise up in the ways they did.

Herbert Aptheker - American Negro Slave Revolts.
David Walker - Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World.

Speakers

David Whitehouse

David is a socialist activist in Oakland. He's currently working on a book about the origins of the police.

Saturday July 2, 2016 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
DuSable C

History and Politics of Black Liberation

4:00pm CDT

Rank-and-File Trade Unionism

The presentation will explain why socialists see rank and file workplace militancy as not only the most effective trade union politics, but as integral to the long term goal of fundamental transformation of society. It will draw from current and historical lessons of organized socialists who have operated toward these ends, with a goal of facilitating discussion on the challenges that current activists face.

These are some articles on the topic by various socialists
http://isreview.org/issue/78/marxism-unions-and-class-struggle
https://socialistworker.org/2013/09/27/building-rank-and-file-power
https://www.marxists.org/archive/draper/1970/tus/1-marx-tus.htm
http://johnmolyneux.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/marxism-and-trade-unionism.html
http://isj.org.uk/the-rank-and-file-and-the-trade-union-bureaucracy/
https://www.solidarity-us.org/rankandfilestrategy
http://www.marxisthistory.org/history/usa/unions/tuel/1922/0300-foster-tuelprinciples.pdf

Speakers

Dennis Kosuth

Saturday July 2, 2016 4:00pm - 5:30pm CDT
DuSable C

Labor and Labor History

9:30am CDT

From Apartheid’s Fall to Marikana: Class Struggle in South Africa Today

Speakers

Aaron Amaral

Sunday July 3, 2016 9:30am - 11:00am CDT
DuSable C

Regions—Africa

11:30am CDT

Crisis and Resistance in Mexico

Speakers

Josefina Chávez

Josefina Chávez is a longtime organizer and researcher in the feminist movement in Mexico. She is the editor of the of the Mexican magazine Cuadernos Feministas and a founding member of the Revolutionary Workers Party (Mexican section of the 4th International).

Luis Rangel

Luis Rangel is member of the Revolutionary Workers Party (Mexican section of the 4th International) and a leading member of the student movement at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

Sunday July 3, 2016 11:30am - 1:00pm CDT
DuSable C

Regions—Latin America

2:00pm CDT

The Return of World Economic Crisis

Speakers

Lee Sustar

Author of the forthcoming Striking Back in Chicago: How Teachers Took on City Hall and Pushed Back Corporate Education “Reform”.

Sunday July 3, 2016 2:00pm - 3:30pm CDT
DuSable C

Political Economy

4:00pm CDT

The Social Crisis of the American City

From gentrification, to budget cuts, to racist police violence, working class and poor communities are being torn apart and driven out of urban centers across America. This panel will put forward a Marxist analysis of the structural forces driving the historical and contemporary social crisis in American cities and provide a vision for the type of movements neccessary to remake cities in the interests of people and the planet.

Suggested Readings:
A People's History of Boston by Jim Vrabel
The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City by Niel Smith
“The Right to the City” by David Harvey
“Lost: The Crisis Of Jobless and Out Of School Teens and Young Adults: In Chicago, Illinois and the U.S” (Report available here)
“Privatization: The Black and White of Education in Chicago Public Schools” by the Chicago Teachers Union
“Guilty of Mental Illness” by Deborah L. Shelton (Chicago Reporter)
“Chicago After Laquan McDonald” by Ben Austen (New York Times)
“A Just Chicago: Fighting for the City Our Students Deserve” by the Chicago Teachers Union

Speakers

Elizabeth Lalasz

Elizabeth Lalasz is a public sector registered nurse and steward with National Nurses United (NNU), as well as an active member of the ISO in Chicago.

Keegan O'Brien

Keegan O'Brien is a queer socialist activist and writer from Boston, MA and an education graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His writing has been published in The Nation, The Rainbow Times, The New Civil Rights Movement, Electronic Intifada, Socialist... Read More →

Kristen Sheets

Kristen Sheets is a tech worker and socialist activist. She is based in San Francisco, California and is a member of the ISO.

Sunday July 3, 2016 4:00pm - 6:00pm CDT
DuSable C

U.S. History and Politics

9:30am CDT

Native Americans and Self-Determination

Speakers

Brian Ward

Brian is a long-time indigenous rights and climate justice activist. His writing has appeared in Socialist Worker, The Nation, Truth-Out and the International Socialist Review. He has lived and worked with the Oglala Lakota on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and is a member... Read More →

Monday July 4, 2016 9:30am - 11:00am CDT
DuSable C

Native Liberation and History

11:30am CDT

Althusser and Marxist Theory Today

The work of French Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser is undergoing a revival of interest today. This session explains core ideas in Althusser's later writings--including the "aleatory" (meaning "chance" and "contingency"), the "conjuncture," and the "philosophy of the encounter." These notions--as well as aspects of the "postmodern materialism" which they permeate--are then evaluated from the standpoint of revolutionary politics.

Katja Diefenbach et al., eds, Encountering Althusser: Politics and Materialism in Contemporary Radical Thought (Bloomsbury, 2013).

Speakers

Tom Lewis

Tom Lewis writes on social theory, Latin America, and Spain for the International Socialist Review. He teaches Spanish and international studies at the University of Iowa each fall. He lives in Orlando, Florida the rest of the year.

Monday July 4, 2016 11:30am - 1:00pm CDT
DuSable C

Marxism