Join Monthly Review authors and many others at the Left Forum 2015
“No Justice, No Peace: Confronting the Crises of Capitalism and Democracy”
A unique phenomenon in the U.S. and the world, Left Forum convenes the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current predicaments, and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world. The conference is held each year in New York City.
Below are panels either sponsored by or affiliated with Monthly Review. For a full list of panels, please see the Left Forum website. And don’t forget to visit the Monthly Review Press table for a wide selection of discounted books, new and old!
Mészáros and Strategies for the Emancipatory Transition
Abstract: We will identify the location of radical or revolutionary subjectivity as a pathway to the emancipation of the truly human potential – the liberation of free creativity itself. Further, we will discuss the possibilities for a transitional framework which could be a key to de-mystifying the ruling ideology and putting forward a coherent emancipatory ideology. Also, we will discuss the potentially positive role that a vision of a future society can play within a realistic transitional framework.
Participants: Irv Kurki (Chair/Facilitator), Anne Pomeroy, David Holmquist, and Paul Raekstad
E.P. Thompson and the Making of the New Left
Abstract: The panel will explore the origins of the British New Left in the aftermath of the Khrushchev revelations, Budapest and the Suez debacle focusing on the role of the English historian E.P. Thompson, his activities, his writings and the place of these in understanding the origins of his classic, The Making of the English Working Class. Attention will be paid to the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and the journals New Reasoner and New Left Review.
Participants: Forrest Hylton (Chair/Facilitator), Jesse Lemisch, and Cal Winslow
Labor and the Left in the US: Socialist Register 2015, Transforming Classes
Abstract: As the international socialist movement forges an anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist politics, it is necessary to survey the concrete state of working class organization and politics. This panel — and the 2015 Socialist Register volume –provides indispensible assessments of the current phase of capitalism and working class organization. A critical component is the state of unions and working class politics at the centre of world capitalism – the US. It would be misleading to provide anything but a sober reading of the immediate potential for a breakthrough in union organization or a breakdown of the hegemony of the ruling party system. Yet, the panel presented here is not only careful in tracing out the impasse of the Left in the US, it is also cautiously confident that the prospects for workplace and union organization are taking a turn for the better. And that new campaigns and struggles are opening space for socialist organizing.
Participants: Leo Panitch (Chair/Facilitator), Charles Post, Mark Dudzic, Rishi Awatramani, and Jane McCalevey
The US Middle Class in Crisis: A Panel in Honour of Randy Martin: Socialist Register 2015, Transforming Classes
Abstract: One of the central tasks of class analysis in the 21st century is to take into account the way working classes are being made and remade in the struggles against neoliberalism, austerity and authoritarian governments. Indeed, the purpose here is to take an account of the balance of class forces, the old and emerging forms of workplace and political organization, and the strategies being debated and adapted. A central aspect of this debate has been trying to locate the middle classes in the class structure, its economic transformations and political alliances, as social polarisation and inequalities have grown — the so-called ‘death of the American Dream’. The late Randy Martin’s writings were some of the most innovative in probing how financialization was transforming the professional middle classes, as in the current volume of the Socialist Register: Transforming Classes. This panel takes up some of these themes.
Participants: Leo Panitch (Chair/Facilitator), John McCullough, Jeff Goodwin, Greg Albo, Liza Featherstone
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