Israel has waged a settler colonial campaign of dispossession and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for decades. The violence and colonial occupation of Palestine by the Zionist state continutes to this day. The murder of Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in June and the eviction and ethnic cleansing of over 1000 Palestinians from the West Bank are the latest demonstrations of Israel's oppression of Palestinians. The struggle for national rights, self-determination and against apartheid in Palestine is ongoing across the entirety of historic Palestine.
Join us this session for a discussion of the situation on-the-ground in Gaza today, the details of the Israeli occupation, and the prospects for resistance ahead.
Guest speaker to be announced!
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Conservatives like to present gender as a natural binary, rooted in biology. In reality, gender is constructed and enforced from birth. It is shaped by socialisation in the family and in school. It is regulated through the capitalist state and broader social organisation. Those who transgress from gender roles are discouraged and punished.
While resistance and broader societal changes has redefined gender roles and allowed women and LGBTI to enter sections of society previously limited to them, the system still places serious constraints on women and LGBTI people.
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Scientists are already warning that it's probably impossible to limit warming below to below the 1.5 degrees Celsuis level that many scientists regard as "safe". If we fail to act, a chain of irreversible tipping points will be crossed that will initiate cascading waves of cataclysmic environmental breakdown.
If we overshoot these tipping points, is all hope completely lost? And if not - how can a path to environmental restoration be constructed in the face of such irreparable damage? This session will discuss the climate crisis and if it's already too late to avoid catastrophe.
Every movement fighting for workers rights, social justice and climate action needs power to make change. The working class is one of the most powerful social forces in world history. But do they, as a class, have an interest in fighting in these movements? And if so, what factors make this possible?
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Trumpism is still entrenched in the Republican party. While sections of the Republican establishment attempted to distance the party from Trump and denounce the January 6 Capitol hill riot, many of these figures have been sidelined. The 2022 Republican primaries show the ongoing influence of Donald Trump on the party.
The role of Trump in the Republican party is important as an escalation of previous conservative movements like the Tea party and as a figurehead and populariser of far-right ideas.
We'll be discussing these ongoing issues with a US socialist guest speaker to be announced.
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More details to be announced
Socialists champion revolutions. Revolutions are the stage where the most epic scenes of humanism play out; where infinite reserves of selflessness, commitment and hope are expressed by people on a colossal scale. In revolutions, everything in society - from the institutions, to the ruling class, to the people fighting in the revolution themselves - is transformed. So much so that it seems, as Marx said, that "All that is solid melts into air".
Join this session to understand the significance of revolutions, their relationship to socialism and what they look like today.
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On the internet and on the international left, Stalinism remains influential. Stalinism has an impact well beyond the crudest gulag memes and the explicitly pro-Stalinist parties. It creates a dismissive or hostile approach to the oppression and resistance of those facing the violence of the Chinese or Russian states, like the Uyghurs in Xinjiang or the Hong Kongers fighting for democracy. It shapes an approach to imperialism that solely focuses on the US, and considers repressive capitalist states like Iran as "anti-imperialist" for being in the non-US bloc.
Is there anything radical about Stalinism? Are Marxist-Leninists the ardent anti-imperialists they claim to be, or are they apologists for a section of imperialists? Why does Stalinism have a continued impact long after the death of Stalin? Do these debates still matter?
Join this session to hear a Trotskyist critique of the ongoing legacy of Stalinism, and weigh in with your thoughts.
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In response to a severe economic crisis and government austerity in Argentina 2001, workers and the poor rioted and rebelled in what became known as the Argentinazo (Argentina Uprising).
When bosses responded with lockouts, many workers occupied their workplaces and began running them under worker's control. Their success demonstrated that bosses are unnecessary, and worker's can collectively run workplaces, and run them in a much more socially useful way than bosses.
As the struggle unfolded a number of important strategy debates emerged. Should the end goal be to win legal recognition of workplaces? How can worker's build a broader and ongoing movement? For socialists who want to worker's to run society, do worker's co-ops pose a viable alternative to capitalism and a potential strategy to push back the capitalist class?
This session will engage in these debates through the radical experience of rebellion in Argentina.
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It is well known that politicians are shills for their friends in business and the capitalist class. But pro-capitalist establishment politicians haven't been the only ones to ever take office. Left-wing radicals have been elected to parliament before who have used their platform to popularise socialist politics and to stimulate class struggle. This has not been the case for a long time. But by the end of 2022, this may change. The Victorian Socialists are a radical socialist party running in the Victorian state elections at the end of 2022. They have a shot at winning an upper house seat in the Western and Northern metropolitan regions and if they do, they will be the first revolutionary socialist parliamentarians Australia has seen elected in decades.
Join us in this session to hear from Jerome Small, a long-time socialist activist and a candidate for the Victorian Socialists in the upcoming state elections, to learn about the Victorian Socialists project and explore what it would mean for the Australian left to have a socialist in parliament.
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Session description coming soon...
