When Did Socialist States Stop Being Socialist?

Join authors David Camfield and brian bean as they discuss a historical approach to abolition, the state, and how our side can build a genuinely liberatory alternative to capitalism.

Increasingly, people are responding to the contemporary crises underwritten by capitalism by exploring the politics of communism. Camfield and bean will draw on historical lessons and debates to bring nuance to the meaning of “solidarity” and clarity to what “abolition” and “revolution” look like in practice as they take on key questions on what this current period of radicalization means for the future of the left.

More on Red Flags:

Red Flags traces the path from the 1917 Russian Revolution to the construction of the world’s first AES society: the USSR. It also looks at the post-revolution societies created along the same lines in China and Cuba. Using the intellectual tools of historical materialism, Red Flags argues that they were not in fact moving towards communism because the social relations remained fixed in class exploitation. The workers were never liberated.

At a time of burgeoning anti-communism from both conservatives and liberals, this book is an accessible, vibrant synthesis of the history of communism that draws on the latest research to develop a rigorous analysis of the contradictions and uneasy truths the left needs to confront if it is to build a genuinely liberatory alternative to capitalism.

https://fernwoodpublishing.ca/book/red-flags

More on Their End is Our Beginning:

Where do cops come from and what do they do? How did “modern policing” as we know it today come to be? What about the capitalist state necessitates policing? In this clear and comprehensive account of why and how the police—the linchpin of capitalism—function and exist, organizer and author brian bean presents a clear case for the abolition of policing and capitalism.

Their End Is Our Beginning traces the roots and development of policing in global capitalism through colonial rule, racist enslavement, and class oppression, along the way arguing how police power can be challenged and, ultimately, abolished. bean draws from extensive interviews with activists from Mexico to Ireland to Egypt, all of whom share compelling and knowledgeable perspectives on what it takes to—even if temporarily—take down the cops and build a thriving community-organized society, free from the police.

Get Their End is Our Beginning: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2540-their-end-is-our-beginning

Speakers:

David Camfield’s most recent book is Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism for the Future of the Left. David’s other books are Future on Fire: Capitalism and the Politics of Climate Change, We Can Do Better: Ideas for Changing Society, and Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers’ Movement. David lives in Winnipeg and teaches in Labour Studies and Sociology at the University of Manitoba. A longtime active socialist, David is on the editorial board of Midnight Sun and hosts the podcast Victor’s Children. His website is prairiered.ca

brian bean is a Chicago-based socialist organizer, writer, and agitator originally from North Carolina. They are one of the founding editors of Rampant Magazine. Their work has been published in Truthout, Jacobin, Tempest, Spectre, Red Flag, New Politics, Socialist Worker, International Viewpoint, and more. They coedited and contributed to the book Palestine: A Socialist Introduction, and wrote Their End is Our Beginning: Cops, Capitalism, and Abolition, both from Haymarket Books.

Watch the live event recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac6I29c07N0

Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org