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SUMMARY:Socialist Register 21: Beyond Digital Capitalism
DESCRIPTION:Join us on Wednesday February 10th for the launch of Socialist Register 21: Beyond Digital Capitalism (Fernwood Press\, 2020)\, with presentations by Greg Albo\, Sam Gindin\, Bryan Palmer\, Joan Sangster\, Stephen Maher\, Pat Armstrong\, Hugh Armstrong\, Tanner Mirrlees\, and Derek Hrynyshyn. \nIn memory of Leo Panitch\, 1945-2020. \nAs digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades of the 21st century\, it not only refashioned our ways of communicating but of working and consuming\, indeed ways of living. The Covid-19 pandemic revealed not only the lack of investment\, planning and preparation that underlay the scandalous slowness of the responses by states around the world\, but also grotesque class and racial inequalities as it coursed its way through the population and the owners of high-tech corporations were enriched by tens of billions of dollars. Rejecting both technological determinism and facile ‘cyber-utopian’ thinking\, the 57th annual volume of the Socialist Register addresses how to imagine\, struggle for\, and plan for\, new democratic socialist ways of living after the pandemic. \nFor a 20% discount\, purchase your copy of the volume from York University’s bookstore with this link. \nThe event will be on ZOOM: please get your free Eventbrite ticket by clicking here to register. \nCheck out the Facebook page for the event here. \nTickets available Friday January 15\, 12pm.
URL:https://socialistproject.ca/event/socialist-register-21-beyond-digital-capitalism/
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20210212T083000
DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20210212T110000
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SUMMARY:Remembering Leo Panitch
DESCRIPTION:Global Left\, Marxism and Democratic Socialism\nSpeakers: \n\nSam Gindin\, Ingar Solty\, Ana Garcia\, Patrick Bond\, Dinga Sikwebu\, and Vishwas Satgar.\n\nLeo Panitch was a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University\, a renowned political economist\, Marxist theorist and editor of the Socialist Register since 1985. He is the author of numerous articles and books including The End of Parliamentary Socialism\, Working Class Politics in Crisis\, and Renewing Socialism. \nOrganized by Co-operative and Policy Alternative Centre\, Johannesburg\, South Africa.
URL:https://socialistproject.ca/event/remembering-leo-panitch/
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20210223T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20210223T200000
DTSTAMP:20260503T154406
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SUMMARY:Socialists on Social Media Platforms and Imagine Platform Socialism
DESCRIPTION:Communicating within and Against Digital Capitalism\nBertolt Brecht\, in the 1932 essay ‘The Radio as an Apparatus of Communication’\, made a ‘positive suggestion’ to transform radio into a dialogical medium for many-to-many communications. ‘Radio is one-sided when it should be two’ said Brecht. Brecht saw the state as the only entity capable of remaking radio in this way\, but because radio’s ‘proper application’ might make it a ‘revolutionary’ medium\, Brecht concluded the bourgeois state would have ‘no interest in sponsoring such exercises’. \nBrecht’s ‘positive suggestion’ for a many-to-many communications system seems to have come to fruition with the internet\, and more recently\, with the spread of social media platforms such as Facebook\, Twitter and YouTube. Socialists around the world are now using these platforms to produce\, distribute\, exhibit\, and consume socialist media and cultural works\, and they are openly building events\, movements\, and organizations within digital capitalism\, to go beyond it. That said\, the internet and social media platforms are surrounded by all kinds of deterministic\, optimistic\, and pessimistic rhetorics that cloud a clear view of what they give to and take from socialist communicators\, especially as compared to the twentieth century’s mass media industries\, whose state and corporate owners tended to filter out and vilify socialist ideas. \nTanner Mirrlees is Associate Professor of Communication and Digital Media Studies at Ontario Tech University \nImagine Platform Socialism\nInvestigations have demonstrated the ways that the operations of the algorithmic processes that select and sort information for users of YouTube\, Facebook\, and Twitter not only distribute such malicious content\, but also amplify its effects. In order to hold the attention of users\, platforms tend to recommend increasingly controversial and sensationalist suggestions\, leading users quickly into rabbit holes of conspiracy theories and extremist views that undermine attempts at informed and reasoned debate. Other studies showed that Google’s search engine was capable of exhibiting serious racist bias\, and that the platforms’ attempts to limit access to hate speech and misinformation were of limited effectiveness. \nAt the same time\, the monopolistic digital platforms are undeniably of great use to activists working for a more democratic world\, including socialists. The events that triggered US President Trump’s demands for stricter platform regulation were part of a mobilization of dissent that came to be known by its Twitter hashtag\, ‘Black Lives Matter’\, and numerous other examples could be found of activists raising awareness in ways that would not be possible with mass media. Social media empowers individuals to participate in the distribution of their own ideas\, although this empowerment is limited by the mediation of the flow of information by the owners of the platforms in ways that can have direct effects on how mobilizations are informed. \nThis makes it all the more necessary to explore the contradictions between our expectations of social media and the reality of its use\, and determine if there are ways to avoid the harms done to democracy while preserving the benefits. The purpose of this presentation is to inquire whether and how social media could be organized more democratically\, so that they allow our expressive capacities to be developed freely and not under conditions determined by capital. \nDerek Hrynyshyn teaches in the Department of Communication Studies at York University in Toronto\, Ontario. \nPDF poster
URL:https://socialistproject.ca/event/socialists-on-social-media-platforms/
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Toronto:20210228T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/Toronto:20210228T170000
DTSTAMP:20260503T154406
CREATED:20210215T053110Z
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SUMMARY:Take the Plant\, Save the Planet:  Workers and Communities in the Struggle for Economic Conversion
DESCRIPTION:Please join us for a discussion of the politics of plant conversion for an ecologically sustainable future. \nThe current pandemic crisis has dramatically exposed the need for a massive shift of new resources into the caring sector and the production of medical equipment to meet social needs. But even before the fallout for workers in many sectors from the ecological disruptions already being felt from global warming had already indicated the need for a comprehensive approach to industrial conversion. Several sectors immediately stand out in demanding an approach that goes well beyond a ‘just transition’ in moving workers from one job to another. There is a need for a more radical reworking of these sectors – transportation\, military arms and fossil fuels\, with the factories\, facilities and workers steadily re-deployed to alternate socially responsible production. Ecological strategies focusing on conversion will be particularly promising in terms of their potential to actively engage working people by offering them a response to economic restructuring that emphasizes retaining our productive capacity. We need to think through the way unions\, labour councils and communities can take the lead in campaigns for forming workplace conversion committees and regional technology and environmental hubs. We need to insist\, as workers and as communities\, that productive assets should not be abandoned at the will of the corporations\, or simply accept what is being produced now no matter how destructive the good being produced. \n\nFrancesca Hannan is an active member of We Are Oshawa\, Green Jobs Oshawa\, and the Durham Food Policy Council. She has been involved in climate justice activism with Toronto-based groups\, and her professional background is in environmental policy and law.\nStephen Buhler is an organizer with Climate Justice Edmonton and a full-time journeyman machinist currently working in the oil and gas sector.\nSimon Black teaches in the Department of Labour Studies at Brock University and is an organizer with Labour Against the Arms Trade.\n\nThe event will be on ZOOM: please click here to join the meeting. \nSpread the word on Facebook
URL:https://socialistproject.ca/event/take-the-plant-save-the-planet-workers-and-communities-in-the-struggle-for-economic-conversion/
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