The circuits of financialised capitalism birthed by neoliberal capitalism have brought us to today’s historical moment of radical domestic and international inequality and with the existential threat of global warming. Much of the world is experiencing war and ongoing conflict, including genocide and apartheid, as new powers challenge the historic dominance of the West. Unnatural disasters threaten human and other life on planet Earth. A very small proportion of humanity holds most of the wealth and the world’s resources while others live in misery. There are new, bold expressions of old hatreds.
Socialisms in all their variety matter today because they seek justice and peace for humanity, which is only possible through sustainable relationships with the natural world of which we are all a part. These struggles demand critical analyses of the unequal and ecologically destructive world we have inherited, as well as practices that prefigure a more just world to come in new circles of solidarity.
For more than 50 years, the Society for Socialist Studies has endeavoured to open and maintain spaces for socialist and allied critical analyses and reflection, among both scholars and activists. In so doing, the Society draws on the strengths, however constrained and challenged, of both historical and contemporary struggles against capitalism and injustice around the globe.
Despite often violent, sometimes murderous repression, socialist and allied movements mobilize in sometimes extraordinary, sometimes everyday struggles. Together, working people, Indigenous peoples, racialized persons, those with disabilities, the poor, sexual and gender minorities struggle for sustainable relations with the natural world, for social(ist) justice, and for peace, for each and all.
Given the magnitude of the challenges, socialism is strongest as a richly diverse tradition of critique and struggle, open to critical engagement with a wide range of liberatory theorizing and praxis, both historical and contemporary. These include but are not limited to:
• socialist feminisms
• critical race feminisms
• ecological socialisms
• gay, lesbian and queer socialisms
• socialisms from the global South
• “crip” or disability socialisms
• anarchist socialisms
• critical Indigenous theorizing and resurgence.
We gather to share ideas, theoretical, empirical and praxis-oriented, with a special emphasis this year on two critical struggles, ecological and Indigenous movements. Together, we critically analyze the world-as-it-isand seek to act in ways that prefigure a more just, equitable and sustainable world-that-may-be.