Socialism 2023

A wonderful conference, a scary time........

After the year I’ve had, of too much isolation due to injury and illness, it was a much needed pleasure to make it to the Socialism 2023 Conference in Chicago over Labor Day weekend. The conference brings together an eclectic mix of various parts of the left—revolutionary socialists, full luxury and anarcho-communists, horizontalists, prison and family abolitionists, democratic socialists, labor organizers, mutual aid and community care activists. The panels and book exhibit (organized by Haymarket Books) perform just the kind of broad coalition-building and conversations we need to be having on a wide range of interconnected issues—labor, housing, Palestine, policing and prisons, climate, disability, gender and sexuality, race, indigeneity and settler colonialism, war and militarism, the global right and left resistance. Those present included scholars, organizers, filmmakers, publishers and media makers. This all felt pretty damn good. Though the context—what we’re up against in the U.S. and around the world—feels ominous and potentially catastrophic for all species. Even at such an energizing event—hope feels really hard right now.

One of the best things about this year’s conference was the clear shift toward ever broader demographic/political representation. The opening plenary was on abolition feminism featuring Angela Davis, Gina Dent, Beth Ritchie and Erica Meiners. There were many queer and trans panelists, a racial mix beyond tokenism, a significant Native/indigenous presence, and a fair sprinkling of panels emphasizing global connections. It was wonderful to see. But it was also clear to me how fractured we also are, and how little we know about what the fuck to do right now? Though the SAG-AFTRA and UAW strikes are garnering broad public support, and there are so many of us at work building new ways to live and think, it nonetheless feels like the losses of the past few years have been so dramatic and disabling that we are at a loss on the meta-level about where we are now. After Occupy, the Bernie campaign, the growth in public understanding and support of socialism, the visibility of Native/indigenous leadership in anti-pipeline organizing, the huge Black Lives Matters mobilizations during summer 2020, the growth in anti-work-as-exploitation sentiment in the wake of the pandemic, the spread of mutual aid networks, the multiplication of genders and sexualities, the tenant anti-eviction organizing, the fierce activism of Stop Cop City—after all of that and more, the backlash has arrived with brutal ferocity.

Anti-democratic oligarchs and racist “pro-family” demogagues have hatched strategies at all levels—from hyperlocal to metaglobal—to retain power and break the backs of workers, leftists, protestors, teachers, everybody who poses a threat to oligarchy and capitalism. The long view on retaining imperial and capitalist dominance through apparent consent/collaboration/limited sharing of wealth and power is disappearing. Now we see the ultimately planet-destroying strength of short-term power mongering everywhere around us. The deceptions and delusions of the political center have been exposed and weakened. Democrats attack their own progressive wing, all the factions of the right fight over how best to establish permanent, stark inequality as the climate apocalypse looms.

Yeah, I know this sounds kind of overwrought. But looking at the photos of the Chilean coup as they circulated on the 9/11 50th anniversary—I could feel them like never before. The photo of Allende’s body being carried out in a Bolivian poncho—resonant of so many other moments of defeat and loss for the left around the world—just broke me this year. I know we have victories too! And inspiration is everywhere! But right now feels so ominous for our collective survival as creatures who imagine a harmonious cooperative egalitarian world.

I was walking around the conference hoping to hear something, some idea of how we might meet this emergency before it’s too late. I didn’t hear one. I heard a lot of amazing people working toward a joyful sustainable future. There are inspirational and strategic plans for labor organizing, cadre formation, global connections. But I still don’t know, right now, how in hell we’re going to get from here to there.