Socialist Studies (E-Journal) / Études Socialistes
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From Crisis to Catastrophe: Sharing the Work in Challenging Times
Full text linkIntroduction to the Issue
The Worse, The Better
Full text linkI often hear students say that the reason there\u27s no mass movement for revolution is that things haven\u27t gotten bad enough yet. I argue back, explaining why worse doesn\u27t automatically lead to better. Yet, I must admit, as a political activist, I routinely emphasize the depths of the latest crisis and warn of worse to come. If the path to liberation runs through catastrophe, why do I have such a hard time admitting that? If not, why do we on the Far Left revel in bad news? This essay answers these questions by comparing “the worse, the better” politics as attributed to Lenin with what Lenin actually said and did. I make a case for seeing a crisis as neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but instead as a collection of forces fueling resistance and reaction
The Auntie Dialogues
No full textThe Auntie Dialogues is a special journal issue of "The Auntie Is In" podcast scripts. This decolonial approach to research dissemination is aimed at layering Indigenous storytelling alongside written literature. In the sixteen episodes presented in Season One, Dr. Paulina Johnson, or the Auntie, bridges her approach with an “Auntie” mentality to address misconceptions and stereotypes about Indigenous peoples and cultures and better inform listeners of Indigenous realities. The podcast does not solely look at damage or deficit but also the vibrancy of Nehiyawak culture including knowledge relating to creation stories, traditions, ceremonies, and much more. Dr. Johnson is Nêhiyaw or Paskwâw-iyiniw, four-spirit or a prairie person, from Nipisihkopahk, Samson Cree Nation in Maskwacis, Alberta. The Nehiyawak are an oral culture, meaning they share information, through stories, songs, and everyday conversations, and the podcast allows Dr. Johnson to maintain that connection to her people and how knowledge can be shared and importantly to be as straightforward as needed as your own auntie would be to you. By grounding each podcast episode in ceremony and sharing the oral narratives and her own stories and experiences Dr. Johnson is able to facilitate the learning and unlearning needed for decolonization and importantly, reconciliation. These articles are the dialogues of the Auntie is in
Hanna Jalal, York University. Sethna, C., & Hewitt, S. (2018). Just Watch Us: RCMP Surveillance of the Women\u27s Liberation Movement in Cold War Canada.
No full textSocialist/Postsocialist Studies and the Global Left: A Critical Commentary
Full text linkThis commentary addresses the marginal presense of authors, subjects, and issues focused on former socialist countries in Eastern and Central Europe, the Balkans and the former Soviet Union in "socialist studies" produced in Western English-language based academic journals, as well as the so-called "global political Left" these publications support. The commentary suggests that the gap is epistemological, emotional, and serving to protect conversations about "socialsim" from the deep critique and interogation of socialist theories, utopias, and practices generated in the emerging field of "postsocialist studies" originating in former socialist states and societies assocaited with a geopolitical "East.
Finntopia: Illusions and Incoherences
Full text linkThe article discusses the recent treatment of Finland by the US Left, criticises this from a Finnish point of view, and engages in a discussion on treating existing countries in utopian terms and the need to analyse countries as evolving through power struggle rather than "models"
Frank Cunningham’s Pragmatic Perspective
Full text linkThis article is a longer reflection on Frank Cunningham\u27s Ideas in Context in light of the pragmatic philosophy of John Dewey
Remembering Dorothy E. Smith: A Socialist Studies Tribute
Full text linkTributes by: Debbie Dergousoff, Daniel Grace, Liza McCoy, Eric Mykhalovskiy, Gary Kinsman, George J. Sefa Dei, Abigail B. Baka
Sexism and the Left: Three Case Studies
No full textMany Left organizations pride themselves on their commitment to women’s liberation, and socialist feminism is a real and important current of Left praxis. Nonetheless, there is also a long history that demonstrates a remarkable persistence of sexist practices within socialist organizations. This article suggests that sexist practices, as well as feminist analyses of and responses to sexism, have been epistemologically minimized, dismissed, distorted and ultimately forgotten, enabling a normalization of patriarchal hegemony on the Left, and producing what the late Charles Mills termed an “epistemology of ignorance.” To demonstrate this, the article draws on three case studies, spanning recent and distant history of socialist organizing: the crisis of the International Socialist Tendency and Socialist Workers’ Party UK (2010-13); the founding period of the International Socialists in Canada (1975-6); and the Bolshevik-Menshevik division in Tsarist Russia (1902-3). The argument is based on extensive original research including four decades of personal archives from socialist and feminist praxis