Left Forum 2013: Imagine Living in a Socialist USA Part I

With Frances Goldin (Chair), and Speakers:

Arun Gupta, Tess Fraad-Wolff, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Frances Fox Piven, Kazembe Balagun, Ron Reosti, Debby Smith, Tom Angotti, and David Lindorff

Imagine what life would be like if capitalism was overthrown in America, if we replaced it and were able to live in a genuinely socialist society. Imagine a society of ecological sanity, material abundance and social equality, a society where social relations were premised on human solidarity, not capitalist exploitation and human competition, where people are not set against each other, where production for profit, driven by private greed and accumulation of capital, has given way to production for public use. The first panel is an indictment of American capitalism and presentations intended to inspire hope: The panelists imagine multiple aspects of the new world: art, health care, housing, food, emotional life, sexuality, racism, criminal justices, law, religion, education, science and technology, women, and the democratic organization of a publicly owned and directed self-managed economy. The second part will be on how to get there from here, how to make the American socialist revolution.