Join author David Camfield for the launch of his book new book Red Flags: A Reckoning with Communism for the Future of the Left. Andrew Loewen and Tami Gadir will join David in conversation about the book.
Red Flags offers an clear analysis of the contradictions and uneasy truths the left needs to confront if it is to build a genuinely liberatory alternative to capitalism.
This launch is a hybrid event and can be watched live on McNally Robinson’s YouTube Channe here: https://www.youtube.com/live/cmbFIPpdpHQ
About the book:
Increasingly, people are responding to the contemporary crises underwritten by capitalism by exploring the politics of communism. Some have taken a sympathetic, even nostalgic, view of “actually existing socialist” (AES) societies past and present, including the USSR, China, and Cuba, and the Marxist-Leninist political tradition associated with them. They see these states as a powerful alternative to capitalism, governed by parties genuinely committed to socialism and staunchly resisting Western imperialism. But were these societies really in transition towards a classless, stateless society of freedom — the original communist goal? Is Marxism-Leninism the political approach that should orient people on the left now?
Red Flags traces the path from the 1917 Russian Revolution to the construction of the world’s first AES society: the USSR. It also looks at the post-revolution societies created along the same lines in China and Cuba. Using the intellectual tools of historical materialism, Red Flags argues that they were not in fact moving towards communism because the social relations remained fixed in class exploitation. The workers were never liberated.
At a time of burgeoning anti-communism from both conservatives and liberals, this book is an accessible, vibrant synthesis of the history of communism that draws on the latest research to develop a rigorous analysis of the contradictions and uneasy truths the left needs to confront if it is to build a genuinely liberatory alternative to capitalism.
About the author and speakers:
David Camfield is a professor in the Labour Studies Program and the Department of Sociology and Criminology, University of Manitoba. He is the author of Future on Fire: Capitalism and the Politics of Climate Change, We Can Do Better: Ideas for Changing Society, and Canadian Labour in Crisis: Reinventing the Workers’ Movement and has written many articles on Marxism and left politics. He is on the editorial board and editorial advisory committee of Labour/Le Travail and the advisory board of Alternate Routes. He has long been involved in social justice activism, served on the executive of the Winnipeg Labour Council, and is active in the University of Manitoba Faculty Association. David is on the editorial board of Midnight Sun and hosts the podcast Victor’s Children.
Andrew Loewen has been active on the grassroots, anti-colonial radical left for more than two decades, primarily in the Prairies and western Canada. He is a former editor of Briarpatch Magazine and works for a large public sector labour union in Winnipeg.
Tami Gadir is a researcher from RMIT University, Australia, specializing in the politics of global music industries. Her research on nightclub cultures culminated in a book, Dance Music: A Feminist Account of an Ordinary Culture and her current project is about workers’ choirs. Gadir is a member of the International Socialists, and has served as a union delegate while being active in climate and anti-war movements. She has worked across five cities and three continents.
