“The day we can’t get our hands on the ballot boxes before the vote is counted we’re done for,’ Trueba argued. ‘The Marxists haven’t won by popular vote anywhere in the world,’ his confreres replied. ‘At the very least it takes a revolution, and that kind of thing doesn’t happen in this country.’ ‘Until it…
For our 2021 August event the Canterbury Socialist Society is pleased to host a guest lecture from Josephine Varghese. Josephine is originally from Kerala, and recently completed a PhD in Anthropology at the University of Canterbury studying urban migration of young women in India. This talk will discuss the historical background of the Hindu right-wing…
“A country of inveterate, backwoods, thick-headed, egotistical philistines, who have brought their “civilisation” with them from England and keep it to themselves like a dog in a manger.” – Lenin’s assessment on New Zealand having read one book of its short history in the early 1900s. For our June 2021 event David Colyer will present…
“Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory nature takes its revenge on us. Each victory, it is true, in the first place brings about the results we expected, but in the second and third places it has quite different, unforeseen effects which only…
Some fifty years after its inauguration, second-wave feminists celebrated the ‘first’ annual International (Working) Women’s Day, having casually dropped the word ‘working’ as if to efface the ceremony’s origins in the Second International. Whether intentional or not, the omission betrays longstanding tensions between, or the so-called ‘unhappy marriage’ of, feminism and Marxism. Says the feminist…
Please note: we are working on a new schedule where “doors open” from 7pm, and ours events will start right on 7.30pm. This is to avoid going too late in the evening. “In short, it has become an article of the creed of modern morality that all labour is good in itself – a convenient…
“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if Labor had not first existed. Labor is superior to capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” -Abraham Lincoln Welcome back to the first Canterbury Socialist Society event of 2021! Employment law in New Zealand…
“Working men’s Paris, with its Commune, will be forever celebrated as the glorious harbinger of a new society. Its martyrs are enshrined in the great heart of the working class. Its exterminators history has already nailed to that eternal pillory from which all the prayers of their priest will not avail to redeem them.” –…
The Canterbury Socialist Society is pleased to confirm our second annual Fred Evans Memorial Lecture. For this lecture we invite a theorist, organiser, or other person of interest to speak on a topic pertaining to their expertise. Fred Evans was a prominent unionist during a pivotal moment in New Zealand labour history – the Waihi…
For our October event, CSS member David Colyer will present a lecture on some of the earliest aspects of the workers’ movement in New Zealand. In the late 1880s a new wave of radicalism swept the industrial world. Millions of workers joined new trade unions, socialist political parties, and the Knights of Labour, which was…