Climate and Capitalism: A Public Lecture on Climate Change and Capitalism “It seems to be easier for us today to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the earth and of nature than the breakdown of late capitalism.” -Fredric Jameson “Socialists have all too often failed to take ecological issues seriously enough. However, this is not a…
“Our immediate aim should be chiefly educational… with a view to dealing with the crisis if it should come in our day, or of handing on the tradition of our hope to others if we should die before it comes.” -William Morris, 1884 Our first event for 2020 is a bit of a regroupment at…
“It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search,…
The Canterbury Socialist Society is excited to announce our first 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…
“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.” -George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier With the postponement of this month’s scheduled public lecture (Postponed – CSS Public Lecture: Solitude…
“It is always somewhat perplexing and sometimes shocking to hear, from respected unionists, a lack of concern for the struggle of brothers and sisters outside their own backyards. Such failure to bear faith and allegiance to real solidarity is what lies at the heart of labor’s inability to coalesce into the force that some of…
[Solitude or Solidarity: On Postcolonialism and Marxism] “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…
“At the anniversary celebrations of the veterans of ’51, as I mingled with those mighty people, the years fell away and I was young and strong again. But, old as most of us were, we knew full well that if called upon again, we would fight again and there would never be a white flag.”…
“No. I am no dog to be registered; neither am I a slave to be trained to fight to uphold kings, aristocrats, and rich men in luxury while the workers never have sufficient of the world’s goods to enable them to live a comfortable life.” – Harry Cooke, on refusing Compulsory Military Training, 1911. For…
As an addition to the Canterbury Socialist Society programming for 2019 we will be hosting a monthly reading group on the last Sunday of every month. This will entail closer reading and discussion of specific texts, with a focus on building a solid foundation of knowledge. As such many of the readings will be fairly…