This event will be live 
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This event will be live 
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BRIAN: Mr. President, friends, 
and fellow citizens, he who 
could address this
audience without a quailing 
sensation has stronger nerves 
than I have. I do not remember 
ever to have appeared as a 
speaker before any assembly,
more shrinkingly, nor with 
greater distrust of my ability, 
than I do this day.
A feeling has crept over me, 
quite unfavorable to the 
exercise of my limited powers of
speech.
Fellow citizens, pardon me. 
Allow me to
ask: Why am I called upon to 
speak here today? What
have I or those I represent to 
do with your national 
independence?
Are the great principles of 
political freedom and of
natural justice embodied in that
Declaration of Independence 
extended to us? And am I 
therefore called upon to bring 
our humble offering to the 
national altar? And to
confess the benefits and express
devout gratitude for the 
blessings resulting from your 
independence? To us?
Would to God, both for your 
sakes and ours, that an 
affirmative answer could be 
truthfully returned to these 
questions. Then would my task be
light and my burden easy. And 
delightful.
But such is not the state of the
case. I say it with a sad sense 
of the disparity between us
. I am not
included within the pale of this
glorious anniversary. 
Your high independence only
reveals the immeasurable 
distance between us. The 
blessings in which you, this 
day, rejoice are not enjoyed in 
common. The rich 
inheritance of justice, liberty,
prosperity and independence 
bequeathed by your fathers is 
shared by you. Not by me
. The sunlight that brought 
light and healing to you has 
brought stripes and death to me.
This Fourth July is yours. Not 
mine.
At a time like this, scorching 
irony, not convincing argument, 
is needed.
Oh, had I the ability and could 
reach the nation's ear
, I would today pour out a fiery
stream of biting ridicule, 
blasting 
reproach, withering sarcasm, and
stern rebuke. For it is not 
light that is needed. But fire. 
It is not the gentle shower, but
thunder.
We need the storm, the 
whirlwind, and the earthquake. A
feeling of the nation must be 
quickened. The conscience of the
nation must beroused.
The propriety of the nation must
be startled. The hypocrisy of 
the nation must be exposed, and 
its crimes against God and man 
proclaimed and denounced.
What to the American slave is 
your Fourth of July? I answer:
A day that reveals to him more 
than 
all other days in the year the 
gross injustice to which he is 
the constant victim
. To him, your celebration is a 
sham. Your 
boasted liberty an unholy 
license. Your national greatness
, swelling vanity. Your sounds 
of rejoicing are empty. And 
heartless. Your denunciations of
tyrants brass-fronted impudence.
Your shouts of liberty and 
equality hollow mockery. Your 
prayers and hymns, your
sermons and thanksgivings, with 
all
your religious parade and 
solemnity are
to him mere bombast, fraud, 
deception. Impiety and 
hypocrisy. A thin veil to cover 
up crimes which would disgrace a
nation of savages.
There is not a nation on the 
earth
guilty of practices more 
shocking
and bloody than are the people 
of the United States. At this 
very hour. Go where you
may, search where you will, roam
through all the monarchies and 
despotisms of the Old World, 
travel through South America, 
search 
out every abuse, and when you 
have 
found the last, lay
your facts by the side of the 
everyday practices of this 
nation, and you will say
with me that for revolting
barbarity and shameless 
hypocrisy,
America reigns without rival.
MARIANELA: Thanks so much for 
that really powerful reading, 
Brian. Hello, all, and welcome. 
I just wanted to take a minute 
to give thanks to everyone 
joining us from all over the 
world. I know that we already 
have over a thousand people 
joining us today. I am
Marianela D'
Aprile, a member of the national
political committee of the 
Democratic
Socialists of America, and I 
want to welcome you
all to this year's virtual 
Socialism conference. It's 
heartening to see so many of you
coming together today to take 
the time to learn from each 
other and
bolster ourselves for a 
continuous fight for a socialist
world. Before we get started, I
want to take a minute to thank 
the organizers and sponsors of 
the Socialism conference. The
Democratic Socialists of 
America, Haymarket Books, and 
Jacobin Magazine. I want to give
a special thank you to Verso. 
They've been incredibly 
supportive of the conference 
this year, and are streaming one
of the sessions on their YouTube
channel.
And you can find out more about 
all of these organizations by 
clicking on the links posted in 
the live chat.
This moment has made so clear 
the need
for independent
Socialist politics.
So we encourage you to subscribe
to 
Jacobin, support Haymarket, and 
join the DSA, and if you can, 
contribute to the conference, so
we can continue to make a space 
for providing political 
education and bring Socialists 
around the world to learn from 
and with each other. No donation
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share it with as many people as 
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So before we begin, I just have 
a few housekeeping items.
We're moderating the live chat, 
but we can't guarantee that 
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quickly as we're able to do so. 
With so many people joining us 
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And if the YouTube feed is 
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the
Socialism Conference website or 
the
Haymarket YouTube page. I want 
to give a special thanks to 
Maggie
Rumfelt, who is live captioning 
this event. And now I want to 
hand it over to Brian Jones, a 
long time educator and activist 
in New York City.
He writes about the history of 
politics, a member of the 
People's History of the United 
States, and works at the 
Schomburg Center for Research in
Black Culture. Brian will be 
introducing our speakers and 
starting off our discussion.
BRIAN: Thank you. Hello, 
everyone. I'm Brian Jones. I'm 
thrilled to welcome you to the 
opening plenary of the Socialism
2020 Conference. Racial 
Capitalism and Crisis. The 
crisis we're living through is 
actually multiple unprecedented 
overlapping crises of health, of
the economy and unemployment, 
and certainly of politics. And 
at the same time, we have an 
equally unprecedented social 
movement, erupting in the US, in
the form of a national uprising 
against racist police murder. So
here to talk about these things,
about these crises, how we're 
unfolding and what we can do 
about them, are
Grace Blakeley and Robin DG 
Kelley. Grace Blakeley is a 
journalist, staff writer at
Tribune Magazine, and author of 
Stolen, how to save the world 
from financial civilization. 
She also sits on the forum for 
the UK Labour Party. Robin 
Kelley is the professor of 
history at UCLA.
He's the author of a number of 
books,
including Hammer and 
and Hoe, as well as
Race Rebels. Let's start with 
opening remarks from each of 
you. Grace, do you want to go 
first?
Can't hear you.
GRACE: Can you hear me now?
BRIAN: Yes.
GRACE: Great. Cool
. So I was just gonna talk about
the links between the 
centralization of capitalism, 
the monopolization, with 
financialization and 
imperialism, and how these 
generate crises. Really, I think
we can argue that the crisis 
that we're experiencing today
is one that is generated by the 
internal
dynamics of the capitalist 
system, rather than what 
mainstream economists would have
us believe, which is that this 
is an exogenous shock, generated
by the natural environment. 
Which has disturbed an otherwise
kind of stable process of 
production. In fact, many of the
trends that we're seeing emerge 
as this crisis progresses. So, 
for example, the massive
dominance of some of the largest
firms, firms like Amazon, for 
example, and their growing 
market power, the imperialistic 
relationships that structure 
both global production and 
circulation of capital, which is
now imposing a huge debt crisis 
on the global South. And the
close links between the state, 
the finance sector, and large 
businesses. The way in which 
states kind of intent on 
supporting
capitalist production have in 
its
kind of imperial manifestations 
-- have
made available unprecedented 
amounts of
resources to support ongoing 
capital accumulation. So I think
basically to kind of talk about 
this theoretically first, from 
the kind of Marxist perspective,
we can then look a little bit 
into how this is
actually playing out 
empirically, today. So 
obviously, Marx talks about how 
as the scale of production 
increases under capitalism, more
capital is necessary up front to
begin a kind of cycle of -- a 
turnover of capital. So from MC 
to M. The fact that more capital
is needed strengthens the links 
between business, production, 
and finance, which manages that 
capital that is advanced to 
business. So you get 
financialization in the 
corporate sector. It also means 
that only those capitalists that
are able to access these large 
pools of finance can compete. 
Smaller 
capitals that can't access this 
money can't compete and are 
generally swallowed up by their 
larger rivals. Those larger 
businesses become more 
productive because of the 
dynamics of the economies of 
scale and this leads to a 
self-reinforcing process of 
centralization that's only kind 
of periodically upset by crisis.
So as these monopolies emerge 
and become more powerful, 
they're able to exercise huge 
amounts of market power. There 
are various ways to use it. 
Either they can push up prices, 
in which case they are 
benefiting from extraction from 
consumers, for example, and this
pushes up prices, but this is 
the exception rather than the 
rule. A lot of kind of very 
centralized forms of production,
a lot of monopolies 
provide goods and services kind 
of at the cost of production.
Instead, they generate their 
profits on 
the cost side and do so by, for 
example, 
pushing down wages, benefiting 
from hyperexploitation, and 
avoiding other obligations. For 
example, taxation.
So all together, this generally 
means profits are much higher. 
When these profits go, either 
they're reinvested in expanding 
production,
or if profits can't be generated
by expansion of production, 
we'll come back to that later,
then they're for example shared 
by mergers and acquisitions or 
just significant payments of 
dividends to investments. And 
these investment patterns and 
actually generation of profits 
aren't neutral. They reflect the
logic of imperialism. The 
multinationals, the scale of 
production, tends to increase 
initially, obviously, in the 
capitalist core. This is where 
the capitalist system initially 
kind of takes hold, and these 
body national that's merge in 
the core are able
to grow up in these countries 
and spread their tentacles all 
over the world and in doing so 
are able to extract value from 
the periphery, which then
upsets the development of 
capitalism in those other 
economies. That's the first 
process that Marxists talk about
frequently. In the era of 
financial globalization, we're 
also seeing a second form of 
imperialism, which is a form 
where even the capital that is 
generated 
in the periphery flows out of 
the global South and into the 
financial systems of the global 
North,
often via tax havens, and this 
kind of 
completes this imperialistic 
circuit of capital. And of 
course, when you think about how
these profits are generated,
large international monopolies 
that provide
goods and services at kind of no
cost to consumers, for example, 
the big tech monopolies, where 
do they generate their profits? 
If it's a firm like Apple, that 
generates most of its
profits from commodity 
production, hyperexploitation 
further down the value chain 
facilitates higher wages for 
workers in the core, but it's 
also
the ways in which this capital 
is reinvested
, reflect the logic of 
imperialism as well. What we're 
increasingly seeing today is the
profits of large multinational 
corporations being used to buy 
up other assets, so this is a 
kind of
-- the epitome of 
financialization, in that
many of these large corporations
are effectively acting like
financial institutions in that 
they're
using their own profits to buy 
up assets in different parts of 
the world, and that also 
reflects the logic of 
imperialism. And of course, many
of these profits stem from the 
reduction in tax liabilities 
associated with the ease with 
which these companies are able 
to avoid taxation.
So these dynamics of 
imperialism, financialization, 
and monopolization create 
tendencies towards crisis. Over 
the long term, there is this 
structural trend, which is as 
the scale of production 
increases, the amount of labor 
used in the production process 
falls, which creates huge 
structural issues at the level 
of the global economy, and we're
seeing that today. Where 
actually the global labor forces
according to the International 
Labor Organization is actually 
shrinking, which is pushing a 
lot of the workers
in the periphery into the 
euphemistically termed "informal
sector", and also creating all
sorts of pressures on waged 
workers in the periphery. As 
well as to a certain extent on 
workers at the core as well. But
there are also periodic crises 
that are associated with these 
cycles of investment, the 
business cycles. And especially 
when there's lots of profits, 
when there are a lot of profits 
being generated, not a lot of 
new investment opportunities. 
And that
that's sort of exactly the point
at which we found ourselves when
the pandemic hit. We had a 
decade of stagnation in the 
global economy. Really the only 
thing that had kind of
brought the global economy back 
to 
-- well, facilitated their 
recovery -- was a stimulus 
program introduced by China, in 
the wake of the financial 
crisis. And that had really 
driven a lot of the growth that 
we had seen in the ten years 
since then. Because in the core,
we had stagnant productivity, 
low levels of investment, high 
levels of debt, which were 
dragging down on demand, and the
only thing that was really 
keeping these economies going 
was the state providing huge 
amounts of support to the 
finance sector, and indirectly 
to businesses through
constitutive easing.
And productivity stagnating, 
wages alongside it stagnating, 
globalization also is slowing, 
so after the kind of 
infiltration
of markets was associated with 
previous ways of globalization
-- came to an end, and as 
certain economies have kind of 
been able to, through pursuing a
development path, associated 
with the significant increase in
state investment, countries like
China, as they kind of 
developed, that has been this 
problem of where can capitalists
-- where can capital expand into
? Where are the new markets? 
That can be subjected to this 
logic of imperialism? And 
increasingly, it is looking as 
though those 
new potential markets, the kind 
of new
bricks and new mints are not as 
obvious. And that's, again, 
creating a kind of structural
constraint on the investment 
opportunities available. So we 
have
this coincidence of very high 
profits, of a finance sector
which is consolidating these 
profits, and is seeking out -- 
constantly seeking out 
investment opportunities. 
Reinforced by a state which is 
putting more and more money into
that system, in the same way, 
with a lack of avenues for 
profitable investment. That is 
the perfect situation for a 
crisis to emerge, and even 
indeed before
the pandemic, there were a lot 
of economists predicting that we
would be entering a global 
recession within the next few 
years. Indeed, I wrote a long 
article
last year, saying that we would 
be heading for a recession 
within the next few years. This 
has to
do with, again, the absence of 
investment opportunities, the 
stagnation of productivity, 
combined with the huge amounts 
of capital that we're seeking 
out, profitable investment 
opportunities, and also combined
with the massive increase in 
debt that we've seen over the 
last ten years. So both private 
debt, household debt, and 
corporate debt, which had become
very, very significant. 
Particularly in the American 
economy.
By the time the coronavirus 
pandemic hit. So really, however
you
look at the kind of economic 
stagnation that we're going 
through now -- of course, a lot 
of it has
to do with the fact that the 
economies have been shut down, 
as a result of the necessities 
of lockdown. But actually the 
fact that we're not
going to experience this 
V-shaped recession, the fact 
that things aren't going to just
go back to normal, whatever 
normal looked like in the 
context of the kind of secular 
crisis that we find
ourselves in now, that fact 
emerges from the inherent 
contradictions of the
kind of financialized, 
monopolized, imperialistic 
system that we are living under 
today.
And the kind of contradictions 
and problems that we will be 
left with, when this crisis 
ends, so, again, extremely high 
levels of personal debt, high 
levels of corporate debt, low 
levels of productivity, and 
perhaps most crucially,
a massive debt crisis in the 
global South, which at the
moment has not been dealt with, 
at all, really. These things are
going to come together and give 
us
probably a very severe 
depression along the lines of 
what we saw last in the 1930s.
And times like this, where not 
only are
you seeing periodic frequent 
severe
crises, but when even the 
recovery is simply characterized
by deep stagnation, these are 
the kinds
when you really begin to see 
levels of social unrest that you
were very unlikely to see in the
period, say, preceding the 
financial crisis. And what I 
will say, just closing, and 
perhaps we can talk about this 
more in the
discussion, is that the 
withdrawal of support for the 
status quo associated with this
period of crisis does not 
necessarily benefit the Left, as
we know. It can benefit the 
Left, if we're aware of these 
trends, able to understand them,
explain them, and therefore 
provide solutions. But we have 
seen -- and particularly we've 
seen over the last ten years -- 
that it is much easier for the 
Right to
build very simplistic, 
nationalistic, xenophobic 
narratives to explain the 
decline in living standards 
associated with this form of 
capitalism. So, you know, 
hopefully we are better 
prepared, we are better 
organized, in order to explain 
the dynamics of this crisis.
But whilst it is important for 
us to understand that we are 
living in an age of unique 
opportunities, we also have to 
be able to organize in order to 
take advantage of them. There is
no natural link between
capitalist crisis and the 
emergence of Socialism.
BRIAN: Thank you, Grace. As you 
said, before we have some time 
for discussion, let's also get
opening remarks from Robin DG 
Kelley.
ROBIN: Thank you, Brian. Thank 
you, Grace. The last word you 
said were very important for 
what I want to talk about. That 
there's no organic relationship 
between capitalist crisis and 
Socialism. 
And by the way, I've always 
wondered if
Frederick Douglass was ever 
invited back to give a speech to
the Ladies Anti-Slavery Society 
in Rochester. Because you may 
not want to invite me back after
I've finished what I want to 
say. I'm asked to speak about 
working class responses 
historically to crisis. And it's
a very complicated question, 
because it's sort of premised on
the idea that there is a single 
working class that experiences 
crises together. In totality. 
But if we are to 
acknowledge the combined and 
uneven development of capitalism
as a system, we also have to 
acknowledge
how race and gender unevenly 
structure the character of 
exploitation. That is to say: 
That capitalism operates through
racial projects. Racial projects
that assign differential value 
to human life and labor. And to 
put it simply, there are 
segments of the working class 
that experience crises when 
others do not. And there are 
some segments that are 
experiencing forms of crises all
the time. So if we begin with 
1919, the Red Summer, the period
that a lot of us on the
Left love to romanticize about. 
Besides the fact that we're 
talking about the immediate
post-war economic downturn, this
is a period marked by the end of
the terrible pandemic, 1918. The
end of what was essentially a 
war over colonies. A war that 
also brought the collapse of the
secondary national
, the working class fought and 
died over nations, to protect
empires, often led by and 
encouraged by Social Democrats, 
a tiny segment of that class 
with the exception of
the Russian Revolution, which 
I'll say something about... 
Actually went to jail because
they held onto the 
Internationalist Socialist idea.
There was the Russian 
Revolution, which birthed the 
Third International, today 
probably the most consequential 
International in history. And 
yes, come back to the United 
States, and we see all these 
promising moments. The
Seattle General Strike, the 
Great Steel Strike in 1919, the 
birth of a Communist movement in
the US, the weak and divided -- 
it just erupted. But let me 
point out two things, more about
this period.
One, that the largest workers' 
revolts in this period of 1919 
were not necessarily in Europe, 
but also in the colonies. And 
I'll talk about that. Places 
like Trinidad, Johannesburg. 
Also, in this country,
Red Summer meant vicious racial 
violence. Outright massacres of 
Black
workers, perpetrated often by 
White working people. 
Charleston, Cleveland,
Longview Texas, Chicago, 
Knoxville, Washington, D.C., 
before East St.
Louis in 1917, after Tulsa. And 
this is the high point of Black 
Radicalism. You have the 
formation of groups like the 
African Blood Brotherhood, and 
various Black Socialism 
organizations, but the potential
for a truly revolutionary 
movement in the Red Summer of
1919 was demolished not simply 
by a Mitchell Palmer or 
repression or capital, but 
demolished in part by White 
working class support for White 
supremacy.
By racial
racial pogroms, by the growth of
the Klan. So let me talk about a
couple other moments. The 
official end of Reconstruction 
in the United States occurs in 
1877, which is also the year of 
the Great Railroad Strike. One 
of the moments where people 
thought of St. Louis or 
Cincinnati as like the Paris 
Commune. The great Black 
Socialist
Peter H Clark was one of the 
leaders of these strikes. 
There's a flourishing movement 
in
the South after 1877 of 
biracial, multiracial working 
class movements. The Knights of 
Labor. But it collapsed with the
triumph of white supremacy, 
through the consolidation of 
White supremacy, through 
disfranchisement, lynching, the 
violent crushing of the last 
vestiges of Indian sovereignty, 
imperial rule in Hawaii, the 
Philippines, Puerto Rico, and 
the decade of the 1890s is a 
decade beset with recession and 
repression.
If you go back to the 1930s, our
favorite time, the period we 
tend to romanticize -- the Left.
I wrote about the '30s. The 
heyday of working class 
interracial radicalism. But 
there are three things we need 
to remember about that moment. 
One, what made the Communist 
Party different -- because the 
Communist Party was the most 
vibrant, successful Left 
formation in the '30s -- what 
made them different than any 
other Socialist party in history
up to that point, up to that 
point, was that they made 
antiracism central to their 
agenda.
They refused to treat Black 
workers or Brown workers or 
Indigenous workers as just any 
kind of worker.
And they actually refused at 
least initially to forgive the 
racism of White workers. 
Secondly, and this is tied to 
this, the biggest mobilizations 
didn't necessarily center around
issues like relief or jobs. But 
in 
defense of the Scottsboro Nine, 
the Scottsboro Boys. The 1930s 
was also characterized not just 
by multiracial insurgecies 
against capital. It was also
characterized by a rise in 
fascism that drew on segments of
the White working class. They 
may have taken names like
the Black Shirts or the American
Nazi Party, but these were 
American fascists, and they were
home grown. The Klan, the White 
Legion or American Legion. I
love this quote by Barbara 
Herndon. The fascists were no 
fools. They understood the 
psychology of their victims. The
appeal was irresistible. It went
something like this. Run the 
niggers back to the country they
came from. Africa. They steal 
the jobs away from us White men,
because they lower wages. Our 
motto is, therefore, America for
Americans. Okay? One last 
example I want to give is to 
jump to the '60s and '70s. The 
'70s, of course, we know as one 
of the periods of the great 
global slump. Another period of 
crisis. But we get nostalgic 
about this period, because it 
is, also, again characterized by
multiracial working class 
rebellion. I mean, this is a 
period of the Black Panthers, 
and the Peace and Freedom Party,
the period of Fred 
Hampton and the Rainbow 
Coalition, radical feminism 
building across lines of race 
and national difference. This 
is the period of the New Left 
where they had an epiphany. That
it not only had to embrace 
Marxism, but work in factories. 
This is also the period of one 
of the greatest strike waves in 
American history in the early 
1970s, all during the worst 
global slump since the '30s. But
let me remind you of two very 
important developments.
First, the League of 
Revolutionary Black Workers was 
born out of the Wild Cat 
Strikes, 1968. Of Black workers 
in Detroit's auto industry.
The Dodge Revolutionary Union 
Movement,
Ford Revolutionary Union 
Movement, et cetera.
They developed the most 
socialist, antiimperialist, 
antiracist movement in history. 
It emphasized workers' control. 
Out of this group emerged the 
Black Workers Congress, and the 
same thing can be said. Except 
that they saw in a strategy 
demanding reparations as a way 
to build a revolutionary
Black working class insurgency, 
to
weaken capital, and the state's 
legitimacy, and to build 
alliances with other progressive
movements. So what happened? On 
every front, a significant
segment of White workers along 
with the ruling classes and the 
neoliberal
Rainbow Coalition junior 
partners,
Black and Brown elected 
officials, and others, defeated 
them. It did not support -- they
did so with support for a 
repressive apparatus of the 
state, which had been working 
overtime to put revolutionaries 
in prison. This was then 
followed by the rebirth of the 
Klan in the '70s. Its base, 
incidentally, starts out in 
prisons, with prison guards. 
Something just to keep in mind
. And we see a series of
shootings and home and church 
burnings and
lynchings in the '70s, and '80s,
which brings us to the 
Greensboro massacre. In closing 
here, I'm not saying that White 
workers supported these 
reactionary movements -- all of 
them. But this was a period of 
backlash. Deepened by economic 
crisis, into the 1980s. And the 
consolidation of neoliberalism
, which of course hit the Third 
World much harder, thanks to a 
huge hike in interest rates
, thanks to IMF and World Bank 
austerity measures, and all of 
this leading to a global debt 
crisis. At home, we get 
anti-affirmative action,
anti-immigrant organizing,
anti-tax movement, which helped 
keep the White suburban dream 
afloat for some. Not everyone. 
And to preserve some wealth 
accumulation for a segment of 
the White working class. As 
Black and Brown workers in 
cities experienced defunding. 
They experienced capital flight.
The disappearance of living wage
jobs. The defunding of services.
And the investment in police. So
they
had don't divest, invest 
experiences. Now, I'm not trying
to dampen the excitement for the
current rebellion and 
possibilities for struggle for a
Socialist future. Nor am I 
blanketly condemning White 
workers.
But if we -- and this is my 
inspiration for this. If I have 
to read another article
chastising Black Lives Matter 
and other Black-led
antiracist movements for not 
being sufficient
anticapitalist, or calling
on them to embrace a new 
humanism and rise out of their 
identity saddles, I'm gonna 
scream. The movement for Black 
Lives has been uncompromisingly 
anticapitalist and 
proSocialist from its inception.
August 28. Check out the Black 
Nationalist Convention. They're 
gonna
be unfolding the boldest 
political platform that we've 
seen. Our movement has to 
historically deal with its 
Whiteness problem. And while I 
see promising signs, we still 
have a long way to go.
Because white supremacy 
continues to rule. A 
revolutionary working class 
movement needs to 
attack white supremacy and 
patriarchy directly. Not treat 
these as obstacles to class 
consciousness. We need to 
embrace the Wobbly principle of:
An injury to one is an injury to
all, which I take to mean that 
we build around any segment of 
the working class, of working 
people in crisis, even as other 
segments may experience periods 
of stability and growth. We need
a working class movement 
dedicated to the abolition of 
the police. And the military. 
And
that includes recognizing police
unions as company unions. I'm so
tired of this hand wringing 
about... Well, we can't 
undermine unions, even police 
unions. Police unions work for 
corporations. Those corporations
are called Target, Amazon. 
That's what police do. And they
're company unions. The labor 
movement has a history of 
fighting company unions before. 
And so we need to recognize it 
as such. We need a working class
movement that makes
as essential the man the
recognition
an essential demand the 
recognition of Indigenous 
sovereignty. Let me say one 
thing. What makes this
moment exciting for me is not
the discernible presence of 
White people in the streets. I'm
very excited about that. But I 
would make the argument that 
we've seen them in the streets 
before. Rather, what makes this 
moment exciting is that millions
and millions are taking to the 
streets behind a radical banner.
A radical abolitionist banner. 
One that calls for abolishing 
the police and prisons. Shifting
those resources to housing, 
universal health care, living 
wage jobs, universal basic 
income, green energy, and a 
system of restorative justice. 
This may not
be new, but the fact that these 
proposals are sort of taking new
flight across the board -- 
that's what matters.
And I think that we have to push
beyond
this imagined sort of future in 
which the system of capitalism 
just kind of collapse, without 
actually thinking about what 
we're gonna build and what are 
the structures of domination, 
repression, exploitation, that 
may not look like
the way 19th Century Marxists 
thought they looked. And I'll 
stop there. Thank you.
BRIAN: Wow. That was brilliant. 
Both of you. Thanks. So much to 
chew on there. I guess I'd like 
to throw the first question to 
you, Grace. About thinking back 
to what you were
saying about the crisis pre-
dating the pandemic. I think 
there's a lot of people who feel
like... Well, I'm out of work. 
I'm struggling to feed myself.
And then people who are working 
are risking their lives in those
jobs.
And those Instacart and delivery
and Amazon and this whole 
organization of 
hyperexploitation that you were 
describing -- but you're also 
saying that the state is 
propping up capital in this 
moment. And using its power to 
do that. And it seems to me that
we're also trying to make 
demands of the state, to 
redistribute goods, to take care
of people, for health and 
housing. And schools. How do you
see this dynamic with the 
state and capital playing out in
the near future? And what kinds 
of things do you think we should
be demanding?
GRACE: Yeah. Muted again, sorry.
This is a question that I think 
is coming up all the time now. 
In the
context of -- not the
defeat, but let's say the 
retrenchment associated with the
end
of the Corbin and Sanders 
moments in the US and the UK. A 
lot of people are looking back 
over the last four or five years
and thinking... Well, the way 
that the Left interacted with 
the state was hopelessly naive. 
We failed to develop an adequate
account for the capitalist 
state. I think that's certainly 
true in the UK, where the focus 
of our energy was so much on 
this question of austerities, 
and the fact that we had these 
severe state cuts to public 
services, and even in the UK, 
that was associated with, again,
the leader of the opposition 
saying there have been cuts to 
police. That hasn't been good 
for you, has it, working class 
people? Therefore vote Labour. 
So it's this very confused 
understanding of what the 
capitalist state actually was, 
and all of our demands were 
centered on state, give us more 
things. Right? And so as soon as
this pandemic hit, suddenly 
there was this huge amount of 
confusion. Because people see 
the state doing a huge amount.
You know, the state supporting 
workers'
wages, supporting businesses, 
spending money in a way we were 
told was impossible. And they 
say... Wow. You know. Clearly we
won the argument, and everything
is great now. And of course, the
fact is that we were making the 
wrong argument to begin with. So
coming back to the thing you 
said at the beginning, which is 
that people are kind of out of 
work, and a lot of people are 
really, really suffering. That 
is absolutely true, and the 
level of suffering that working 
people will be facing not just 
now, but probably over the 
course of the next two years, 
unemployment is likely to stay 
very high. In many countries, 
over the course of the next 
couple of years... It's going to
be huge. Unseen since probably 
the '70s and '80s. And then you 
compare that with the fact that 
in many states in the Global 
South, governments are being 
forced to choose between 
servicing 
debt to creditors, and
if they fail, being forced to 
default and shut out of global 
capital markets, or purchasing 
the basic equipment they need in
order to fight the pandemic. So 
all around the world, this is 
going to be a time of very 
severe contraction
in people's incomes. But it's 
also important to bear in mind 
that this is part of a longer 
trend. So particularly in the 
global North, where you've seen 
for the last 40 years a 
stagnation, really, in earnings,
so in the US, the average 
American worker is only as well 
off in purchasing power parity 
terms as they were in 1979. In 
the UK, we've had the longest 
period of
wage stagnation since the 
Napoleonic Wars. We also have a 
trend saying that the global 
labor force is shrinking, an 
increasing number of people in 
the global South being forced 
into informal
employment, the rise in debt, 
and the associated constraints 
that imposes on people. So this 
is a part of a much longer 
trend. It's a trend that the 
state supported. Now, the 
difference is that today the 
level of 
suffering that working class 
people
are going through is potentially
a threat to the integrity of the
capitalist system as a whole. 
And as a result, the state is 
stepping in to support working 
people's incomes. So that they 
can pay their bills, so that 
they can repay their debts. So 
that they can keep capital 
circulating, basically. And of 
course, this is only happening 
for the world's consumers of 
last resort, which are in the 
global North. The people whose 
inflated wages are supported by 
hyperexploitation further down 
the value chain. People in the 
global South are obviously not 
being supported in the same way 
with welfare and income support.
So it's very much targeted at 
retaining the stability of the 
capitalist system. And you can 
definitely see that when you 
just look at the
level of cash that is being 
thrown at the corporate and 
financial sector. At the moment.
It's truly staggering. It really
does
defy the predictions of
even people who were less 
sanguine about the relationship 
between capital and the state. 
It has been truly astonishing to
see the Federal Reserve 
basically say: We will create 
unlimited amounts of money to 
support the needs of capital. 
This has been a bit of a moment
of clarity, in terms of being 
able to see those links much
more clearly, and understand the
role
played by capitalist -- the 
support provided by the state to
working people throughout the 
course of the economic cycle -- 
is very much aimed at supporting
the interests of capital, rather
than those of workers. So then 
coming back to your question, 
which is: How do we interact 
with the state, knowing all 
these things? I mean, this is a 
really difficult
and as-yet, I think, unresolved 
issue on the Left. Because there
are those who say: A capitalist 
state is a capitalist state. 
There is no way of reforming it.
We can only overthrow it. In 
case the only route for 
Socialism is revolutionary 
Socialism, which is contrary to 
the Democratic Socialist angle 
that we've been going down for 
the last five years. And that of
course the rise of Democratic 
Socialism represents a reversion
of the
historical trend, where 
neoliberalism, the declining 
electoral significance of 
Socialism, was associated
with a kind of move towards kind
of low level protest politics, 
by many people on the Left, and 
a fragmentation of the Left into
an electoral arm, a NGO arm, and
a more radical, protest-based 
arm. A lot of those movements 
were brought together through 
this movement for Democratic 
Socialism. There's a danger now 
that they will kind of break up 
again. Into their various 
different component parts, based
on their attitude towards the 
state. 
Now, whilst I'm not
particularly -- you know, I 
don't think that the state is 
neutral. I don't think that 
Socialists can kind 
of hope for electoral victories
that allow them to change the 
relations of production by using
the levers of power given to 
them by the capitalist state in 
order to bring about Socialism. 
What I do think is that if we 
lose that orientation towards 
state power, it really does harm
the areas of the movement that 
are maybe not focused on the 
acquisition of state power. 
Because there's that famous 
quote: You may not be interested
in the state, but the state is 
interested in you. And you can 
see this obviously playing out 
in the US at the moment. Which 
is that those who 
attempt to resist capitalism
, particularly during moments of
crisis and instability, will be 
killed, or they will be 
otherwise removed. Whether 
that's put into the prison 
system, or literally murdered on
the streets. And I think for 
that reason it is important that
we do retain an orientation 
towards state power, just to be 
able to perhaps
get into the position where you 
have
governments that are relatively 
sympathetic to socialist 
movements, saying: At the very 
least, the apparatus of the 
state should not be used to kill
or imprison these people. And 
then you can start thinking 
about building up those 
movements at the level of the 
firm, on the street, whatever, 
and you have much more space to 
do that. Of course, the 
anti-union legislation that's 
used across the US and UK and 
many parts of the world is 
another element of that. So long
story short: Can we achieve any 
modicum of kind of improvement 
in our
science of living just by the 
demands of the state? No. Can we
achieve our ends without
focuses on ing on the state? I 
don't think so.
BRIAN: Okay. Let me throw a 
question to you, Robin. I was 
thinking about what you were 
saying about "an injury to one 
is an injury to all". The 
meaning of solidarity, it occurs
to me, is that you care about 
the injury to one. You don't 
just campaign about the injuries
to all. You do something about 
the injury to one. And in this 
case,
it really is an inciting one. 
The murder of George Floyd 
brought people into the streets 
in an unprecedented way. In a 
clearly Black-led uprising. And 
it seems like
the unifying slogan of the Left 
at this moment is: Black Lives 
Matter.
It's about the injury to one. 
What do you
-- how does the injury to one in
this moment connecting to all of
the injuries to all, and what do
you think we can learn in this 
moment
from this dynamic?
ROBIN: I'll unmute myself. Okay.
There we go.
That's a very, very, very good 
question, and a very important 
one.
So I want to be clear that
in this particular instance, the
injury takes the
form of racialized state 
sanctioned violence. And this is
a movement that is not just a 
lot of White people, but just 
all across the board,
Black, Brown, Asian
Pacific, South Asian, Indigenous
people are coming out on this. 
But it's not unprecedented. I 
just want to emphasize this. Nor
to me was unexpected. If you 
look throughout history, like I 
mentioned in my
15 minutes, the world 
literally rallied around Free 
the Scottsboro Boys. They were 
not activists, Communists, they 
were just ordinary Black working
people who got swept up by the 
police
and were almost lynched on the 
false claim -- a common false 
claim -- that they raped these 
two White women. Later, the 
world took up Free Angela Davis.
You know. The 
19th Century Abolitionists that
Frederick Douglass was talking 
to, lots of people across the 
board, including White working 
people, not just in the United 
States, but all across the world
in England, for example, the 
Chartists movement, embracing 
abolition. They didn't do so 
because they thought somehow it 
was gonna translate into higher 
wages. They did so because they 
saw something that was a crime 
of the state
against human life
. And even if they might on 
another day see Black people as 
less than human, in these
particular incidents of 
mobilization, segments of the 
working class came out. In the 
1970s, and '80s, Death to the 
Klan was a rallying cry. The
foundation for the John Brown 
anti-Klan committee. There are 
two lessons we can learn. One, 
more often than not, people will
mobilize against this kind of 
violence
. And secondly,
the
vast majority of White working 
people, I would say,
may not
-- and why they won't is a 
lesson we have to learn -- in 
other words, why can't we get 
everyone to support it? Because 
the 
majority of  White people in 
America don't support George 
Floyd. There are people -- the 
recent story about an athletic 
event, where some of the White 
kids are saying -- you need to 
George Floyd that cat. That's 
the language that we're getting.
Not necessarily the glorious 
language of MSNBC. So if you
read Stewart Hall's 1988 book --
and I'm glad Grace is here, 
because maybe she can give me 
some
insights or
disagree -- he wrote something 
that gave us some answers. He 
took the 
British Marxists to task in
the Labour movement to
for failing to understand how 
Thatcherism
tapped into masculinity and the 
unresolved psychic trauma of the
end of empire. To make Britain 
Great Again meant restoring 
the old order of Anglo Saxonism,
heteropatriarchal authority, and
Hall was arguing that
to understand the working class,
the working class of the 20th 
century,
the late 20th Century, has been 
recomposed. It's not unified, 
not homogenize.
It's divided by race and gender 
and is fractured. And this is 
our problem. Our problem is that
a lot of Marxists acknowledge 
these divisions, but see them as
identity politics or
chimeras or false consciousness,
and this makes it impossible to 
see class rule not as a single 
class but
a bloc that can incorporate 
elements of financial capital 
and the working class. There are
people who say we need more 
police, more repression, and 
more violence, and those are the
ones we have to talk about. Not 
so much that we can bring them 
over to our side. But we have to
understand that if 
historic blocs frame or shape 
the way we move forward
, I totally agree with Grace 
that -- the question of state 
power has to be on the table. 
But state power doesn't 
necessarily mean that it is one 
whole unified working class. It 
is
fraction
factions, elements fighting over
one specific aspect of power. 
Sometimes it takes the form of 
running for district attorney 
and trying to control the 
criminal justice system. Other 
times it takes the form of 
trying to challenge forms of 
financialization or expand the 
welfare state in an environment 
where the welfare state is seen 
as
, like, a racialized project of 
handouts. Right? And we have to 
even change the Discourse on 
what the social wage is supposed
to do, and for whom. To 
distinguish between the
kind of phony undeserving versus
the deserving, where the state 
can pass out huge amounts of 
money and subsidies for private 
housing,
and for corporations, and for 
suburbanization, but then
a little bi
pittance for aid for families 
who don't have other forms of 
income
-- is seen as a burden on 
taxpayers, a burden on the 
state, that's undue.
BRIAN: Grace, in your remarks, 
you also spoke about 
imperialism, and
about the rivalry and 
competition with China. It seems
to be one of the sharpest 
rivalries emerging on the 
national stage and has been for 
a while.
Among others, how do you see the
crisis
playing out in terms of the 
question of nationalism, and 
scapegoating, and xenophobia, 
and war?
GRACE: Muted, sorry. I'll unmute
myself.
I think it is -- you know, I'm 
not gonna be able to talk in 
depth, in the way that we've 
just been hearing about. About 
the
dynamics of racism and 
nationalism and how they 
manifest themselves politically.
But I do believe that is very 
important, along the lines of 
what Stewart Hall has said. What
I can talk about
is purely
-- purely because it's where my 
expertise lies --
the links between the forms of 
racism and structures of 
economic power. So currently the
scapegoating of China, for 
example, by the Trump 
Administration, the trade war,
and the kind of general 
xenophobic tone that he has 
struck, you know, as the virus 
has progressed, is very, very 
functional.
Because American capitalism has 
for quite a while been becoming 
less productive. It has been 
associated with obviously -- 
from the period that
-- the 1980s onwards --
we saw a massive increase in 
financialization that was 
associated with capital inflows 
into the American economy. Links
to the role of the dollar as the
reserve currency but also linked
to the massive asset boom that 
was then underway in housing 
markets and in financial 
markets. The huge increase in 
household debt. Increase in 
house prices. Deepening of 
financialization through 
corporate world... All of these 
things which generated, 
obviously, the bubble economy 
that we had prior to the crisis 
-- and which concealed 
underlying trends towards 
stagnation. And this is now even
recognized by mainstream 
economists who talk about this 
idea of secular stagnation. So 
the
fact that even before the 
obvious
stagnation in productivity 
that's been manifested since the
financial crisis, there was a 
preexisting decline in 
productivity in sectors outside 
of finance, real estate, those 
ones that were really in the 
middle of the boom. So
as it's become less productive, 
it's become more sluggish, it's 
massively dependent upon the 
imperial role
of the dollar, which both allows
America to stay in its massive 
current account deficit, and 
allows the state to sustain its 
large fiscal deficit, and it is 
also very obvious that that
hegemony is increasingly under 
threat. Obviously, America is 
still by far the largest economy
in the world. It has the largest
military. The dollar is 
definitively the world's reserve
currency, and is likely to 
continue to be for at least the 
next several decades.
But there is that classic 
observation
, Thucydides's trap, that it is 
best to try to take your enemy 
down before they become as 
powerful as you are. So at the 
moment, America is more powerful
than China. It makes sense for 
Trump to try and use the 
mechanisms available to him to 
halt China's rise. Because
if we do reach a stage where 
American
imperial power is threatened by 
the power of China, then you 
potentially get to a point where
the role of the dollar as the 
reserve currency is threatened. 
And at that stage, it is 
obviously unclear what would 
happen next.
Do we move towards the rinmimbi 
as the national reserve 
currency? If so, China has a 
long way to go before being able
to internationalize that 
currency. Do we move to a system
of IMS special
drawing rights being used much 
more systematically, and what 
impact that would have on 
imperialistic relations is a 
very interesting question.
But regardless of whether we're 
able to see
what comes next, it is 
increasing will
ly clear that America's power is
being threatened. And there may 
reach a point where that 
manifests itself in the de facto
-- well, I mean, we're already 
seeing the kind of declining use
of the dollar in terms of 
national reserves. But whether 
or not that starts to become 
systemically important, more 
systemically important than it 
currently is, is a really 
significant consideration. That 
both underlies Trump's 
xenophobia and nationalism, and 
also the kind of 
internationalism of the Federal 
Reserve, in extending swap lines
to central banks all over the 
world, to allow those banks to 
access dollars. And this is 
partly because central banks 
need dollars themselves to 
support their kind of
them, but there is also a huge 
amount of debt held by private 
institutions, denominated in 
dollars. Central banks also need
these to support their corporate
sectors. Obviously who isn't on 
the list? China. And I read an 
interesting article talking 
about how if the Chinese state 
needed to access dollars, it has
a huge
pot of assets. The
debt of the US government 
-- to sell US treasuries en 
masse, in order to get access to
dollars -- that would play a 
really significant role in 
undermining America's imperial 
power. So really, the American 
state is walking this tightrope 
at the moment.
Between its kind of -- the 
waning productivity of the 
American economy, the waning 
power of American capitalism, 
and the rise of China
. Whilst recognizing that
Trump's power rests on his 
ability
to stoke these nationalistic 
tensions. That kind of jars with
the recognition that actually
American imperial power rests on
forms of internationalism, like,
for example, the Fed's ability 
to provide swap lines, which 
maybe doesn't fit with Trump's 
rhetoric.
So yeah, I can see the ways in 
which I think it's very obvious 
--
the ways in which the rhetoric 
that we're seeing at the moment 
is functional to the 
reproduction of capitalist power
relations. And that
even goes without saying, all 
the dynamics we know exist, 
particularly in the American 
economy, about the huge amount 
of basically free labor that is 
provided by
Central American
African-American populations,
the exploitation of Black 
Americans, and the functionality
that plays in the reproduction 
of American capitalism. So 
without wanting to kind of 
reduce these things to a 
functionalist understanding, 
where you say -- obviously
there is racism, because racism 
is functional to capital. 
Obviously those things can't be 
reproduced without drawing on 
preexisting
tropes and narratives and
constructs that exist, you know,
psychologically, sociologically,
it is also obvious why today 
these tropes are being used so 
much more and are becoming so 
much more important.
ROBIN: Well, actually, that's
BRIAN: Well, actually, that's an
interesting point. The role of 
racism. Its connection to 
capitalism. How would you 
characterize it, Robin? I know 
you used the term racial 
capitalism. That's part of the 
title of this plenary. How do 
you put those ideas together?
ROBIN: Okay. So I wish I could 
take credit for that term, but I
can't. The term itself, 
actually, comes out of South 
Africa.
Attempts on the part of the
Communist Trotskyists
and anti-activists and 
organizers who were trying to 
understand what was unique about
capitalist formation in South 
Africa. And from there, my 
professor, my teacher, Cedric 
Robinson, developed it in his 
book Black Marxism. And part of 
the point he was making, which I
think is relevant to our 
conversation, it ties to what 
Grace just said.
And that is that
capitalism emerges not 
necessarily 
as a negation
of feudalism. It grows up in the
swirl of feudalism. Feudalism in
Europe was also marked by a deep
racism. Racialism. As he would 
put it. And so
racialism, racial difference, is
something that was already 
grounded in Western 
civilization, in the formation 
of capitalism from the get-go.
It took the form of suppression 
of the Irish. Of antisemitism. 
Of anti-Arab repression.
It took the form of basically 
recognizing that
difference is not sort of a 
neutral curious thing, but 
capital builds
on segmenting
populations and marking some
for forms of exploitation and 
others, not
. So, in other words, racism, 
racialism preexisted capitalism.
And like any dynamic form, it's 
not archaic. It continues to 
exist and take on various forms.
But the most important aspect, I
think, we have to always keep in
mind, and I kind of said this at
the beginning, that capitalism 
operates through racial 
projects.
And these racial projects 
basically assign
value through difference.
The differential value to human 
life and labor.
That is the value of human 
beings, both in terms of the 
value of their labor power,
so labor power is not some sort 
of abstract -- the labor theory 
of value is not an abstract sort
of
neutral
non-racial, non-gendered way of 
understanding surplus and wages.
And the same thing with property
value. What it means to make 
human beings as property. You 
can't separate
the idea of slavery, for 
example, and 
Indigenous dispossession, from 
a market economy that
makes things into commodities. 
Makes human beings into 
commodities. And also places a 
certain kind of value on private
property. Unless that property 
is in the possession of or 
occupied by people who were not 
seen as valuable. So in some 
ways, you cannot -- there's no 
such thing as a non-racial 
capitalism. And this is, I 
think, the important point. That
-- and Lucy Gilmore talks about 
this. You cannot separate these 
things.
And that's to say that it's not
as if we fight for the abolition
or dismantling of capitalism and
then after that try to deal with
racism. These things are 
inseparable.
And unless we recognize the 
inseparability, we won't be able
to understand
the success of capital and state
to be able to incorporate
elements of a working class who 
sees the value
of their own Whiteness
as trumping -- no pun intended 
--
the exploitation of their labor 
power. You know?
BRIAN: Thank you. I want to 
switch gears for a moment. And 
ask you another question, Robin.
Which is about
solutions and organizing and the
way people move forward. Grace 
mentioned different wings of the
Socialist movement. One that 
might seek electoral office. 
Another that's more focused on 
protest in the streets. But it 
occurs to me that there's 
something else that people just 
do. In a crisis. Which is look 
after their neighbors. Take care
of each other. Feed each other. 
What
do we make of the history of 
mutual aid? That people organize
when they feel that the existing
institutions aren't meeting 
their needs and they may not 
even continue to make demands of
the institutions, because they 
know those needs will never be 
met?
ROBIN: Right. This is a 
one-minute answer, because I 
know we only have two minutes.
BRIAN: Lightning round.
ROBIN: Anarchists didn't invent 
mutual aid, of course. Everyone 
knows that. And in fact, mutual 
aid is the basis of any kind of 
solidarity or community 
building. Collective survival
is essentially what it's all 
about. But also, Peter 
Kroputkin made the argument that
mutual aid is what the animal 
world is all about. Even outside
of human beings, this is just 
the natural order of survival. 
It's not Darwinian.
Darwinianness is a myth. But 
that said, politically, it's 
been important
in terms of the history of 
political warfare. But what's 
different about the last 
200-plus years is that we 
actually do have a modern
liberal state that we can make
demands on, the sense of 
entitlement from the state. The 
sense that -- and this comes 
with Social Democracy, and the 
progressive and New Deal era -- 
the idea that we are expected to
get -- we should demand these 
things -- that's fairly new. And
that to me is what makes this 
moment different.
And we have to -- we've got to 
continue to survive and build 
power through our own survival. 
But what happens is that 
sometimes when 
we survive through forms of 
mutual aid, the state can come 
and take that. I'll give you one
real quick example. Detroit.
Detroit's a good example, where 
you have these amazing
community-based farming. Taking 
the empty lots 
and the places left by capital 
flight, and transformed into 
gardens.
Trying to deal with food 
scarcity.
And these, through forms of 
state power,
eminent domain, all kinds of 
things,
can transform these commons into
private property. So that even 
the defense of mutual aid is a 
struggle to try to create a new 
commons. So
just in ten seconds -- if we 
think of mutual aid as not just 
survival pending revolution, but
also making the conditions of 
revolutionary 
transformation through the 
formation of a new commons, then
it takes on, I think, a really 
significant role in the future.
BRIAN: Okay. Thank you both. 
That was really brilliant.
Grace Blakeley and Robin D G
Kelley. Thank you so much for 
your answers and your remarks. 
And thank you for joining us as 
part of this plenary session. 
And actually, the conference 
continues for the rest of the 
day today. There's more coming 
up. We'll take a 15-minute break
now 
and we'll be back with three 
titles streaming simultaneously.
The titles are: Reparations for
Slavery and Colonialism.
And you can view the rest at the
Socialism Conference website, 
Socialismconference.org. Thank 
you, speakers. Thank you.
