The Canterbury Socialist Society is pleased to confirm our 2024 Fred Evans Memorial Lecture. For this lecture we invite a speaker to present on a topic related to working class politics and history in Aotearoa/New Zealand. Fred Evans was a prominent unionist during a pivotal moment in New Zealand labour history – the Waihi Miner’s…
“Precisely the defeated man must try the outside world again” – Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope (1954). It is easier to imagine the end of the world, than the end of capitalism. This phrase has become something of a shibboleth for the contemporary left, a diagnosis of our present condition and a bleak indictment of our…
The Canterbury Socialist Society is thrilled to be able to host this guest lecture for our August event, 2024. Berkay Koçak is a political science doctoral researcher from Türkiye, currently based in New Zealand, specializing in political theory and Marxist political economy. Berkay completed a PhD in the Political Science and Public Policy programme at…
“The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past evolution of the human race, that it has been maintained by mankind up to the present time, notwithstanding all vicissitudes of history.”― Peter Kropotkin————————————————————— Through mutual aid, we acknowledge the ways that governments have failed our…
“Marx was not simply the best or most consistent or radical socialist, but rather the most historically, and hence critically, self-aware. By “scientific” socialism, Marx understood himself to be elaborating a form of knowledge aware of its own conditions of possibility.” – C Cutrone, “Capital in History: The need for a Marxian philosophy of history…
“There is today in the world a dominant discourse […] This dominating discourse often has the manic, jubilatory, and incantatory form that Freud assigned to the so-called triumphant phase of mourning work. The incantation repeats and ritualizes itself, it holds forth and holds to formulas, like any animistic magic. To the rhythm of a cadenced…
Federation of Socialist Societies 2023 Conference Registration The New Zealand Federation of Socialist Societies is holding our first conference over Labour Weekend (21-23 October) 2023. The ‘main event’ will be all day on Sunday 22nd, and this will be bookended with a Commonweal IV launch party on Saturday evening, and an optional working…
“Hitherto men have always formed wrong ideas about themselves, about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged their relations according to their ideas of God, of normal man, etc. The products of their brains have got out of their hands. They, the creators, have bowed down before their creations.” Karl…
“This war…WILL END CAPITALISM! Do you get that? After capitalism, what? SOCIALISM!” This quote from trade unionist Ted Howard, written in August 1914 reflects the hopes and beliefs of Canterbury socialists at the start of World War One. Based on research for the ‘Voices Against War’ website and her forthcoming book “‘I don’t believe in…
Following the success of our first ‘Socialism for Dummies’ event earlier this year, the CSS brings you round two … ‘Anarchism for Dummies’. Featuring two of the CSS’ very own anarchists (Tim Elder and Leith McLean) and one executive member with a lot to learn (Sionainn Byrnes), this event is an opportunity to ask any…