From Crisis to Catastrophe: Sharing the Work in Challenging Times

Introduction to the Issue

The Worse, The Better

I often hear students say that the reason there\u27s no mass movement for revolution is that things haven\u27t gotten bad enough yet. I argue back, explaining why worse doesn\u27t automatically lead to better. Yet, I must admit, as a political activist, I routinely emphasize the depths of the latest crisis and warn of worse to come. If the path to liberation runs through catastrophe, why do I have such a hard time admitting that? If not, why do we on the Far Left revel in bad news? This essay answers these questions by comparing “the worse, the better” politics as attributed to Lenin with what Lenin actually said and did. I make a case for seeing a crisis as neither wholly good nor wholly bad, but instead as a collection of forces fueling resistance and reaction

The Auntie Dialogues

The Auntie Dialogues is a special journal issue of "The Auntie Is In" podcast scripts. This decolonial approach to research dissemination is aimed at layering Indigenous storytelling alongside written literature. In the sixteen episodes presented in Season One, Dr. Paulina Johnson, or the Auntie, bridges her approach with an “Auntie” mentality to address misconceptions and stereotypes about Indigenous peoples and cultures and better inform listeners of Indigenous realities. The podcast does not solely look at damage or deficit but also the vibrancy of Nehiyawak culture including knowledge relating to creation stories, traditions, ceremonies, and much more. Dr. Johnson is Nêhiyaw or Paskwâw-iyiniw, four-spirit or a prairie person, from Nipisihkopahk, Samson Cree Nation in Maskwacis, Alberta. The Nehiyawak are an oral culture, meaning they share information, through stories, songs, and everyday conversations, and the podcast allows Dr. Johnson to maintain that connection to her people and how knowledge can be shared and importantly to be as straightforward as needed as your own auntie would be to you. By grounding each podcast episode in ceremony and sharing the oral narratives and her own stories and experiences Dr. Johnson is able to facilitate the learning and unlearning needed for decolonization and importantly, reconciliation. These articles are the dialogues of the Auntie is in

Review of Maoism and the Chinese Revolution: a critical introduction, by Elliott Liu

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Sexism and the Left: Three Case Studies

Many Left organizations pride themselves on their commitment to women’s liberation, and socialist feminism is a real and important current of Left praxis. Nonetheless, there is also a long history that demonstrates a remarkable persistence of sexist practices within socialist organizations. This article suggests that sexist practices, as well as feminist analyses of and responses to sexism, have been epistemologically minimized, dismissed, distorted and ultimately forgotten, enabling a normalization of patriarchal hegemony on the Left, and producing what the late Charles Mills termed an “epistemology of ignorance.” To demonstrate this, the article draws on three case studies, spanning recent and distant history of socialist organizing: the crisis of the International Socialist Tendency and Socialist Workers’ Party UK (2010-13); the founding period of the International Socialists in Canada (1975-6); and the Bolshevik-Menshevik division in Tsarist Russia (1902-3). The argument is based on extensive original research including four decades of personal archives from socialist and feminist praxis

In Search of Penal Labour Citizenship: Prisoner-Workers Organize for Labour Rights in Canada

Do Canadian federal prison-workers have a right to unionize? This key question is investigated in a case study approach to an attempt, by prison-workers, to organize a union in a Canadian federal penitentiary in British Columbia. The authors analyze prisoner-workers penal labour citizenship position via-a-vis the State’s conceptualization of prison-workers as non-employees and difficulties in finding the appropriate Canadian jurisdiction to hear their case

Front Matter: Change and Crisis

Introduction to 2022 issue

A Tribute to Dorothy E. Smith

A Review Essay by Himani Bannerji about the life and work of Dorthy E. Smith

Remembering Dorothy E. Smith: A Socialist Studies Tribute

Tributes by: Debbie Dergousoff, Daniel Grace, Liza McCoy, Eric Mykhalovskiy, Gary Kinsman, George J. Sefa Dei, Abigail B. Baka