An exciting new range of guest speakers at the Ecosocialism 2023 conference in Naarm/Melbourne July 1-2 have been announced.
They include: independent First Nations Senator Lidia Thorpe; Kurdish feminist leader Nilüfer Koç; Kurdish writer, journalist and refugee Behrouz Boochani; veteran Filipino socialist activist Sonny Melencio; Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John; Burmese human rights activist Maung Zarni; Sapna South Asian Climate Solidarity co-founder Ruchira Talukdar; Aorearoa/New Zealand Unite Union founder Mike Treen; West Papuan activists Paula and Cindy Makabory; Liam Flenady, campaign manager for Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather’s successful Griffith campaign; and Aishik Saha, an activist with All India Students’ Association and a researcher on labour and the digital economy.
These speakers join the previously announced keynote speaker Kohei Saito, author of the best-selling book Capital in the Anthropocene, and Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the idea of Degrowth Communism and Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism. Leading Indian socialist Clifton D’Rozario, veteran Pakistani socialist and global South climate activist Farooq Tariq and Malaysian socialist Cheong Huei Ting will also present.
More guest speakers, to be announced soon, will be joined on various panels by a number of leading Socialist Alliance activists including Green Left co-editors Susan Price and Pip Hinman, Sam Wainwright, Sue Bull and Peter Boyle.
There will be a rich discussion about ideas and visions for a post-capitalist society and about the intersecting struggles for liberation and ecological sustainability that have the potential to take us there.
Those interested in an ecosocialist future should check out the conference agenda and read the Links insert in Green Left 1381 for a insightful article by Gareth Dale.
Dale said Saito has a “compelling case”. Because “the growth imperative is innate to capitalism” we need to struggle for a post-capitalist, ecosocialist alternative based on “democratically planned resource allocation, common ownership and solidarity ethic, appears uniquely able to manage the downscaling of rich-world material and energy use”.
[Ecosocialism 2023 will be held at the Victorian Trades Hall, 54 Victoria St, Carlton — walking distance from the CBD. It is organised by Green Left and co-sponsored by Community Radio 3CR, Links journal, Resistance Books and the Socialist Alliance. Get your tickets now.]