What Should Socialism Mean in the 21st Century?

A talk and discussion with Nancy Fraser

In the 2020 Socialist Register “a number of the essays interrogate central dimensions of how we live and how we might live in terms of educating our children, housing and urbanism, accommodation of refugees and the displaced, and (to lean on that all too common phrase) the competitive time pressures for ‘work-life balance’. These are all key questions, of course, of ‘social reproduction,’ a theme that has cut across many volumes of the Register. They are the counterpoint to ‘economic reproduction’ and ‘how we work’ at the heart of several essays here. Today, this involves exploring and exposing all the hype and contradictions of the so-called ‘gig economy,’ where automation’s potential for increased time apart from work is subordinated to surveillance, hazardous waste, speed-up, and much else that makes for contingent work and precarious living. Finding new ways of living cannot but confront both these obstacles.”

Drawing on an expanded conception of capitalism, Nancy Fraser constructs an expanded conception of socialism that overcomes the narrow economism of received understandings. Disclosing the capitalist economy’s contradictory and destructive relation to its “non-economic” background conditions, Fraser contends that socialism must do more than transform the economy. Over and above that desideratum, it must also transform the economy’s relation to its background conditions, especially non-human nature, the unwaged work of social reproduction, and political power. In a nutshell, a socialism for the 21st century must be ecological, feminist, anti-racist, and democratic.

Nancy Fraser is the co-author with Cinzia Arruzza and Titihi Bhattacharya of Feminism for the 99%: A Manifesto (Verso, 2019) and with Rahel Jaeggi of Capitalism: A Conversation in Critical Theory (Polity, 2018). Previous books include Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal Crisis (Verso, 2013), Redistribution or Recognition: A Critical-Philosophical Exchange with Axel Honneth (Verso, 2003), and Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory (University of Minnesota Press, 1989), among other books.

All tickets are sliding scale. No one is denied admission for inability to pay. Please write info@marxedproject.org for the zoom code if you would like to attend.