‘The Future of Revolution’ with Jasper Bernes

How might a twenty-first-century revolution against class society succeed? Join us for a conversation with Jasper Bernes, author of The Future of Revolution: Communist Prospects from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising (Verso, 2026). Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Bernes reads the revolutionary history of workers’ councils and communes in the light of thinkers from Karl Marx to Paul Mattick and C.L.R. James.

“In this extraordinary study into revolutionary histories and possibilities, Jasper Bernes does not let his reader off lightly. He pushes us to think hard alongside him about the logics and activities of collective emancipation—in this task, we couldn’t ask for a more brilliant guide than Bernes. We need this book now, and will continue to need it long into the future.” —Natasha Lennard, author of Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life

Jasper Bernes lives in Oakland and teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. A regular contributor to the Field Notes section of the Brooklyn Rail, he is the author of The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrialization and two books of poetry, We Are Nothing and So Can You and Starsdown.