This virtual panel will examine the commune and communal organizing as part of the project of revolutionary social transformation. The speakers address how socialist communes can be used to abolish capitalism’s logic, based on the exploitation of the human being and the expropriation of nature, along with the range of oppressions (including racial, gender, sexual, and colonial oppression) in capitalist society.

The speakers – Kali Akuno, John Bellamy Foster, Chris Gilbert, and M.E. O’Brien – will draw from various theoretical perspectives and practical experiences.

This panel is presented by Monthly Review and hosted by The People’s Forum, and is organized in the context of the recent launch of Chris Gilbert’s Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project from Monthly Review Press. The book looks at the theory, practice, and history of socialist commune building in Venezuela.

PLEASE NOTE this is a virtual panel and there will be no in-person component of the event. SPEAKERS:

Kali Akuno, Cooperation Jackson spokesperson and co-author of Jackson Rising Redux: Lessons on Building the Future in the Present.

John Bellamy Foster, Monthly Review Editor and author most recently of Capitalism in the Anthropocene: Ecological Ruin or Ecological Revolution.

Chris Gilbert, author of Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and Its Socialist Project.

M.E. O’Brien, author of Family Abolition: Capitalism and the Communizing of Care and co-author of Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052–2072.

Cira Pascual Marquina (moderator), Venezuelanalysis editorial team and co-author (with Chris Gilbert) of Venezuela, the Present as Struggle.