Socialism 2014, a Galway day school on socialist ideas, takes place in the Imperial Hotel, Eyre Square, this Saturday from 10.30pm to 5pm.
The event will see debates on Marxist theory, the working class, how to fight oppression, how to change the system, and the need for new ideas in the Irish political system.
“With the current dissatisfaction with establishment political parties there is a growing thirst for socialist ideas,” said Dette McLoughlin, SWP Galway. “We especially welcome anyone who is attending such a meeting for the first time. Politics is not just for a certain type of person- it is about every area of everyone’s life and how society works.”
The day school openings with the lecture Sexism, Commodification and Women’s Liberation at 10.45am by Swedish feminist Madeleine Johansson. She will talk about how sexism and commodification reinforce the oppression of women; examine why oppression exists and who benefits from it, andhow it can be opposed.
The environment will be discussed by academic and author John Molyneaux in Climate Change: How do we stop the planet burning? at 12.15pm. At 2pm leading SWP member Brian O’Boyle, an economics lecturer in Sligo, will review a society of consumerism, as depicted in the Mad Men era of early 1960s America, and the ideology of capitalism, in Mad Men and a Cultural Critique of a Mad system.
The day school concludes at 3.30pm when James O’Toole, author of Revolution - a Beginners Guide addresses the meeting with a talk entitled State and Revolution.
Admission is free. Socialism 2014 is organised by the Socialist Workers Party Galway.
