Uncaptive Minds Discussion Forum

 

Twenty Years after the “Collapse of Communism”

legacy, lessons, towards an emancipitory communism for the 21^st Century

 

Twenty years ago a revolutionary wave on the scale of 1848 and 1919 swept across Eastern Europe and the USSR.  It brought down the state-socialist   regimes, which called themselves “communist”.    Western capitalism declared the “collapse of communism” and   some spoke of the “end of history” with a new era of liberal democracy.    Instead the era of neo-liberal globalisation brought a new phase of war and recessions, in  Eastern Europe the optimism of 1989 gave way to economic shock-therapy and widespread impoverishment,  in the former USSR the old elite has been replaced by the rule of exploitative oligagarchs.

 

What happened to the radical ideals of the freedom movements of workers and intellectuals which challenged the old regimes, which called for workers self-management, and end to all forms of oppression and alienation, which opposed the ruling bureaucracy and the restoration of capitalism.   The legacy of totalitarian “communism” still hangs over us all; amidst the worse crisis of capitalism in decades there remains a real crisis of confidence in a viable alternative to this system.  

Did communism really collapse? Can we develop a vision of an emancipatory communism in the 21^st century?   Uncaptive Minds is hosting a forum to address these questions, speakers are:

 

Marko Bojcun, a writer and  a leading activist in the collectives which published the journals Dialoh and META which stood for “democracy and socialism in an independent Ukraine”.

 

Allan Armstrong is a member of the National Council of the Scottish Socialist Party and is a member of the Republican Communist Network, a platform of the SSP.

 

Chris Kane, is a member of The Commune, he was a solidarity activist with workers in the Eastern Bloc in the 1980’s and writes on Ukrainian labour history and politics.

 

Thursday 25^th June 7:00 PM

 

Artillery Arms