Socialist Fundamentals Series

The Socialist Fundamentals Series was created by East Bay DSA's Political Education Committee (PEC) and elected committee leaders. The curriculum creates a shared vocabulary and understanding as the basis for debate, solidifies knowledge of socialist fundamentals, and enables members to make informed strategic and tactical decisions. Join us each month as we work through the curriculum. The material in the Socialist Fundamentals Series may be amended via recommendations from the Political Education Committee to the chapter Steering Committee.

We hope that studying the core curriculum will be a shared cultural experience that fosters a sense of connection between members and the larger chapter. PEC will organize a monthly Socialist Night School to work through the curriculum. Chapter members are highly encouraged to read the standard curriculum along with the Political Education calendar, even if they can't make every (or any) of the curriculum events the Political Education Committee puts on. The series is ongoing--once a month February through December, and restarting each February. All members and non-members are encouraged to attend! For exact dates and times and place of each session, see the Events Calendar.

Session 1: The Communist Manifesto

Reading:
The Communist Manifesto (1848) by Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels
Themes and key concepts/ topics:
Socialism/communism, materialism, idealism, class, class struggle, capitalism
Socialist history
Why the working class?
Utopian/Idealist vs. “scientific”/ “materialist” socialism

Session 2: Introduction to Key Socialist Concepts

Readings:
Chapters 4-7 of The Point is To Change It by John Molyneux
Themes and key concepts / topics:
Socialism, communism, materialism, idealism, mode of production, class
Why the working class

Session 3: Class and Labor Struggle

Readings:
Intro and Chapters 1,2, and 4 of Joe Burns’ Class Struggle Unionism
Themes and key concepts / topics:
The working class, class struggle unionism

Part 2: Developing a Socialist Analysis (Sessions 4-10)

Session 4: Social Reproduction and Socialist Feminism

Readings:
Social Reproduction Feminisms by Tithi Bhattacharya, Sara R. Farris and Sue Ferguson (excerpt from SAGE Handbook of Marxism)
Excerpt from Genora Dollinger Interview [Genora (Johnson) Dollinger Remembers the 1936-37 General Motors Sit-Down Strike]
Themes and key concepts / topics:
Socialist Feminism and Gender Oppression in Capitalism
Social reproduction

Session 5: Black Reconstruction and the General Strike

Readings:
Black Reconstruction by W.E.B. Du Bois excerpts (Chapters 1 “The Black Worker”, 2 “The White Worker”, and 4 “The General Strike”)
Themes and key concepts / topics:
US History, racism and racial oppression from a materialist perspective
Expanding the conception of “the working class” beyond literal employed wage workers and “militant labor action” to properly understand that enslaved people launched and won the most successful general strike in US history

Session 6: Racial Ideology in the US

Reading:
Chapters 1, 3, and 5 of Mistaken Identity by Asad Haider
Themes and key concepts / topics:
There is no scientific biological basis for the idea of race
American fealty to the idea of race has serious negative ramifications for our ability to confront class exploitation
Racism remains a major obstacle to working class solidarity in the US, key for socialists to understand and confront.

Session 7: Ecosocialism

Readings:
What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff
Part 3 of Red Nation by Nick Estes

Session 8: Capitalism with Californian Characteristics

Readings: Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore (Ch. 1: “Introduction” and Ch.2 “The California Political Economy”)
Themes and key concepts/topics:
Accumulation and surplus
Discusses the end of the Fordist political moment and the brutal transition to neoliberalism, specifically through a focus on why California solved the capitalist crises of the 1970s and 80s with mass incarceration and the abandonment of public goods like education and child welfare

Session 9: Imperialism and Global Capitalism

Readings:
Excerpts on imperialism from From Marx to Gramsci, ed. Paul Le Blanc and Imperialism - the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin
Excerpts from Neocolonialism by Kwame Nkrumah
Themes and key concepts / topics:
Neocolonialism, imperialism

Session 10: Fascism

Part 3: Socialist Strategy, Tactics, and Organization (Session 11)

Session 11: Building Independent Working Class Organization

Readings:
Democracy is About People Having Power by Mike Parker (article published on The Call)
Goals:
Understand that socialist power is derived from the independent organization of the working class; reckon with current constraints that the working class is not sufficiently organized to win reforms (much less revolution) until greater organization is achieved; be able to formulate questions to analyze current constraints and opportunities to increase working class organization; be able to engage with the question of what DSA's role, and what the party's role, is in building socialist power.