Reading Group

WICHITA DSA READING GROUP

Want to learn more about critical issues from a democratic socialist perspective? Interested in discussing issues with like-minded progressives? Then the new Wichita DSA reading group might be just the thing for you.

We normally meet on the fourth Saturday of the month 12:00 noon at Riverside Perk, 1144 N. Bitting (directions).

Reading group normally meets at noon on the fourth Saturday of the month at Riverside Perk, 1144 N. Bitting. In October we will meet on October 29 at 10:30 am at the Chester Lewis Reflection Square, 205 E. Douglass.

October 29 How Should Progressive Movements Make Decisions?

10:30 am Chester Lewis Square 205 E. Douglass

Jo Freeman "The Tyranny of Structurelessness"
Quick Guide on Group Dynamics in a People's Assembly
optional Michael Walzer, "A Day in Life of a Socialist Citizen"
optional Chris Maisano, "Let's Meet the 99 Percent where they are at"

November 26 Karl Marx and Frederich Engels "The Communist Manifesto"

Both the democratic socialist/social democratic movement and the Communist movement claim to follow the teachings of this most influential book of Marx and Engels.

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Past Readings 2011

May 28

swrod John Nichols, The "S" Word: A Short History of an American Tradition...Socialism

A short, sharp, irreverent rejoinder to right-wing red-baiting.

A few months before the 2010 midterms, Newt Gingrich described the socialist infiltration of American government and media as even more disturbing than the threats from foreign terrorists. John Nichols offers an unapologetic retort to the return of red-baiting in American political life--arguing that socialism has a long, proud, American history. Tom Paine was enamored of early socialists, Horace Greeley employed Karl Marx as a correspondent, and Helen Keller was an avowed socialist. The "S" Word gives Americans back a crucial aspect of their past and makes a forthright case for socialist ideas today.

John Nichols is the Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine, a contributing writer for the Progressive and In These Times, and the associate editor of Madison, Wisconsin's Capital Times. He's the author of several books, including The Death and Life of American Journalism,The Genius of Impeachment and The ""S Word

June 25

Ecological_rift John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, The Ecological Rift: Capitalism's War on the Earth

InThe Ecological Rift: Capitalism"s War on the Earth environmental sociologists John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York offer a radical assessment of both the problem and the solution. They argue that the source of our ecological crisis lies in the paradox of wealth in capitalist society, which expands individual riches at the expense of public wealth, including the wealth of nature. In the process, a huge ecological rift is driven between human beings and nature, undermining the conditions of sustainable existence: a rift in the metabolic relation between humanity and nature that is irreparable within capitalist society, since integral to its very laws of motion.

Critically examining the sanguine arguments of mainstream economists and technologists, Foster, Clark, and York insist instead that fundamental changes in social relations must occur if the ecological (and social) problems presently facing us are to be transcended. Their analysis relies on the development of a deep dialectical naturalism concerned with issues of ecology and evolution and their interaction with the economy. Importantly, they offer reasons for revolutionary hope in moving beyond the regime of capital and toward a society of sustainable human development.

January 22 DSA's Social and Economic Bill of Rights

A short pamphlet by DSA which can be read on-line here.

February 25 and March 26 Envisioning Real Utopias

Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright, Verso 2010

wright_envisioning_website_sidebar Rising inequality of income and power, along with recent convulsions in the finance sector, have made the search for alternatives to unbridled capitalism more urgent than ever. Yet few are attempting this task--most analysts argue that any attempt to rethink our social and economic relations is utopian.

A systematic reconstruction of the core values and feasible goals for Left theorists and political actors, Envisioning Real Utopias lays the foundations for a set of concrete, emancipatory alternatives to the capitalist system.

Characteristically rigorous and engaging, this book will become a landmark of social thought for the twenty-first century.

Two chapters of ERU are available on-line:
Chapter I: Why Real Utopias? Chapter IV: The Socialist Compass

Envisioning Real Utopias website

Buy on-line from Amazon Powell's Book(a unionzied bookstore)

Past Groups

January 23 The ABC's of the Economic Crisis
February 27 Why Not Socialism?
March 27 Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide
April The Big Squeeze

May 22 Thomas F. Jackson From Civil Rights to Humans Right

September 25 Robert Kuttner, A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama's Promise, Wall Street's Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future

October 23 11:00 am Kim Bobo, Wage Theft in America: Why Millions of Working Americans Are Not Getting Paid - And What We Can Do About It

November 27 Hal Draper, The Two Souls of Socialism

Come to one or all of the reading group meetings. We usually have copies of some of the books at a reduced price. Drop an email to us at wichitadsa@gmail.com

The books can also be ordered on-line from Powell's Books or Amazon.

Readings 2010

January 23, 2010

ABCS-economic_crisis Fred Magdoff and Michael Yates, The ABCs of the Economic Crisis: What Working People Need to Know

The economic crisis has created a host of problems for working people: collapsing wages, lost jobs, ruined pensions, and the anxiety that comes with not knowing what tomorrow will bring. Compounding all this is a lack of reliable information that speaks to the realities of workers. Commentators and pundits seem more confused than anyone, and economists—the so-called "experts"—still cling to bankrupt ideologies that failed to predict the crisis and offer nothing to explain it.

In this short, clear, and concise book, Fred Magdoff and Michael D. Yates explain the nature of the economic crisis. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the authors demonstrate that this crisis is not some aberration from a normally benign capitalism but rather the normal and even expected outcome of a thoroughly irrational and destructive system.

Only an aroused public, demanding the right to health care, decent employment, a secure old age, and a clean and healthy environment, can lead the United States and the world out of the worst crisis since the Great Depression and toward a system of production and distribution conducive to human happiness. This book is aimed primarily at working people, students, and activists, who want not just to understand the world but to change it.

February 27. 2010

whynotsocialism .G. A. Cohen, Why Not Socialism?

Is socialism desirable? Is it even possible? In this concise book, one of the world's leading political philosophers presents with clarity and wit a compelling moral case for socialism and argues that the obstacles in its way are exaggerated.

There are times, G. A. Cohen notes, when we all behave like socialists. On a camping trip, for example, campers wouldn't dream of charging each other to use a soccer ball or for fish that they happened to catch. Campers do not give merely to get, but relate to each other in a spirit of equality and community. Would such socialist norms be desirable across society as a whole? Why not? Whole societies may differ from camping trips, but it is still attractive when people treat each other with the equal regard that such trips exhibit.

But, however desirable it may be, many claim that socialism is impossible. Cohen writes that the biggest obstacle to socialism isn't, as often argued, intractable human selfishness--it's rather the lack of obvious means to harness the human generosity that is there. Lacking those means, we rely on the market. But there are many ways of confining the sway of the market: there are desirable changes that can move us toward a socialist society in which, to quote Albert Einstein, humanity has "overcome and advanced beyond the predatory stage of human development."

March 27

halfthesky Nicholas Kristoff and Sherryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

New York Times columnist Kristof and his wife, WuDunn, a former Times reporter, make a brilliantly argued case for investing in the health and autonomy of women worldwide. More girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century, they write, detailing the rampant gendercide in the developing world, particularly in India and Pakistan. Far from merely making moral appeals, the authors posit that it is impossible for countries to climb out of poverty if only a fant not just to understand the world but to change it.