Socialism: a term defined by Google as “a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.”
Students of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality club spoke about the class struggle in 2018 and the way in which this struggle leads to the fight for socialism in an informative lecture on Thursday Nov. 8.
The lecture educated students about socialism’s growth and the need to actively help the working class in its political mobilization. With a series of slides on the board that informed listeners on the negative effects of capitalism in the world, IYSSE president junior Alex Findeis tried to promote what is known as a genuine socialist perspective
With the recent 2018 midterm election, Findeis hopes that he provided a greater sense of what socialism is.
“This was a nationally coordinated presentation with our national IYSSE organization. Coming up to the midterms there’s a lot of interest in socialism,” Findeis said. “We thought that it was necessary to really push for our perspective and to provide a genuine socialist perspective on campus, and also to promote our opinions among a growing interest.”
Additionally, Findeis hopes that those who came to educate themselves will help the club through actively participating in this issue of socialism.
“I hope that it will educate people on what genuine socialism is, I’m really hoping we’ll get more members out of it. We’re a small club on campus, but we’re very eager to be politically active, we’re very dedicated to our cause and we really want people to get involved,” Findeis said. “Even if they don’t agree with everything we promote, we hope that people will get involved and really engage with us and talk about these issues.”
Students who previously may not have had an enriched understanding of socialism felt that the lecture addressed movements and issues throughout the world that many people had been unaware of. History education major sophomore Tanima Rahman was among these students.
“I came to this event today because I feel like even though there are a lot of assumptions about socialism, since this event was specifically about examples of socialism in 2018, it made it more concrete,” Rahman said. “[This event] showed you actual movements and people doing this around the world and even in America that we might have not known about.”
Organized by IYSSE, the lecture demonstrated the importance of educating students about different political and economic theories. With the promising turnout of interested students at the event, students may start to promote their beliefs surrounding these issues.