World Socialist Web Site arts editor David Walsh has been invited to speak at Toronto’s York University on the afternoon of Thursday, October 24. (Full details of the time and venue are provided at the bottom.)

A leader of the Socialist Equality Party (US), Walsh will speak on the topic “Art, socialism and the working class.”

As exemplified by Walsh’s writings, the Socialist Equality Party and the WSWS pay great attention to artistic questions as part of the effort to develop workers’ cultural and political understanding.

Socialist consciousness is not simply the product of the struggle for specific economic and political demands. Art and culture, and the intervention of Marxist critics in that process, have played an immense role historically in shaping and broadening the outlook of the working class.

The ongoing struggle to defend the Detroit Institute of Arts—whose collection is now under threat of liquidation by the government-imposed financial manager charged with making working people pay for the bankruptcy of Detroit—is the expression of the SEP’s attitude toward these matters. The party has begun to mobilize the working class in defense of culture and art, an enormously important advance.

Walsh’s lecture will consider: What are the implications of this fight? What is the significance of art for the working class—and of the working class for art?

David Walsh has been the Arts Editor of the World Socialist Web Site since its founding in 1998. The Sky Between the Leaves, a collection of his film reviews and essays, will be published by Mehring Books later this year.

Walsh’s lecture is being supported by the York Chapter of the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) and sponsored by, among others, the Graduate Programme in Geography at York and the Colloquium Committee of the Department of Sociology.

Everyone, including students, workers and artists, whether attending York or living in the Greater Toronto Area, is welcome to attend.

Thursday, October 24 at 3PM
York University (Keele St. Campus)
Ross Building, Room N143