Red
October
2025

A conference of
socialist ideas in action

Oct 24-26

TMU Student Centre | Toronto

Register nowfor a weekend of socialist ideas and strategy

From Trump's trade war and Carney's austerity to the genocide in Gaza and growing climate chaos the capitalist system is producing multiple crises. For most working-class people, this moment has provoked feelings of frustration, anger, and despair. It is clear that socialists need to join together and strategize to build working class unity and power to combat the reactionary right and fight for a socialist alternative.

Opening Rally

October 24 at 7:00 PM

Getting Organized for a Better World.

Nastaran Yadollahi

President of CUPE Local 79

Nigel Barriffe

Vice President of Elementary Teachers of Toronto

Chiara Padovani

York South-Weston Tenant Union

Deena Newaz

Spring Socialist Network

Main Program

October 25 at 10:00 AM

Follow your course

Our program features six "courses" on different topics, which you can follow as you please. Each programming block of concurrent sessions will feature one talk per course. Feel free to follow along with a particular course, or to mix-and-match as you attend sessions. Click on the course titles below to see the associated sessions.

Understanding Capitalism

  • Exploitation: Where does profit come from?
  • Capitalist crisis: What is the Tendency of the Rate of Profit to Fall?
  • Artifical Intelligence: What is the value of human labour?
  • Resisting the new militarism: What is the permanent arms economy?

Socialism and Liberation

  • Black, Feminist, Queer, Marxist: What was the Combahee River Collective?
  • José Carlos Mariátegui: Latin American Marxism & Indigenous liberation
  • Trans liberation: What are the roots of transphobia?
  • Kanehsatà:ke (Oka), Ipperwash, Gustafsen Lake: Land Back lessons from the 1990s

What is Revolutionary Socialism?

  • The United Front: How to build a mass movement
  • Russia 1917: The Theory of Permanent Revolution
  • From above or from below? The two souls of socialism
  • From Claudia Jones to Hossam El-Hamalawy: What is revolutionary journalism?

Workers' Power

  • On-to-Ottawa Trek 1935: Unemployed workers fight back
  • Soviets, shoras, cordones: The revolutionary history of workers' councils
  • Black workers vs South African Apartheid: Lessons for Palestine
  • Education workers & Ontario’s almost general strike: The role of socialists

How Do We Get To Socialism?

  • Can we vote our way to socialism?
  • The Waffle movement and the NDP: Lessons for socialists
  • Capitalism & class consciousness: How do ideas change?
  • What would a future socialist society look like?

Strategy & Tactics

  • How do we win climate justice: Why we need the working class
  • Don't attack Iraq! How we stopped Canada from joining the war
  • The case for Universality: From child care to health care
  • Palestine solidarity: What was the Pride Coalition for Free Speech?

Nuit Rouge

6:00 pm - 11:00 pm

Paupers Pub

539 Bloor St W

Final Day

October 26, 11:00 AM

Spring Labour Caucus & Strike Solidarity School

11 am - 3 pm

Room 221 | 720 Spadina Ave

Directions

Toronto Metropolitan University Students’ Centre

55 Gould Street Toronto, M5B 1E9

  • Dundas Station is the closest TTC station to the conference.

  • Parking is available at 300 Victoria Street.