About Socialist Days 2007

Socialist Days is an annual conference organized by the Center for Socialist Studies to encourage dialogue between socialist and progressive activists in Egypt and the world.

We consider Socialist Days to be A Festival of Ideas... the kind of ideas that aim at comprehending the nature of the abusive, oppressive and tyrannical institutions that dominate our contemporary globe, and that try to develop strategies and tactics to fight for a better world.

Socialist Days 2007, 6 – 9 December, is the third in a row. The Center had organized its first conference in February 2005, and the second in February 2006. Both conferences gained considerable success and opened doors for serious talks on issues of contemporary class struggle.

For us, Socialist Days 2007 is a very important event. It comes in the midst of an exceptional period in Egypt – the rise of the social movement and the economic struggles with the Egyptian working class at its heart, the strongest in perhaps the past 40 years. This leaves us facing a huge responsibility: for the conference to be a platform for dialogue, analysis, and visioning of such stunning movement. For now we stand in the middle of a battlefield, and this conference is one tool to understand its nature and crystallize our vision for its future and our role in shaping it.

Socialist Days 2007 features several interesting sessions including:

• The return of the Egyptian working class: An analysis of the Egyptian workers’ current struggles and a reading into their future
  
• The rise of the social movement in Egypt
  
• The Coptic question: A new insight
  
• The roots of polarization between seculars and Islamists in Egypt
  
• The 90th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution.
  
• The dilemmas of resistance movements in the Arab World

Beside sessions and debates, Socialist Days 2007 features a number of films, performances, photo galleries, documentaries, in addition to a socialist book fair.

Take part in Socialist Days 2007, December 6 – 9