Tracy Rosenthal, Marques Vestal, and Beatrice Adler-Bolton speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2025. This session was sponsored by Death Panel.
Discussions of “surplus populations” often fixate on labor markets; those cast out of work, left idle, or deemed unproductive. This session explores how the state organizes surplus not just through production, but through property and confinement. From land enclosures to the prison-industrial complex, the management of “surplus” has always been a question of containment, racialized abandonment, and carceral exile. Drawing on histories of displacement, abolitionist thought, and housed and unhoused tenant organizing, the discussion will examine surplus not as a demographic misfortune, but as a structural necessity of capital, and as a flashpoint of resistance. What emerges is not a question of productivity but of place—who is allowed to belong, and who must be removed to keep property regimes intact.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, September 4-7, 2026. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
Maryam Abidi, Safear Ness, and Naomi Bennet speak in this session recorded at Socialism 2024.
At Palestine solidarity encampments across the country, religious life as part of revolutionary activity blossomed. Seders invited all to imagine a freer world and communities defended Muslims praying in congregation hand in hand. These religious activities also became lighting poles for violence and repression. Understanding why will illuminate why Marxists ought to sharpen our understandings of comradely religious life.
The next Socialism Conference will be held in Chicago, July 3-6. Learn more about the Socialism Conference at www.socialismconference.org.
Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org
Follow Haymarket on podcast platforms for regular event recordings, book talks, political analyses and poetry readings!
In 2026, we’re celebrating 25 years of publishing “Books for Changing the World.” In those 25 years, we’ve helped build critical space and infrastructure for radical ideas and movements on the left to grow. That work of institution-building and popular political education has never been more necessary or more urgent. We need your help to continue to do this work.