Penn Calendar Penn A-Z School of Arts and Sciences University of Pennsylvania

Life after Capitalism: In Defense of Socialism

Wednesday, September 18, 2024 - 7:00pm to 8:30pm

PCPSE 250 (The Forum)

The Andrea Mitchell Center welcomes Peter Frase as he defends the proposition of socialism as a superior alternative to liberal democracy. This is the first event of the 2024-2025 Faculty Workshop Series, Other Ideals?: The Future of Democracy.


Peter Frase is an editorial board member of Jacobin magazine, as well as the author of Four Futures: Life After Capitalism (2016). In his book, Peter Frase argues that technological advancements and environmental threats will inevitably push our society beyond capitalism, and Four Futures imagines just how this might look. Extrapolating possible futures from current changes the world is now experiencing, and drawing upon speculative fictions to illustrate how these futures might be realized, Four Futures examines communism, rentism, socialism, and exterminism—or in other words, the socialisms we may reach if a resurgent Left is successful and the barbarisms we may be consigned to if those movements fail.