Marxist Union

The Socialist Scholars Conference began meeting annually in New York City in 1980. Initially, it was called the Marxist Union. The SSC brought together all the leftist academic organizations of that era, from the Union for Radical Political Economics to the Marxist Literary Group, with the intention of founding a permanent multidisciplinary academic organization that would meet annually to share scholarship.

The organizers of the first conference were members of the Marxist Literary Group, an affiliate of the Modern Language Association.   The first organizing meeting was held at New York University in June 1980. Financial support was provided by South End Press. The speakers at the opening session included Aronowitz, Barbara Ehrenreich, Rosalyn Baxandall, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Harry Cleaver. Small sessions met over the weekend which discussed various academic and political topics.

A meeting on the final day of the conference established a permanent organizing committee to carry on the work of the new organization.  In 1981, the organization met again in New York City under the name Socialist Scholars' Conference (a name first used in the 1960s for a meeting which occurred for several years in a row).  

The SSC continued to meet on an annual basis in New York City until 2003.  The conference subsequently adopted the name Left Forum, which continued the tradition of meeting annually in New York.  By the late 2000s, the conference attracted several thousand participants. It no longer meets annually.

References

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