Summer School 2026
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2026’s Summer School on the theme of Populism will be held in Worcester on 21st – 23rd August. For more information, and to make a booking, visit https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/summer-school-2026/ Details of the weekend’s talks will be announced in due course.
I’m pleased to announce the first of the talks at this year’s Summer School on Populism, being held in Worcester on 21st – 23rd August. Paddy Shannon will be speaking on ‘Should / Could Socialism Be Populist?’
Populism is any political message that’s popular, regardless of merit or political orientation. Ideas become popular when they resonate with how people think. And just how do they think? In Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), psychologist and Nobel prize-winning behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman identifies two modes of thought. System 1 is fast, heuristic and emotional. System 2 is slow, effortful, logical and dispassionate.
In the whirl of everyday life, says Kahneman, people get by with System 1 thinking. But that’s highly vulnerable to manipulation by populist politicians. We generally explain the socialist case in the language of System 2 thinking, because we need people to understand it, not just react emotionally to it.
Which gives us a problem. If socialism is ever to succeed, it must first become popular, and to do that, it must contend with System 1 thinking. People won’t listen to us if we don’t speak their language. Is a populist socialist approach possible? What would it even look like?For more information, including about making a booking, visit https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/summer-school-2026/
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