Alana

Ackerman
Socialist Discourse vs. Capitalist Practice in Ecuador: The Tension Seen Through an
Immigration Lens

The paper I propose to present is the result of fieldwork I carried out in Ecuador between
2010 and 2012 for my Masters thesis, and focuses on the current tension in Ecuador
between the governments discourse based on twenty-first century socialism and
contradictory capitalist practices masked by this discourse. I intend to locate this tension
specifically in the field of Ecuadorian immigration.
Ecuador is well-known as a country of emigration, especially after the 1999 dollarization of
the economy and ensuing financial crisis, but it is also a significant receiving country, mostly
of migrants from Colombia, Peru, and the U.S. The current Ecuadorian immigration policy,
which establishes visa categories and procedures, dates back to 1971, a time of military rule
in the countrys history. This policy eases immigration for desirable foreigners who
contribute to the strengthening of the capitalist economyinvestors, businessmen, and
real estate holdersas well as spouses of Ecuadorian men, a category that evidences
patriarchal values (the woman as a political subject as she relates to her husband)while
making undesired immigration more difficult for those who do not contribute to the
strengthening of the capitalist system, such as political refugees (mostly Colombians) and
economic migrants (mostly Peruvians).
Partly in reaction to the financial crisis of 1999 and the corrupt neoliberal rule that followed,
the population voted in 2006 for Alianza Pas, a party that advocates twenty-first century
socialism. In 2008, a new Constitution was ratified in which an article declares the end of
the concept of the foreigner and introduces the concept of universal citizenship. Despite
this utopian socialist discourse in the states magna carta, an immigration policy based on
exploitative and patriarchal ideals remains in force today, influencing different foreigners
experiences of the immigration process in vastly different ways. Thus, I argue in my paper
that socialist discourse in Ecuador appeases the electorate while allowing old asymmetrical
models to continue operating with little debate or denouncement."
Nilufer Akalin
Dispossessed immigrants: The reproduction of racialization in the times of austerity
measures

In the last decade, major social, economic and political developments in the South
European countries have brought migration on to the centre stage in political discourse with
a rise of racist and xenophobic discourses against migrants. The social, political stand and
attitudes toward the excluded body (immigrant) had started to be articulated through the
demolishment of the subject in the era of the symbolic demolishment of the human body
under serious conditions of living in financial crisis. This paper seeks to make a contribution

to this line of research on how the social conflicts of the industrial world are translated in
racial terms just as the financial crisis and the existence of Neo-Nazi party in Greece was
becoming the manner to divide, rank human beings by reference to selected embodies
properties to subordinate, exclude, and exploit them. Regarding the current political and
economic situation, some material trajectory can be traced through racialization and racism
that are being implied in Greek society. This research paper focuses, as a case study, on the
understanding of how inequality is structured and reproduced under global capitalism,
addressing the patterns of behavior, organizational outcomes, state policies, practices and
articulations of ethnoracial inequality and control. This paper also aims to demonstrate to
what extent the austerity measures produce a new form of racialization. Therefore, it
situates the relationship of immigrants, the state and Golden Dawn at the central axes to
understand why and how the austerity measures produce racialization.
Barbara Allen
Alexander Shlyapnikov under Arrest, 1935-7
Alexander Shlyapnikov, an Old Bolshevik and leader of the Workers' Opposition in the
Russian Communist Party from 1919 to 1921, was arrested by the NKVD in January 1935, as
were many other former oppositionists in the wake of the Kirov murder. Interrogated in
1935-6, he was tried and executed in 1937. Charges escalated from counterrevolutionary
activity and anti-Soviet agitation to terrorism and conspiracy to assassinate Stalin.
Shlyapnikov contested the charges and refused to implicate others. The interrogation
protocols and his written statements attached to the protocols reflect his struggle to reveal
the absurdity of the charges against him and to preserve his own sense of identity as a
revolutionary. At his closed trial by the military collegium of the USSR Supreme Court in
September 1937, he denied all the charges against him and confessed that he was only
guilty of having had a liberal attitude toward those persons around him. His behavior
differed significantly from that of other Old Bolsheviks such as Zinoviev and Kamenev, who
confessed in public trial, supposedly for the benefit of the party. He asserted that his
confession to outlandish charges would not serve the partys interests.
Riya Mary Al'Sanah
The struggle for democracy in the Tunisian revolution

Tunisia has been held up by the international community as the prime example of a country
succeeding in a democratic transition process in contrast to Egypt, Syria or Libya: it is
politically stable, it has adopted a new constitution praised by the international community,
it has carried out transparent elections, and it has signed a loan agreement with the
International Monetary Fund.

However, the reality in Tunisia is much more complicated. The Tunisian bourgeoisie and
remnants of the Ben Ali regime are reasserting themselves through increased repression
against political decent and growing calls against industrial action and for a social truce.
This paper will look at democratic forms, as promoted from above by the Tunisian elite and
international organisations and contrast them with revolutionary democratic structures
developed from below. We will discuss the substance and nature of the democratic
transition taking place in Tunisia today. Furthermore, we will address whether the
democratic structures developed by the revolutionary movement can offer an alternative to
the promoted model of neoliberal democracy."
Valentina Alvarez
Experience of domestic work in Chile: social reproduction an identity construction of the
working classes

During the 1970 decade, the Domestic Labour Debate reflected about the relevance of
domestic labour to capitalism in order to unveil the particular place of women into class
struggle. Despite differences among DLD theorist, they all agreed that, through producing a
docile workforce or maintaining a reserve army of labour -to put some examples-, capitalism
was the main beneficiary of womens domestic labour. Therefore, they thought,
revolutionary practices can only be deployed when domestic labour is rejected, socialized or
done while its bearers women- engage in proletarian struggles.
Some years before that debate, domestic work and childcare experiences of Chilean women
from popular sectors in 1970 questioned such statements. They showed how reproductive
labour did not only benefit capitalism. Working class women were producing in daily basis a
sense of dignity for their families that invested them with authority for their struggle.
However, they did so by reproducing traditional gender roles. In that vein, I argue that is
necessary to enquiry domestic work beyond the economic reductionism of DLD to
understand its multiple dimensions. To account for particular experiences and the meanings
attached to them can shed light in that direction.
Leandro BeatrizAlves
Moments of danger, moments of opportunity: Trade unions and climate change
That trade unions (TUs) are fading away is widely accepted. Explanations for this draw on
broader societal processes, e.g. the reduction of manufacturing in industrialised countries,
where TUs were strongest, the increase of the service and IT sector, where they have less
experience in organising, and the casualisation of employments. Paradoxically,
individualisation processes occur in a situation where the needs of a collective and global
response to global crises (financial, food, ecological) are acute.

In the case of TUs this is especially true against the background of globalisation, which
strengthens the power of Transnational Corporations to relocate production and dictate the
working conditions in the Global South as well as in the Global North and to set workers in
competition to each other (Chan/Ross 2003, Cowie, 2001). TUs are the only kinds of
organisations that are present in virtually every country around the globe (The ITUC
represents 175 million workers in 155 countries and territories and has 311 national
affiliates.). Thus, potentially they are the only force to challenge the power of TNCs.
In reality, though, they are struggling with structural transformations including the
diversification of the workforce in terms of feminisation and ethnic diversity (Schierup et. al.
2006, Ward 1990, Mulinari/Neergaard 2003). Furthermore, new international bodies and
the political recognition of climate change have exerted pressures on unions to re-formulate
their policies (Hyman/Ferner 1994). The overdetermination of these processes constitutes a
transitional phase where social actors have to reconsider the parameters of their actions.
Unions have to simultaneously reassure their traditional membership, recruit new
members, cooperate with other social movements as well as global organisations (e.g.,
World Bank, IMF), act on a global level but remain rooted at the local, and accommodate
new issues like climate change and North-South divide.
In other words, unions are living what Walter Benjamin has called moments of danger. In
contrast to the notion of crisis Benjamins term denotes not only the threat of
disintegration but also the threat of conformism that is about to overpower tradition
(Benjamin 1974).
Selected Unions: 1. The metal workers unions are arguably the best organised and largest
world-wide and are also those facing the greatest challenges from climate change policies,
relocation of production from the North to the South, and redundancies due to
technological innovation. Their international (IMF), regional (EMF), and national branches in
the selected countries will constituted one of the two major case studies of our study. The
metal sector in most countries of the European Union has a comparatively high percentage
of migrant workers, which will make it possible to investigate whether these workers are
having an important role in shaping new union policies.
2. About one third of the worlds workers are employed in the agricultural sector.
Agriculture is integrated into the issues of climate change and the North-South divide: On
the one hand it is the sector most hardly hit by the effect of climate change, while at the
same time, it produces significant effects on climate change. It also plays a significant role in
the North-South relationships, since predominantly Northern companies are responsible for
the advancement of agribusiness threatening farming on small scale in countries of the
South. The IUF and other unions of food workers are forming alliances with non-union
associations like Via Campesina to address these conflicts. As opposed to the metal sector
where the majority of workers are men, about 70% of the agricultural workers are women.

Thus a combined study of these two sectors will allow us to better compare the influence of
gender relations on new union policies.
The selected countries: The core of our investigation is in Europe looking at the national and
local unions in the metal and agricultural sector: Sweden, UK and Spain. Unions in all these
countries have made huge efforts to integrate climate change issues into their policies and
to engage with environmental organisations, whereby Spanish unions seem most advanced.
In order to gain a broader insight into different regimes of countries of the South we have
chosen Brazil, South Africa and India. All three countries are integrated into the global
economy, while having different trade union histories.
We have conducted an average of 20 in-depth life-histories interviews (per country) with
union officials responsible for the departments of Environment and/or International
Relations and members of rural organisations (such as MST Landless Workers Movement
and MMC Rural Women Movement from Brazil) and rural unions.
We aim to present our findings at the Eleventh Annual Conference.
Maurice Andreu

Did the leadership of the Communist International believe that capitalism could not survive?


The leadership of the Communist International thought certainly that its revolutionary
action should put capitalism to its end. This historical confidence had an economic and
political basis: the world war crisis of 1914 revealed all the limits of capitalism and created
the conditions of its reversal. The CI, almost always, explained its failure by the mistakes and
the weakness of the revolutionaries, not by capitalist ability to rise again from its ashes. My
paper will confirm that the leadership of the Comintern believed that capitalism would be
soon dead But there is sometimes a kind of ambiguity. I shall speak of two cases: Lenin, in
1921, when the CI takes the turn of United Front and Bukharin, in 1928, when the words
general crisis of capitalism are introduced in the Program of the Comintern.
Thanos Andritsos

In search of unity: From the multiple geographies of resistance to the common place of a
renewed class project.
Greece, from 2009 onwards, became the epicenter of the global financial crisis. In this
period very intense social struggles took place. Many studies for the so called greek
resistance seem to focus on highlighting unilaterally only certain aspects (such as the
mobilization in the squares of aganaktismenoi, experiments of self-organization and social
solidarity, local and environmental struggles, workers' strikes, the electoral rise of the left,
etc.) and lack in an overall picture and perspective.

The current paper understands all the major battles as moments in the evolution of the
power relations and the class struggle inside the Greek society. Our main goals are a) to map
the current social movements geographies and b) to highlight the issue of unification of all
the struggles under a common anti-systemic context.
In this order, we can trace three processes of unifying:
1.
Unifying as a demand of the movements: An ""internal"" process coming from
the development, the discourse and the political practices of the movements.
2. Unifying as a consequence of dominant politics: An ""external"" process coming
primarily from the governments practice to target every single popular mobilization as
unified threat.
3. Unifying as a common radical theoretical resultant. A current attempt in the radical
theorys discourse to search for a unified political subject.

Taking into account these processes, the paper seeks for the preconditions for a shift from
the multiple geographies of resistance to a common place of the renewed class project."
Ricardo Antunes

The International Working Class 150 Years After and its Challenges Today
The International Workingmen's Association (IWA) was born in London on September 28,
1864 with the essential principle: the emancipation of the working classes must be
conquered by the working classes themselves. What does it mean to think of an
international organization of the working class today? Given the globalized shape of
capitalism, has it not become even more urgent to create a new project of international
working-class organization? In order to explore these crucial questions, we must initially try
to understand the new morphology of labor and some of its principal tendencies. Stable
work is being replaced by atypical labour. How is it possible to organize this new proletariat?
How can this growing sector of the working class advance toward class consciousness, under
conditions of the transnationalization of capital? How can it link up with the more
traditional sectors of the working class?
Just as capital is a global system, the world of labor and its challenges are also increasingly
transnationalized. Given that the destructive logic of capital is seemingly multiple but in
essence unitary, if these vital poles of labor dont ally themselves organically, they will suffer
the tragedy of greater precarization. If, on the other hand, they forge ties of solidarity,
defining and planning their actions, they may have greater power than any other social
force to demolish the capital system and thereby begin delineating a new way of life."
Stephen Ashe

Whatever happened to the labour movement? A Gramscian analysis of the electoral rise
and fall of the British National Party

In Whatever happened to the Labour Movement? Thomas Linehan provided a historical
analysis of support for the British Union of Fascists, the National Front and the British
National Party, as well as the role that the labour movement has played in preventing such
parties from making greater political inroads in working class areas during the 1930s and the
1970s. For Linehan, the emergence of the British National Party in 2002 can be put down to
a unique combination of structural, political and ideological factors. In particular, Linehan
emphasises the weakening of the traditional tripartite alliance between the working class,
the Labour party and the trade union movement. This paper will test Linehans thesis by
exploring the electoral rise and fall of the BNP in Barking and Dagenham between 2004
and 2010. This paper will argue that a richer, deeper analysis of the BNPs electoral
breakthrough and subsequent demise can be gained by drawing upon Antonio Gramscis
carceral writings on hegemony (Gramsci, 1971), and in particular by developing a wider
analyses of the relationship between the local state and civil society.
Abigail Bakan

Marxism, Intersectionality and Indigenous Feminism

Global capitalism has proven to be tenaciously resilient, manifest not only in its continuing
exploitation, but also in processes of gender and racial oppression. While the linkages
among gendered and racialized oppression, and class exploitation, have been the focus of
some Marxist feminist theorists (Himani Bannerji, Angela Davis, Collette Guillaumin), it is
American legal feminist theorist Kimberl Crenshaw who has helpfully coined the term
intersectionality, applied primarily to the US context. This increasingly influential concept
has significantly broadened the potential ground on which to link anti-racist feminism with
Marxist theory. Scant attention, however, has specifically addressed the contributions of
indigenous feminism, though formative in anti-racist theory and practice in North America.
This lacuna is evidenced in both intersectional feminist and Marxist feminist scholarship.
However, Marxs interest in indigenous societies not least gender relations in indigenous
societies was significant (Ethnological Notebooks, 1880-82), and considerably influenced
Engels Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State. This paper (i) theorizes the
significance of attention to indigenous feminist contributions regarding intersectional
feminist and Marxist feminist conversations; and (ii) attends to the specific tenacity of the
North American states as case studies, exemplifying such theorization. I suggest that Marxist
understandings of the gendered and racialized experiences of imperialism, social
reproduction, and anti-colonial resistance, can be considerably advanced through an
engagement with the contributions of indigenous feminism.
Laurent Baronian

Marx and living labour

I propose to present issues of my book "Marx and living labour" (Routledge, 2013) related to
the question: How capitalism survives? The basic idea linking all the chapters together is
that Marx, from his early economic works, conceived the labour of any kind of society as a
set of production activities and analysed the historical modes of production as specific ways
of distributing and exchanging these activities. On the contrary, political economy considers
the labour only under the form of its product, and the exchange of products as commodities
as the unique form of social labour exchange. For Marx, insofar as the labour creating value
represents a specific mode of exchanging the society's living labour, general and abstract
labour cannot not only be defined as the substance or measure unit of the commodity, as in
Smith or Ricardo, but foremost as an expense of living labour, i.e. of nerves, muscles, brain,
etc. Hence the twofold nature of living labour, as a concrete activity producing a use value
and an expense of human labour in general producing exchange value. Marx himself
claimed that this twofold nature of labour creating value was its main and most important
contribution to economic science. This book aims at showing how both determines the
original categories and economic laws in Capital and constitutes the profound innerspring of
Marx's critique of political economy. The role and function of living labour is highlighted by
showing how, on the one hand, the opposition between living and dead labour is at the
origin of the deepest contradictions of the capitalist mode of production, whereas on the
other hand capitalism survives, i.e. overcomes its contradictions and pushes its own limits,
only be appropriating more extensively and intensively the social productive forces created
by the living labour of individual producers developing cooperation links. The contradictions
based on opposition between living and dead labour suggest a Marxian interpretation of the
current crisis which must be distinguished from underconsumption and stagnation theories
of crises.
Emmanuel Barot

One-dimensional Man, fifty years after

This year marks the 50th birthday of "One-Dimensional Man" : what remains of our
Marcusian lovings ? Marked by so-called pessimism, exalting the "Great Refusal" of
outsiders, and lamenting the integration of the proletariat to capital, Marcuse ushered in
the era of post-proletarian multitudes and supposedly at this time gave up Marxism, turned
to revisionism and fell into an anarcho-leftist romantic utopism. Is this statement really valid
? Actually he kept the idea that capitalism was not able to digest any form of struggle, an
heterodox but close relationship to Marxism, and maintained the strategic question of how
organize the class struggle facing an ultra-violent late capitalism. What lessons are to be
learned from these dialectical ambivalences ?
Pritish Behuria

Balancing Violence and Ideas: Historical Strategies of Elite Capital Accumulation in Rwanda
Strategies of Primitive Accumulation in Rwanda have traditionally been organized around
primary commodities - particularly coffee. Rwanda's own 'natural economy' was
complicated by its colonial history and the introduction of cash crop production in this
respect. Immediately, the ethnic/class heirarchy prevalent in the country became an arena
of competition around the capacity to push farmers to grow increasing coffee. Chiefs, at this
time, were rewarded on the basis of their capacity to organize labour in this respect through
coercion and creating collective identities. As the country became independent, the
heirarchy was further altered, as traditional 'class' divisions became 'ethnic' divisions in
order to collectivize violence and incite revolution. The first two governments continued the
same strategy of accumulation and managed their elites through the distribution of rents in
these sectors. Crucially, coffee became part of the national effort and became bound on
ideas of 'economic nationalism'. This was also woven in the fabric of ethnic opposition
against traditional Tutsi leadership.
The Post-Genocide Government has attempted to break away from traditional class
dynamics around primary commodity specialization. It has served to both disperse elites and
labour to different sectors, thus reducing the capacity for resistance from below and within
the elite bargain in the country. The destructive forces of capitalism have accompanied
economic development in the country and the central governing apparatus legitimizes itself
on the basis of violence, rather than the force of a 'national effort' in the same way as its
predecessors.
This paper will study strategies of elite capital accumulation that have taken place
historically in Rwanda, contrasting the balancing of violence and ideas in managing
resistance from its elites, as well as 'from below'."
Riccardo Bellofiore

Which crisis, which capitalism? Marxian political economy and Financial Keynesianism.
This paper presents an analysis of the crisis combining a Marxian and a Financial Keynesian
perspective. Both are framed in a long-run perspective of the capitalist dynamics. The
tendency of the rate of profit to fall has to be interpreted as affirmed to the
countertendencies winning over the tendency, and through the change in the forms of
capitalisms. Neither the classical versions of the fall of the rate of profit or an
underconsumptionist view are tenable; the same can be said against the traditional post-
Keynesian analyses of the crisis.
Each crisis erupts because of the contradictions in the idiosyncratic factors explaining the
ascent. We are experiencing the crisis not of a generic Neoliberalism or a void
financialisation, but of a money manager capitalism, which was built upon a concentration
without centralisation of capital, new forms of corporate governance, aggressive

competition, a capital market inflation, indebted consumption. A world able to gain in new
forms the same good (or rather, bad) old exploitation, to provide internally demand, and to
present itself as a stable Great Moderation.
The paper will show how this constituted a financially privatised Keynesianism, based on a
new monetary policy and a new autonomous demand driving the process, a configuration
which was necessarily unsustainable. The paper will show how the crisis evolved from a
Great Recession to a Lesser Depression, looking at the specificities of the European crisis,
which (like the global crisis) is not due to trade imbalances, nor to government public
deficits, even not the euro in itself."
Bernhard H. Bayerlein

The Abortive Women's International (1919-1943)

Within the global deployment of the so-called mass or solidarity organizations for different
social categories and specific objectives as segments of the wider framework of the
communist movement, women occupied a special place. The paper shoes that from an
institutional, personal and cultural perspective the womens organizations prefigured a
Womens International together with unions, cooperatives, intellectuals, anti-colonialist,
anti-fascist initiatives ... The paper verifies how feminism and gender solidarity in the
"Comintern solar system" were thwarted and short-circuited by Stalinism and transformed
into an appendage of Soviet structures and "cultural diplomacy".
Anindya Bhattacharyya

Abstract oppression and social reproduction

The Marxist concept of oppression is used to describe a wide variety of social phenomena
involving systematic discrimination against a minority. Racism and sexism are the basic
examples but the category has ramified over the decades, taking in Islamophobia,
homophobia, transphobia, ablism to name but a few. In recent years there has been
renewed interest on the left in how these oppressions interact the intersectionality
debate and how they relate to exploitation of workers and the antagonism between ruling
and working class.
Clearly these oppressions have something in common: otherwise we would not group these
phenomena under a single term, or deploy similar arguments across the gamut of
oppressions (eg the argument that they weaken the working class by pitting worker against
worker). Yet for all this there does not seem to be any Marxist theory of oppression in
general - what I call abstract oppression. What is X-ism, where X is an unspecified political
minority? Are all oppressions ""the same"" or are there significant differences between, say,
racism and sexism?

This paper seeks to outline an approach to oppression in the abstract. The aim is to set the
various Marxist theories of concrete oppressions on a rigorous conceptual foundation a
necessary step if notions of intersectionality etc are ever to move beyond empirical
description. It ends by indicating how, if abstract oppression is the ""superstructure"", then
social reproduction is the ""base"". By understanding oppression abstractly we gain a better
grasp of how the are undergirded and perpetuated by political economy: the replenishment
of labour power through childrearing and immigration is intimately linked to sexism and
racism respectively. This approach can lay the foundation ""grand unified theory"" of
exploitation and oppression that can act as a framework for understanding all these
phenomena as a totality."
Ian Birchall

Rereading Rosmer in 2014

1914 was a major victory for the capitalist order. A growing European socialist movement
was, in Trotskys words, so reduced that at Zimmerwald it was possible to seat all the
internationalists in four coaches. As Michael Goves recent elucubrations show, it is still a
site of ideological contest. Lazy clichs, like nation overrides class or Second International
Marxism are inadequate to offer an explanation. Alfred Rosmers uncompleted Le
Mouvement ouvrier pendant la guerre (2 vols, 1936, 1959) makes a valuable contribution to
our understanding. Rosmer combines the memoirs of an anti-war activist with archival
research, and draws on Georges Dumoulins fascinating pamphlet Les Syndicalists franais
pendant la guerre (1918). Trotsky rightly urged that every serious proletarian
revolutionary ought to read - more exactly, to study - Rosmers book. Rosmer came from
the syndicalist tradition, but recognised that syndicalism was part of the problem; he was an
independent thinker who did not endorse Lenins strategy of revolutionary defeatism.
Rosmers stated aim was to recall what happened yesterday, to relate the facts, to show
their interconnection, and to draw out their meaning; the lesson must then be so clear that
it will provide the reply to the agonising questions of the present.
David Black

Sohn-Rethel's Neo-Kantian Marxism - A Critique

"Alfred Sohn-Rethel located the origin of philosophical abstraction in the ""false

consciousness"" brought about by the new money economy of Greek Antiquity. In the
Enlightenment the conceptual barrier Kant put between phenomenal reality and the
""thing-in-itself"" expressed, in Sohn-Rethel's view, the reified consciousness stemming
from commodity-exchange and the division of mental and manual labor. Because Sohn-
Rethel saw the entire history of philosophy as branded by a timeless universal logic, he
dismissed Hegel's concept of ""totality"" as ""idealist"" and Hegel's critique of Kantian
dualism as irrelevant to Marx's critique of political economy.

David Black suggests that Marx's exposition of the fetishism of commodities is historically-
specific to capitalist production, and therefore cannot explain the origins of philosophy,
which Black shows to have involved various historical developments in Greek society and
culture as well as monetization. Just as Hegel's critique of Kantian formalism informs Marx's
critique of capital, Hegel's writings on how the proper organization of labor might abolish
the barrier Aristotle put between production and the ""Realm of Freedom"" prefigure
Marx's efforts to formulate of an alternative to capitalism.
Paul Blackledge

Engels and the Problem of Working-Class Reformism

Thrown into sharp relief by the events of August 1914, working-class reformism has been
amongst the most important strategic issues facing the revolutionary left over the last
century. Thirty years ago Carol Johnson famously argued that part of the problem faced by
the twentieth-century left was that Marx had nowhere developed a coherent theory of
working-class reformism. In this paper I explore Engelss tentative attempts to fill this gap in
the decade or so after Marxs death. Taken up by Lenin and Luxemburg alongside Kautsky
and Bernstein, Engelss arguments have been a source of recurring debate ever since the
publication of his supposed Testament in 1895. In this paper I argue that this literature is
marked by a tendency to proceed from a fairly one-dimensional view of the revolutionary
politics Marx and Engels elaborated around 1848. By reading Engels later political writings
against the backdrop of an attempt to unpick this caricatured interpretation of his earlier
revolutionary perspective I hope to shine a new light on the debates of the 1890s with a
view to informing contemporary strategic debate.
Eric Blanc

National Liberation and Bolshevism Reexamined

This paper analyzes the socialist debates on the national question up through 1914 in the
Czarist empire. I argue that an effective strategy of anti-colonial Marxism was first put
forward by the non-Russian socialists, not the Bolsheviks. Lenin and his comrades lagged
behind the borderland Marxists on this crucial issue well into the Civil Warand this
political weakness helps explain the Bolshevik failure to build roots among dominated
peoples. Consequently, the Bolsheviks were either too numerically weak and/or indifferent
to national aspirations to successfully lead socialist revolutions in the borderlands,
facilitating the isolation of the Russian workers government and the subsequent rise of
Stalinism."
Claire Blencowe

Feminist Investments in Biopolitical Life: Racism, Progress & Methods of Critique

This paper begins with the story of eugenicist feminism, pointing to the entangled
genealogies of biopolitical governance, racism and twentieth century European and North
American feminist politics. It goes on to question the 'assertion of contingency' as a tactic in
undermining biopolitical knowledges and investments - suggesting that such assertions have
acted to mask, rather than to dislodge, biopolitical racism within feminist politics as
elsewhere. Contingency, development and progress are technologies of attachment that
invest feminist agency in biopolitical life (and so economies of endless growth and
expansion). These investments persist in contemporary landscapes in which race,
population and growth are understood as aspects of culture, religion and education more
than biology. The paper highlights the dangers of denying and denouncing, rather than
attending to, our own investments in despicable politics. It calls for 'generous methods'
(M'charek) in the study of feminist racism.
Mark Blum

Max Adler's social theory: a foundation for more effective interpersonal cooperation

The Austro-Marxist Max Adlers theoretical career included the development of a concept of
societal socialization which was not fully appreciated by his peers, nor consequently by
posterity. Only his student, and later prominent Marxist Lucien Goldmann , comprehended
the full implications of his concept of what might be called micro-sociological socialization
[Vergesellschaftung]. Adlers conceptual turn stresses that every society has its own
manner of organizing an interdependence insofar as each develops structures that must
fulfill the cognitive imperative of a practical vision of the totality of its participants. Past
forms failed in their governing hegemonies to realize the equality and interpersonal depth
of cooperation that socialism could effect. Max Adlers understanding of interpersonal
relations, while preceding even the group dynamics movement that emerged in the 1920s
and 1930s (Moreno, Lewin), insisted on not only a more refined knowledge of the dynamics
of human cooperation, but a clear understanding of the institutional problems that could
obstruct knowledgeable interaction. Lucien Goldmann wrestled with this problem of
interpersonal understanding in the 1950s. As Max Adler and to a degree Otto Bauer,
Goldmann knew that only by a more public recognition of how the norms of collective
cooperation were distorted within societal institutions in a capitalist culture could effective
socialization be realized. Training in cooperative empathy finally had to meet the wall of
normative praxis in the everyday world. Max Adler understood that every human culture
over time has its own manner of structuring cooperative association [vergesellschaften] .
Each manner of organization generates values that justifies its praxis. But, a socialized
society required a discerning interdependent depth of knowing into how human
cooperation occurs or founders. The functional democracy which the Austro-Marxists
strove for, that is the interdependent equality of all participants in any societal effort,
required a new address of how cooperation could actually be realized. The works councils
were a functioal address of this democratic socialization, but even they often foundered

because of the lack of insight into an effective association of differing persons, skills, and
temperaments. Socialization today still suffers under the lack of micro-sociological
discernment of association as it is practiced in societal institutions, and, without further
development of the group dynamic understanding of its praxis in everyday efforts of
cooperative activity, a socialization from the top downby mandateonly reproduces how
cooperation has occurred within the historical norms of capitalist and pre-capitalist
societies.
Flix Boggio & Stella Magliani-Belkacem

The 'democratic question' today and the struggle for hegemony.

Although it has been entangled for a long time with a stalinist political practice, the
'democratic question' has had a rich marxist legacy. From Marx to Lenin through Kautsky
and Gramsci, the main thinkers of classical social democracy and communism have
consistently pointed out the unifying potential of democratic demands for revolutionary
politics. Theoretically, a strand of marxist thinking that started with Gramsci and was taken
upon by Poulantzas and post-althusserian authors has developed a new problematization of
""democracy"". Neither mere liberalization of State institutions nor simply self-organization
at the grassroots, ""democracy"" is a dialectical process of unification and leadership-
building of the oppressed and exploited against their ""passivization"" by State apparatuses
and authoritarian statism.
Against this rich background of theory and practice, contemporary socialist organizing
seems to lag behind it: 'democracy' is either reduced to procedural-formal processes inside
social movements and socialist parties or it is considered of limited relevance for today's
struggles in the West. While it seems completely straightforward to imagine the unifying
potential of 'down with Mubarak' in Cairo, 'democratic demands' in the West are thought
only in the terms of 'solidarity' against repression in particular struggles or through the lens
of antifascism.
Our paper aims first at acknowledging this gap between marxist theorizing and socialist
organizing. This gap is indeed an index of several methodological pitfalls: a division between
East and West, a 'stageist' understanding of bourgeois institutions, an instrumental
conception of democratic demands (as simply providing stepping stones for the worker's
movement). Secondly, we want to raise the question of the racial divide at work in this gap.
It is indeed clearly the case that non-white people have struggled more than often in the
last 40 years against State repression, mass incarceration and in favor of more inclusive
institutions (both at the narrowly political level and at the economic level). Is not the left's
weakness in relation to democratic demands also a symptom (and a reason) for its
incapacity to relate to non-white struggles?

Lastly, we want to emphasize how democratic demands may provide today a fertile ground
for a left strategy: first as a way to bridge the gap with non-white communities in resistance,
secondly because social and economic struggles cannot succeed without attacking the
authoritarian character of neoliberal institutions, thirdly because democracy lays the
foundations of a non-nationalist narrative for a people's unity in the struggle for hegemony.
Patrick Bond, Ama Biney and Castro Ngobese
South Africas Elite Transition: looking backward and forward
South Africa's twenty-year elite transition - from racial apartheid to neoliberalism, in the
process amplifying unemployment, inequality and ecological destruction - follows patterns
witnessed in many other neo-colonial African regime changes dating to the late 1950s.
However, there are several political initiatives from the left which hold promise, including
the breakaway by the largest trade union from its alliance with the ruling party. This
discussion about past, present and future features one of the transition's leading political
economists (Patrick Bond), the former editor of the Pambazuka African ezine (Ama Biney)
and the spokesperson of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (Castro
Ngobese).
Mathieu Bonzom

How immigration control survives in the US: the current immigration regime, hegemony and
strategy

This paper is an analysis of immigration control in the US today, in terms of hegemony.
Laws, enforcement policies, and debates surrounding them, have been shaped by successive
administrations and legislatures so as to combine various sets of political demands, mainly
those of big business owners, opponents of mass immigration, and immigrants themselves.
In a logic akin to that of the historic bloc, this generates power by assembling demands that
are not immediately and fully compatible. The stability of such an immigration regime can
only be maintained by a political process implementing numerous ad hoc reforms. Hence,
only some of the many government interventions, such as the 1986 Immigration Reform
and Control Act (IRCA), rework all dimensions of this overarching regime: anti-immigration
measures and a mass legalization plan. The limited character of each set of policies (or their
enforcement) allows for the reproduction of a subaltern population of immigrants. The IRCA
illustrates the general goals of the immigration regime: satisfying employers' demands in
the best possible way, by harnessing and reproducing both anti-immigrant sentiment and
immigrant consent to contingent statuses (this reproduction is ensured by simultaneously
rewarding those impulses and preventing their full satisfaction).
While focusing on immigration in the neoliberal era, it will be possible to show elements of
synchronic and diachronic continuity, with race relations more generally, and with the
treatment of immigrant and racial minorities in a less recent past.

The hegemonic dynamic makes it difficult for immigrant movements to come up with a
strategy that does not end up allowing, or indeed contributing to, the perpetuation and
relaunching of the regime. At the same time, the reproduction of immigrant consent can cut
both ways: when it is fragilized by political circumstances prioritizing coercion, mobilization
opportunities appear, as was the case in 2006, and arguably has been ever since.
Instead of wallowing in the sophistication of hegemonic apparatuses, identifying the
blocking points they create should feed contributions to counter-hegemonic strategy. One
of several racial issues to be tackled that way is the immigration regime. The sense of defeat
following the short-term victory of the 2006 mass movement, has been enhanced by
Democratic party policies intensifying or allowing more coercion, and channeling the
movement's demands into ""Comprehensive Immigration Reform"" bills that could be
termed ""IRCA 2.0"". Mobilizations around immediate demands like stopping all
deportations (""Not 1 More"" campaign) and tactical innovations involving ""coming out""
and daring acts of civil disobedience (aiming at demonstrating that the risks of being
undocumented are lower than they seem especially when people get organized), appear as
important contributions. Frequently embraced by immigrant leaders with an ultimate
""legalization for all"" agenda, those perspectives do not directly demand a legalization plan
but avert the divisive logic of IRCA-like bills (selective legalization, repression, relaunching
the regime). They may thus be better suited to both rebuilding the dynamic and reinventing
the strategic goals of immigrant mobilization, in a counter-hegemonic fashion.
Tobias Boos

From Que se vayan todos! to a binarising state perspective

The Latin-American discussion about populism has a long and rich tradition. Since the
election of the so called progressive governments in the region there have been numerous
contributions to the debate, especially with regard to Ernesto Laclaus concept of populism.
One of the first and most interesting critiques of his approach was already formulated by
Portantiero and de pola in 1981. In this article they observe a kind of organicist hegemony
that characterizes existing populist governments which reduces the heterogeneity of
popular demands.
The paper utilizes Antonio Gramscis concepts of common sense and moral and intellectual
leadership and stresses their fundamental role in regard to the process of gaining
hegemony. By exploring the representations of kirchnerist militants and sympathisers about
the current balance of forces and the political situation it shows that their interpretations
contain a very specific idea of the state structuring their vision of politics.
Derek Boothman

The communist movement in Turin: an extended essay by Gramsci

There has recently come to light the handwritten original version of the longest single piece
written by Gramsci before the highly influential essay on the Southern question on which he
was working at the time of his arrest in 1926. This earlier essay, on the factory council and
communist movement, including the role of the weekly journal LOrdine Nuovo, was his
direct and immediate assessment of the events leading up to the red two years (biennio
rosso) in Turin, a city defined in the essay as the Petrograd of the Italian proletarian
Revolution. It deals in particular with the mass general strike of April 1920, news of which,
according to the manuscripts opening lines, was received enthusiastically in Russia. At its
height the month-long strike involved half a million people out of a regional population of 4
million, the working-class mass being led solely by the [Turinese] Section of the Socialist
Party, comprised in its absolute entirety of communist workers. According to an annotation
in another hand on a later typed-up version, the essay consists of fifteen pages with, as was
Gramscis wont, very few corrections, and dates to the summer or early autumn of 1920. It
thus predates both the founding congress of the Italian Communist Party (January 1921) and
Gramscis eighteen-month stint as an Italian representative in Moscow on the Executive and
Presidium of the Comintern. Printed versions of the essay, published at the time, are hard to
come by in any language, and in any case such writings were normally subject to editing for
length, or in order to cut material judged extraneous to other national experiences (not to
mention possible inaccuracies in translation), and so the manuscript version assumes added
importance. As well as its purely historical interest, as a comment by a leading participant in
the events themselves, what emerges is an early attempt by Gramsci to give a detailed
break-down of class forces and of the organizations of the urban working class, to discuss
the question of power in society and the value even of defeats and to define a politics of
alliances. In the space allotted, we shall try to illustrate the main lines of the document and
put them into the context of Gramscis subsequent development.
Toby Boraman

Polynesian involvement in the New Zealand strike wave from the late 1960s to the mid-
1980s
Marxists in Anglophone countries have largely neglected the role indigenous peoples have
played in class struggle, often based on the assumption that indigenous people are highly
marginal to that struggle. Furthermore, despite wage labour being an integral part of
Polynesian life in New Zealand, studies of Polynesians in New Zealand have largely ignored
it. Commentators often assume that Polynesians are marginalised victims of capital
(including colonialism and imperialism) and racism. Even labour historians have almost
totally ignored the role Polynesians have played in the labour movement. Far from being
helpless victims, many Polynesians participated in numerous struggles in the workplace
during the upturn in workplace dissent in New Zealand from the late 1960s to the mid-
1980s. Indeed, Mori workers were generally at the forefront of this struggle. Many Pasifika
migrants and their descendants also became active and important participants in labour

struggle by the mid- to late 1970s, although some barriers to involvement remained. In the
workplace, many Polynesians brought aspects of their culture to their struggle to humanise,
minimise and resist wage work. As such they often created, adopted and adapted various
forms of informal and formal resistance in the workplace. To some extent, aspects of
Polynesian culture shaped many strikes and other forms of dissent. While a major fusing of
class and ethnicity occurred, by the early 1980s bitter conflict developed between some
advocates of Maori sovereignty and some trade unions. This paper will examine Polynesian
involvement in workplace unrest in three industries the timber industry, the meat
processing industry and the cleaning industry."
Kajsa Borgns
An ecological Marxist critique of the green growth and no-growth concepts
The political idea of green growth motivates most of todays so called sustainability
policies in developed countries. As a counter-argument, ecological economists have coined
the idea of no-growth or steady state economics as a sustainability goal. Whereas on the
one hand the former serves as an attempt to reconcile the demands of capitalist economies
and democratic states on behalf of any real ecological sustainability, no-growth theories
often underestimate the forces and logics of both capital and state. Taking an ecological
Marxist and Marxist crisis theory perspective as its starting point, this article scrutinizes
green growth and no-growth logics and argues that strategies need to be more radical in
order to achieve a truly sustainable economy.
Bruno Bosteels

Marx in Times of Riots: The Late Writings of Jos Revueltas

This paper addresses the late political writings of the Mexican activist-writer Jos
Revueltas, between Essay on a Headless Proletariat and the posthumous texts collected in
Mexico 1969: Youth and Revolution. Revueltas will appear as the supreme theorist of the
contemporary moment, defined as the age of riots in search of new forms of politics and
dominated by anarcho-communist ideas and practices. Where Revueltas was looking back,
trying to resituate his own work in light of the cooptation of the Mexican Revolution from
the beginning of the twentieth century, this work as become uncannily prescient of current
events at the start of the new millennium. In studying these late writings, finally, I will be
preparing their upcoming translation for the Historical Materialism book series from Brill.
Ulrich Brand

Growth and Domination. Shortcomings of the (De-)Growth Debate

The growth critical debate could be more fertile if economic growth were considered more
carefully in its connection with the ruling capitalist and patriarchal modes of production and
living. In this way, we can understand economic growth as a social relation which is

intrinsically linked to societal domination and, hence, reproduces social structures.

Moreover, societal domination is the basis of unsustainable societal nature relations. After a
quick overview of the debate, my argument is developed with reference to (neo-)Marxist
debates as well as linking to insights from political ecology. Democracy, I conclude, should
be put more to the centre of the growth critical debate because it is the precondition for a
society which is liberated from the compulsion of capitalist economic growth with all its
implications for social dynamics and structures as well as societal nature relations. The
current degrowth debate starts to focus more on questions of democracy but in a rather
deficient way. The paper will also integrate central debates and insights from thr Fourth
International Degrowth Conference in September 2014 in Leipzig.
Che Brandes-Tuka

Discourse and ideology of the European far-right and the fertile soil for the rise of Fascism
In this paper I will explore what it is about the discourse and ideology of European far-right
politicians like Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen and Nigel Farage that makes their rhetoric so
effective and how the left and relevant actors like migrant organizations in different
countries have responded to the challenge posed by them. Through discourse analysis,
psychoanalytic evaluations of key right-wing figures, analyzing the social basis of their
organizations and the movements they represent as well as the ideological pervasiveness of
everyday racism and tendencies towards authoritarianism in European societies I will try to
contribute to a more balanced explanation with regards to the psychological and socio-
economic factors that lay behind the rise of the far-right in Europe. By comparing the
different responses to the challenge of the far-right by different leftist actors I hope to draw
lessons in how to counter the far-right more/most effectively.
Craig Brandist

Problems of Ukrainization: The Political and Cultural Dynamics of Hegemony 1923-1932.

Linguistic and cultural divisions have once again come to the fore as imperial powers
struggle for influence in Ukraine. The question of the position of native Russian speakers in
the state played an important role in how the current conflicts developed. The questions
raised were ones with which the Bolsheviks grappled throughout the 1920s, played out
through the policy of Ukrainization, the nature of which was contested throughout the
decade. Drawing on published and archival sources, this paper discusses the way in which
competing political imperatives and hegemonic agendas were brought to bear on the
questions of relations between Ukrainian and Russian languages and cultures in the 1920s,
from the delineation of the policy at the 12th Party Congress in 1923 until the end of the
decade. Ukraine became a particularly intense focus for debates about the cultural and
political dimensions of hegemony, with Russian cultural and linguistic concessions to the
Ukrainian-speaking population coinciding with proletarian concessions to the peasantry.

Here the hegemonic apparatus of the Soviet state during the NEP period required
continual adjustment to guard against encouraging separatist sentiments on the part of the
mainly rural Ukrainian-speaking population, while avoiding resentments on the part of the
mainly Russian-speaking urban proletariat. In addition to these problems, the modalities of
the concessions made were affected by the emergence of a relatively wealthy peasant
minority and petty urban capitalists as a direct result of the NEP itself, as well as the
complications brought about by the presence of significant national minorities (Jewish,
Greek, Romanian etc) within the Ukrainian SSR.
Debates over the formulation of Soviet policy in Ukraine occupied all the leading Bolsheviks
from the intense debates about general nationality policy in 1923 until the regimes move to
crush peasant resistance to collectivisation at the end of the decade. There was an intense
dialogue between Ukrainian Party leaders (Rakovskii, Lebed, Shumskii, Korniushin) and
those at the Centre (Zinovev, Bukharin, Stalin), which can be traced through arguments at
the major Party congresses and in correspondence and other documentation that circulated
between State and Party agencies. There is a considerable level of sophistication in these
debates that reveal the ways in which the notion of hegemony was developed and applied
throughout the decade. Consideration of such material shows that Gramscis writing about
the linguistic and cultural dimensions of hegemony in no way exhaust Marxist consideration
of the question in the 1920s, but were to some extent dependent upon these discussions.
This has importance both in understanding the relationship of early Soviet thought to the
former colonies of the USSR, but also in understanding some of the contours of the political
situation in Ukraine today."
Heather

Brown

Transcending Dualisms: Marxs Philosophy of Nature and Labor

As the most recent report from the UN on Climate Change argues, it is no longer possible to
ignore the effects of human destruction of the environment. Some form of climate change
in the present is inevitable and will have significant impacts on various ecosystems and
societies. The goal according to the UN International Panel on Climate change is in part to
mitigate these effects. The question remains, however, how do we approach the human
costs of climate change and the uneven effects of a reversal of this process? In recent years
there has been a significant return to Marx to theorize questions of race, gender and
economics in light of the contradictions and crises of late capitalism. The same has also
been true of Marxist ecology. However, many of these recent studies take up particular
aspects of Marxs and/or Engelss work relative to environmental concerns rather than
provide a complete philosophical perspective of Marxs ecology. These studies certainly do
provide an important starting point for a Marxian ecological perspective that does not carry
the burden of Soviet style anti-ecological development and in fact, illustrates that Marxs
perspectives on ecology could not be further away from these types of perspectives.
Arguing that Marx and/or a Marxian perspective on the environment is compatible with

particular ecological concerns is not enough, however. If we are able to find an alternative
to the rapacious nature of capitalist economic development that leaves many behind, then
we must create a fully worked out philosophical perspective on ecology that takes account
of various forms of human oppression as well. It is hoped that this paper will begin to fill
this philosophical gap and show that Marx provided an outline for a theory of the human
impact on the environment that is useful for today, albeit with some problematic aspects.
Looking at the whole of Marxs work, I argue that his continuing emphasis on overcoming
dualisms and especially regarding humanitys relation to nature provides a starting point for
a theory of ecology that can account for both human effects on nature and the seemingly
parallel oppression based on race, gender and class without privileging one aspect over the
others.
Iain

Bruce

"Climate Change, Pachamama and Socialism in the 21st Century"

"The paper will bring together three overlapping themes, in order to help understand one of
the greatest opportunities, and dilemmas, for the international resistance to climate
change.
1.
Drawing on unpublished reports and original interviews with key participants, it will
recount the intervention of the ALBA countries in the Copenhagen COP of 2009, when the
leaders and delegations of Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba linked up with mobilizations outside
the conference to block the attempt by the United States and others to impose a non-deal.
It will examine how this led to the Peoples Summit on Climate Change in Cochabamba in
2010, then how the stance subsequently weakened at Cancn and Durban.
2.
It will look at how the indigenous and landless movements, with their practices and
philosophies around the defence of Pachamama and good living (buen vivir, sumak
kawsay) helped to inform and put pressure on the stance of the ALBA governments, putting
Latin America (for a time at least) at the forefront of the climate change movement.
3.
Thirdly, it will look at the contradiction running through the middle of the Bolivarian-
Alba processes, which combine the impulse of these movements with a deeply entrenched
dependence on oil and gas, and powerful strands of developmentalist and extractivist
economic policy. Contradictions which have led to direct confrontations in a number of
cases.
Finally, the paper will seek to identify key challenges that would need to be overcome for
the potential expressed at Copenhagen and Cochabamba to be recovered and continued.
Iain Bruce is a British journalist and film maker, formerly a BBC correspondent in Brazil and
Venezuela, currently working as Executive Editor at Telesur in Caracas. He is the author/co-
author of The Porto Alegre Experience: direct democracy in Brazil, Pluto Press,London,

2004; 'The Real Venezuela: making socialism in the 21st century', Pluto Press, London, 2009.
Between 2010 and 2012 he made a series of four documentaries for Telesur on climate
change issues in Latin America. He also contributes on Latin America to International
Viewpoint and is a supporter of Socialist Resistance.
Dick Bryan Michael

Rafferty

Re-thinking employment through finance

"In the growing literature on financialization, there is little engagement with the labour
market. That which exists focuses predominantly on the idea of shareholder value, and a
competitive pressure that comes into a workplace, with direct ramifications for labour. But
here finance expresses analytically as an exogenous pressure. So how do we think of
employment, and the appropriation of surplus value, as a process into which financial
modes of calculation have entered. In particular, how do we frame the pricing of risk, and
strategy shifting of risk in the employment context (and how does the conception of surplus
value itself change when we consider the pricing of risk)?
In this paper, we try to think employment through the discourse of finance, both to feature
the pricing and trading of risk - a process that needs to be integrated into the conception of
surplus value and so that the analysis of class in relation to financialization can be
advanced. At the moment, finance and class operate on quite different analytical terrains.
To think the connections requires that there be ways to frame each in relation to the other
via more than the discipline of shareholder value. Accordingly, this paper frames
employment and surplus value via the categories of options and swaps, so that these
connections might be explored."
Tom Bunyard

'Dialectical, Strategic Thought': An Outline of the Model of Praxis that Supports Guy Debord's
Theory of 'Spectacle'
Guy Debords famous concept of spectacle is perhaps one of the most widely
misunderstood and misappropriated ideas in contemporary theory. This paper will respond
to that problem by offering a clarification of the concept, advanced via a discussion of the
philosophical positions that inform Debords often dense formulations. Through doing so,
the paper will show that the conceptual framework that the theory rests upon possesses far
greater sophistication and complexity than is often acknowledged, insofar as it contains the
following, still largely ignored components: 1) a philosophical anthropology; 2) a speculative
philosophy of history; 3) an ethics; 4) the rudiments of an epistemology; 5) an idiosyncratic
version of Hegelian Marxism; 6) a dialectical conception of strategy. Through outlining those
elements the essay will advance the following, broader argument. Debords work is best
understood as a 20th Century re-articulation of the classical 19th Century concern with
realising philosophy in lived praxis; after all, the heralded supersession of spectacular

representation, in all of its various formulations within his thought, essentially revolves
around the need to begin consciously making history, as opposed to merely contemplating
and interpreting its results. Therefore, if his theory is indeed to be viewed as having become
more relevant than ever, as many of his more enthusiastic commentators would have it,
then that key orientation towards praxis should form part of its purported relevance. The
paper will show that such a claim to pertinence can indeed be made: that whilst the theory
may be of limited value as an account of modern capitalism, the model of praxis that one
can draw from its conceptual mechanics a model that amounts, we will argue, to a highly
politicised ethics may, nonetheless, be of contemporary interest.
Florian Butollo

The Transformation of the Chinese Economy A Leap beyond Cheap Labour?

Chinas current growth pattern is ridden with contradictions. Excessive reliance on
investments and exports has brought about macroeconomic imbalances while a
proliferation of workers struggles is indicating the limits of the authoritarian model of
control. Since over a decade, the Chinese government therefore seeks to refurbish the
growth model by a combined policy effort for industrial upgrading and the promotion of
harmonious labour relations. This presentation attempts to assess the perspectives of the
reform programme with an awareness of its structural limitations. These consist of a uneven
global economic structure that may impede a progress towards knowledge-intensive
production models, as well as an internal power structure with strong ties to the established
extensive regime of accumulation. On the other hand, growth of the domestic market,
state involvement in industrial upgrading and technology development, and a vertical
clustering of industries create favourable conditions for industrial upgrading. The evolving
political economy thus shows contradictory tendencies in which there is a proliferation of
high-tech industries and advanced manufacturing on the one hand and a persistence of
cheap labour segments and authoritarian type of industrial relations on the other. Our
analysis tries to come to terms with these contradictory tendencies and assess their
implications for economic development and social conflict.
Damien

Cahill

Neoliberal Doctrine as Ideology

Recent scholarship on neoliberalism has drawn attention to the role played by neoliberal
doctrines and think tanks in the neoliberal transformation of states and economies since the
1970s. Much of this scholarship has accorded a strong independent causal role to neoliberal
doctrines in the making of neoliberal policies. Concurrently however, several scholars have
also noted discrepancies between neoliberal doctrines and actually existing neoliberal
policies and economic changes. This paper proposes that a historical materialist framework
is uniquely placed to understand both the important role played by neoliberal doctrines in

the roll out of neoliberal policy, as well as why actually existing neoliberalism is not simply a
mirror of neoliberal doctrines. It argues that the role played by neoliberal doctrines in the
roll out of actually existing neoliberalism is best appreciated if such doctrines are read as
ideology. The paper draws upon Marxs distinction between essence and appearance in
Capital to argue that neoliberal doctrines are ideological in the sense that they offer both a
partial reflection of transformations to capitalist economies since the 1970s, as well as
masking the key social relations at the heart of such transformations.
Ankica Cakardic

Theory of accumulation and Luxemburgian analysis of reproductive labour and current crises


"While writing An Anti-Critique: The Accumulation of Capital, or What the Epigones have
Made of Marxs Theory where she very concisely outlines her thesis on capital
accumulation Rosa Luxemburg argues that the economic roots of imperialism can be
derived from the accumulation of capital and that imperialism in general represents a
specific mode of accumulation. From that point onwards she will develop her critique of
Marx, especially when it comes to the third part of the second volume of ""Capital"" where
Marx analyses the question of reproduction.
With a summary review of this discussion, we will try to see whether it is possible to offer a
Luxemburgian analysis of the current crisis, and reflect on the methodological and
theoretical framework we would need to consider. In the end we will try to use this
instrument for the materialistic analysis of women's reproductive labor and its economic
role in the accumulation of capital, taking into account the relation between the productive
and unproductive labor as it is decomposed in Rosa Luxemburgs several texts from 1902nd
to 1914th."
Lindberg

Campos

Filho

The fight against Brazilian capitalist patriarchy and racism: exploitation, rape culture and
urban lynchings
The aim of this paper is an analysis of the intensification of exploitation by early twentieth-
first century Brazilian capitalism through homo and transphobia, sexism and racism in the
light of the formation of Brazilian bourgeois society in late nineteenth century. I analyse a
number of different examples from mass culture and of social dynamics and practices, for
instance, the first gay kiss in a nationwide soap opera broadcast, the widespread Brazilian
sexism, the increasing visibility of lynchings in urban peripheries and domestic workers's
working conditions. These realities reveal that Brazilian capitalism combines oppression
with exploitation in order to sophisticate and legitimise the latter. In addition to that, I take
into consideration the process of transition from slavery based to a mass consumption
society in the turn of the century to highlight the specific and local conditions that made

such social structure possible. I briefly evaluate the corresponding responses given by social
movements and revolutionary organizations in Brazil and possible perspectives. Even
though it can be observed a series of significant advancements, especially in terms of LGBT
visibility and racial oppression, capitalist accumulation and private property are untouched
which, I argue, are the real basis of oppression and one of the reasons why Brazilian
capitalism still survives. I use theoretical frameworks provided by cultural materialist critics
such as Fredric Jameson, Raymond Williams, Roberto Schwarz, Antonio Candido and Maria
Elisa Cevasco in order to deepen this analysis.
Cagri Carikci

Neoliberal Transformation of the State, Class Struggle and Capital: Lessons from
Privatisation of Turkeys Mining Sector

"The issue of privatisation in public sector and its effects on the relations between the state,
capital and classes have been broadly discussed in recent years. This paper aims to make a
critical analysis of the privatisation in the mining sector in Turkey during the Justice and
Development Party (AKP) period to identify the specific political policies and strategies AKP
has pursued in this process and their implications on the states neoliberal transformation.
Within this framework, this paper will analyse the place of the mining sector in Turkeys
economy and explain the significance of the privatisation process in terms of reproduction
of labour and class struggle.
An effort will be made to express, through a two-way dynamic analysis, the influence of the
state regulation over social relations and the impact of class struggle which is implicit in the
way the society functions on the state, institutions and reforms. Also an emphasis will be
laid on the importance of the relations and conflict between different fractions of capital
during the AKP period.
The paper concludes that behind these privatisations lies a political process, which has
deepened the domination of the capital over the state."
Samuel Carlshamre

History, Heritage, science and ideology: Marxist Arabic Turath-studies post-1967

"This presentation is to examine the relationships between Heritage and History, science
and ideology in the writings of a number of Arabic Marxist historians in the period between
1967 and 1991, in the cultural journal al-Tariq, belonging to the Lebanese Communist Party.
While the issue of coming to terms with the cultural, religious and philosophical Heritage
(turath) of Arabic-Islamic civilisation had been an important part of Arabic cultural and
political discussions at least since the beginning of the nahda in the middle of the 19th
century, the defeat of the Arab states in the 1967 June war against Israel ushered in an era
of crisis, and thus renewed focus on the issue, culminating throughout the late 1970s and

early 1980s in a number of multi-volume studies of the subject written from a Marxist
perspective.
In this presentation, however, the focus will lie rather on the debates and discussions
carried out in al-Tariq, debates in which, more clearly perhaps than the monographs, the
internal deliberations and conflicts within the Marxist circles came to be highlighted. For the
writers involved in these debates such as Husayn Muruwwah, Tayyib Tizini, Mahdi Amil,
Tawfiq Sallum and many more the subject in itself presented a number of problems, such
the questions of relationship of base and superstructure, ideology and scientificity, use and
truth in the writing of history, and not least that of the relationship between the very
categories or knowledge objects of History and Heritage themselves. In this relationship is
highlighted the potentially conflicting uses and functions of (writing about) the past,
tentatively formulated as the tension between identity formation (Heritage) and scientific
knowledge (History).
In this paper, then, the focus will be on the very foundations of the Arabic discourse about
Heritage from a Marxist perspective. From a theoretical view point grounded in the ideas of
Historical Materialism with pretence to represent actual, scientific knowledge about the
past what use could there be in approaching such a object of knowledge? If not discarded
altogether, then how did it need to be transformed, to become manageable by the
theoretical tools of Marxism? What is the relationship that is to be established between the
past and the present to be, and how does it compare to other such formulations,
represented by non-Marxist writers on the subject? Is the project at hand fundamentally
one of negative critique, or of positive re-appropriation?
While this discussion can shed light on some important specific issues and predicaments of
Arabic society and the left in these societies, it also ties in with questions and theories of a
decidedly universal validity, such as the relationship between materiality and culture,
cultural heritage and history, as developed not least by Marxist theoreticians such as
Frederic Jameson and Walter Benjamin."
Thomas

Carmichael

The Aesthetic Ideology of the Later Althusser

"In the Initiation la philosophie pour les non-philosophes, recently published in France, a
text composed in the late 1970s, contemporaneous with his several meditations on the
crisis in the historical Communist movement and his turn to the major late texts on aleatory
materialism, Althusser argues that the The escape into art is perhaps the equivalent of the
escape into religion: a way of finding an imaginary solution to the real difficulties that
societies confront [Translation mine].
However, that critique of artistic practice would appear to be at odds with his conception
of the role of the aesthetic and the aesthetically interpellated collective that informs much

of his late work on aleatory materialism. Consider, for example, the role that Althusser
assigns to culture in his own work. In his unpublished 1982 interview with Richard Hyland,
Althusser asserts that he considers his essay The Piccolo Teatro: Bertolazzi and Brecht,
one of the better things that he has ever written: Je crois que cest une des meilleures
choses que jai crites (Althusser, Conversation avec Richard Hyland 2 juillet 1982, IMEC
Fonds Althusser ALT2. A46.-05.03, p. 32). If we are inclined to heed that the observation
tienne Balibar makes in his remarks at Althussers funeral that For Marx is Althussers one
great book, then we might reasonably ask ourselves, as this chapter considers, why
Althusser would value so highly the theatre essay in that book, an essay that seems to so
many as secondary to Contradiction and Overdetermination or On the Materialist
Dialectic (Balibar, crits, 121).
My paper also takes up the questions posed in Althussers own unpublished notes. In his
unpublished 1966 reflections on Machereys Pour une thorie de la production littraire,
for example, the phrases ncessit libre, rencontre de ncissits, du clinamen, and
thorie de la rencontre appear prominently, in part in response to Machereys own
discussion of necessity in A Theory of Literary Production (Althusser, Notes sur le livre de
Pierre Macherey: Pour une thorie de la production littraire 1966. IMEC Fonds Althusser).

As the notes on Machereys A Theory of Literary Production would indicate, the
terms that will guide the logic of Althussers late thought often appear early, and these
terms
appear
most
often
in
the
field
of
cultural
analysis.

Matteo Cavallaro
Towards a political economy of radical right parties
According to Alesina et al. (2001), anti-immigrant sentiment and racist views can play a role
in undermining public support for public sector. Roemer et al. (2007) furtherly deveoped
this idea estimating the loss of public expenditure caused by widespread racist feelings.
Their works, however, mainly focus on the trade-off between individual preferences, thus
leaving unsolved other questions such as: to what extent do these attitudes have concrete
effects on the economy? What is the role of radical right parties ? And what can we say of
social blocks behind those parties? Goal of this work is to present a thorough review of
political determinants in economics, from the neoclassical interpretation to the approaches
focusing on individual attitudes. On the other hand, I wish to introduce a plan for an
integrated study linking social classes, radical right parties and economic policy keeping in
mind that Policy requires politics (Gourevitch 1986 : 1). In particular, two (both
Gramscian) streams seem useful reach this goal, namely the social blocks approach
developed during the last years by Amable et al. (2003, 2005, 2006 and 2012) and the
marxist theory of the state as proposed by Jessop (2002 and 2006). Developing and unifying
these approaches could prove to be insightful in understanding the role of radical right, as
well as other political forces, in capitalist ecomies.

Riccardo

Cavallo

The Commons Revolution: the Italian Case.

This paper analyses the new attempts at resistance to neoliberalism spread implemented in
Italy in recent times. If, on the one hand, global capitalism seems to survive thanks to the
new practices and tools, on the other hand, in some countries there are developing new
forms of opposition to the dominance of the capital. The Italian case stands in this complex
scenario, where the theoretical work on the commons of a group of scholars (mostly jurists
and economists), has not been confined to the lecture rooms but it has had significant
practical implications of giving rise to a veritable proliferation of socio-political movements,
whose struggles in defence of commons and, in particular, against the privatization of water
resources, ended with the victory of a popular referendum in 2011. Since a so unexpected
victory, we should examine some aspects of the protection of common goods, starting from
the fundamental question summed up as follows: the collective government of the
commons could be a revolutionary in order to way out of the suffocating logic of private
property as a new form of class struggle or, on the contrary, it is likely to remain entangled
in the same neoliberal ideology?
Paromita Chakrabarti
Between Capitalism and Imperialism: Subaltern Feminist Resistance and Struggle in
Mahashweta Devis Breast Stories
The history of Indias emergence from a colony to a post colonial nation state is marked by
the narrative of peoples struggle and agency. However, what is silenced in this narrative are
certain moments of confrontation that marks this transition. This confrontation was not
simply between the colonizer and the colonized but between the bourgeois nationalists who
began to assert power after independence and the tribals or indigenous people who fiercely
resisted being proletarized. Subaltern protests and peasant rebellion against state authority,
multinational corporations land grabbling ventures and institutional tolerance of
spectacular sexual violence against lower caste women have continued to expose the fault
lines of Indian democracy.
This paper discusses Mahashweta Devis radical writings which tell the stories of subaltern
women in India who are caught in the cycle of violence, exploitation and oppression as
body, worker and object; and are yet able to resist the deep seated caste prejudices,
destabilize the notions of victim and violator, and question the hegemonic homogeneity
that symbolize the idea of India. Although Literature has long ceased to be the most
effective medium of social criticism and the advancement of alternative visions, it remains
an important source of intervention, especially in the Indian context, particularly because
literature is able to focus on questions glossed over by more capital-intensive media. The
intersection of class exploitation and features of caste and sexual oppression that are

explored in the work of Mahashweta Devi, articulates a position that is simultaneously

Marxist and Feminist, as well as advancing the perspectives of subaltern social groups.
Devis Breast Stories (trans.1997) uses the site of the transgressive female body to represent
radical aesthetics, launching a stringent critique of Indian nationalism, its imperial invasive
ventures into the tribal (indigenous) and peasant lands and its capitalist exploitation of the
productive subaltern female body for elite consumption. I argue that Mahashweta Devis
Breast Stories represent the subaltern womans struggle and resistance against the
intrusions of the capitalist market economy and the rise of violent quasi-imperial modes of
domination and subjugation.
Devis work constitutes a dialectical engagement with subaltern womens oppression, its
roots in structures of exploitation and strategies for liberation. This is apparent when she
subverts and appropriates the ancient Hindu epics to serve the cause of subaltern protest
against the combined force of state violence, the bramhinical social order, patriarchal
oppression and capitalist exploitation in the form of the persistence of bonded labour. In a
compelling revisionist strategy, Devis literary appropriation of the figure of Draupadi, the
polyandrous wife of the Pandavas as Dopdi, serves as a critique of the violent and
exploitative Indian state and a mark of subaltern female agency. Central figures in her
narrative serve to subvert the grand narrative of motherhood and maternal nourishment
and allegorize the oppressive legacies of patriarchal demands on the female body as
commodity. By rewriting the figure of the sacred wife and mother, Devi problematises the
image of the Indian state as a secular, democratic and progressive republic and exposes the
reality of exclusion, exploitation and erasure of the subaltern female that such a state
regularly practices. Reading Devis work as a Marxist feminist critique of neo-imperialism
and capitalism has particular importance in our times for two reasons: her writings have
inspired protests by tribal womens groups against the Indian State in areas like Manipur
among others, and it gives her readers critical insight into Indias aggressive capitalist
market oriented economic policy, the politics of sexual crimes that are committed by the
upper caste men against women particularly from the lower caste in the name of social
justice, and the dangerous shift of the political debate on cultural nationalism to the right.
Vincent

Chanson

Politicizing Theory : Philosophy and Praxis in critical marxism from Korsch to Krahl.

In this paper, my aim will be to examine Western Marxism concept with a quite different
approach than Perry Andersons classical category. While in the famous Andersons book
Wester Marxism is assimilated to a pessimistic critique of the proletariat praxis, to a
philosophizing estrangement of the classical marxian critique of political economy, ill argue
quite differently that we can find another undercurrent in this tradition, which leads us to a
new type of theory and praxis unity concept. From Karl Korsch seminal text Marxism and
Philosophy (1923) to Hans-Jrgen Krahl Konstitution und Klassenkampf (1971), the
problem of the realization of philosophy is revisited in an experimental and subversive way.

Philosophic statements become here directly politicized : a new dialectical conceptuality

oversteps traditional marxism, critical self-reflexion becomes the core of a new strategic
rationality. Far away from Adornos skepticism and tragic philosophy of history,
revolutionary perspective in late capitalism is for Krahl in a new interpretation of 1920s
dialectical marxism (Lukacs, Korsch) grounded. Thats why Critical Theory could, in
opposition to the habermassian orientation, give us some political and organizational
orientations, directly coming from a new synthesis between critical marxism and german
idealism.
Vincent Chanson is PHD Student (Nanterre University/ SOPHIAPOL). He is the coordinator
(with Frdric Monferrand and Alexis Cukier) of La Rification, Histoire et actualit dun
concept critique (La Dispute, 2014) and the author of many articles about critical theory
(Adorno, Benjamin, Lukacs, Jameson) and marxist aesthetic."
Greig Charnock

& Ramon

Ribera-Fumaz

The Limits to Capital in Spain

Perhaps nowhere better exemplifies how capital survives better than the European
South, where states crisis management strategies since 2009 have amounted to what some
have termed austericide. This paper will explain the crisis in Spain by tracing the essential
features of the development of Spanish political economy paying particular attention to
the reproduction of a mass of small capitals before and after the insertion of Spain into the
New International Division of Labour from the 1970s. While stressing that crisis has been a
necessary and periodically recurring feature of this development, the paper also highlights
how crisis as normality is intrinsically linked to the project of European Monetary Union
through the politics of internal devaluation and widespread struggles over the
reproduction of the working class.
Olivier Chassaing

Legal Form Theory and Criminal Law Criticism

At least since the end of the XVIIIth century, the legal institutions that settle and operate
repression of forbidden conducts have been approached from the historical perspective of
their never-ending reforms, or of their abolition. Therefore, a number of critical studies
about state repression and criminal law have tried to argue that existing historical
institutions could not be abstractly rubbed out, and showed instead the productive, useful
and indeed inevitable character of transgression and its repression, following Marxs dictum
of the social benefits of crime (Theories of Surplus-Value). In particular, Rushe and
Kirchheimer analysed the penal pattern through which economic structure impacts upon
law and makes it a key-tool of labour discipline and broader exploitation (Punishment and
Social Structure). More essentialy, Pachukanis account of criminalization and punishment
traced the deeper legal form at its rise, namely the commodity form, and argued that law

becomes a formal condition to reproduce capitalism and reinforce its social hierarchy. Thus,
penal pattern and commodity form theory offer two different ways to understand the
connection between criminalization and penalty on one side, and exploitation and social
domination on the other. Those two options can be defined as structural subordination and
agentivity of criminal law since law expresses and shapes class struggle. I would like to
question these various theories of legal form in order to identify the principle of legality
criticism that structures those critical theories of crime (wether they be engaged with a
restorative justice or with an abolitionnist framework).
Franois Chesnais

The notion of finance capital and the contemporary operations of TNCs

"The exploration of capital's capacity to survive requires a re-examination of the notion of

finance capital as an initial necessary step. Finance capital refers to something more, and
infinitely more formidable than just capital operating in financial markets. In the
contemporary conditions of the globalisation of capital, it designates the process and
consequences of the centralisation and concentration of industrial, banking and merchant
capital alike and their intermeshing. Contemporary finance capital is in combination
productive capital lodged in industrial corporations, all of them transnational corporations
(TNCs), money capital centralised in very large and powerful financial conglomerates
(financial capital) and merchant and commercial capital embodied in the conglomerates
operating in both in commodities proper and in final commercialisation.
Once this has been posited the analysis will focus on TNCs. If today capitalism continues to
be capable of containing the effects of the world crisis, in the case of the advanced capitalist
countries it is due in large part to the scale of value and surplus production through foreign
direct investment and the intensification of exploitation taking place under TNC corporate
management operating on a global level. The configuration of foreign production has
continually evolved from the 1960s onwards. It has been marked by a continuous extension
from the direct production of value and surplus value by TNCs to their appropriation of
surplus value from other firms. Global vertical supply chains appeared in the early 1990s,
followed by ever more complex value chains, first among TNC affiliates and then
increasing through offshoring with medium and small firms often situated in a large number
of countries."
Danielle

Child

From Labia to Labour: an alternative to the performed body in mid-1970s feminist art

"From 1973 to 1975, three women artists Margaret Harrison, Kay Hunt and Mary Kelley
undertook a study of (mainly women) workers in a Bermondsey metal box factory. The
project was born out of their engagement with the Womens Workshop of the Artists Union
and was more akin to a sociological study than art, producing detailed data on the lives of

these workers. The research culminated in an installation, exhibited under the title Women
and Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry (1973-5) at the South London
Art Gallery. The piece was to evidence the inequality between the men and women who
worked at the factory.
The work is dubbed as a feminist project due to the artists whom undertook the research
and the subject of the project. This paper will consider the work as a departure from the
dominant models of feminist art of the mid-1970s in which the female body is performed.
Through examining the types of labour - performed labour, labour as knowledge creation
and the actual labour of the subject (creating value through extracting surplus) - it will be
argued that this London-based group undertook a more affective feminist critique through
its knowledge creation."
Juan Chingo

The geopolitics of the current international crisis: neo-Kautskyism or inter-imperialist

rivalries?
"The current crisis has not yet brought about a significant geopolitical transformation as was
the case with the 1929 crisis, which Isaac Johsua characterises as a crisis of American
emergence. The catastrophic economic conditions of the 1929 crisis meant that the United
Kingdom was incapable of playing its old stabilising role and the United States, despite its
rapid advance, was incapable of replacing the UK. In 1931, neither power was able to
intervene to prevent the German banking crisis or the collapse of sterling, events that
contributed to the Second World War. In the current crisis, by contrast, we have seen not
only massive state intervention to rescue the bankrupt financial system, but also the
prominent role played by the Federal Reserve, followed by the European Central Bank and
the Bank of Japan, to prevent the crisis from becoming another Great Depression.
As a consequence, the first phase of this on-going crisis has reinforced an incorrect view:
one that overestimates Americas leading role in a collective imperialism to manage global
capitalism, which in the latter part of the 20th Century replaced imperialist rivalries
(including wars). Although it is true that there is no hegemon to replace American
dominance, this paper will attempt to demonstrate, against these neo-Kautskyist views, that
the difficulty in achieving hegemonic succession lies in the historical features of American
supremacy, which are qualitatively different from those of Britain in the 19th Century; and
that, in spite of some inertia (dollar primacy, rehabilitation of the IMF, etc), the crisis of
American hegemony might be causing a widening gap inside the core, in particular with the
new, post-reunification Germany. This paper will also analyse possible scenarios for the
future of inter-state relationships, taking into account the rise of China and the limitations
on its growth."
Joseph Choonara

Deskilling and the two-fold nature of skill

"The category of skilled labour is an important feature of two areas associated with Marxist
theory: Marxs labour theory of value (LTV) and labour process theory (LPT).
Within LTV, debate surrounds the mechanism through which the value created by skilled
labour is reduced to that of simple labour, and the relationship between the extra value
skilled labour creates and the extra value that must be advanced to produce or reproduce
the skilled labour power. Marxs own writings on this subject in Capital and the Contribution
to the Critique of Political Economy are brief and open to various interpretations. Arguably
Marxs account was sufficient for the period in which he was writing, in which a mass of
more or less interchangeable labourers with minimal training was developing in the
factories of the Industrial Revolution. Today, it would be hard to defend such a position.
Within LPT, Bravermans account in Labor and Monopoly Capital has been criticised for his
portrayal of deskilling as an inevitable outcome of a battle between capital and labour for
control of the labour process. But the resulting debates in LPT pay little attention to LTV. In
most of the well-known contributions to the debate on deskilling, value simply does not
feature in any rigorous manner. Instead the focus is on concrete qualities of labour
processes, such as the variety of tasks performed by workers, their degree of autonomy,
their level of education and training, and so on. Many of the leading exponents of LPT reject
value theory altogether.
Making sense of these arguments requires that we reinstate value in the conceptualisation
of the labour process. Marx argues that labour power has a two-fold character, generating
both values and use-values. I shall propose an account that considers the two-fold nature of
skilled labour power. In this approach, concrete expressions of skilled labour are
subordinated to the drive to generate and appropriate surplus value by capital, which is
engaged in a competitive battle of accumulation. The drive to deskill, or to enhance the
skills of, labour can be understood in this framework. At the same time, it is today necessary
to focus not on the individual worker as bearer of simple labour, but the collective
labourer as a composite formed of different individual labour powers.
This reformulation provides a basis for a reassessment of Bravermans deskilling thesis, one
that is more sensitive to the various counter-tendencies that generate new areas of skilled
labour."
Rossana

Cillo

The struggles of immigrant workers in the logistics and freight transport sectors in Italy
"Since 2008 the logistics and freight transport sectors in Italy have been affected by an
increasing number of strikes, that have been successful thanks to the organization activities
by the independent trade union Si-Cobas and the self-activation of precarious immigrant

workers employed in the co-operative enterprises of the subcontracting system. At different

times the most important logistics hubs of Northern Italy (such as Bologna and Padua) and
some of the most important multinational corporations in the logistics (TNT, DHL, GLS, SDA,
Bartolini...), in the large-scale distribution (Coop, Esselunga, Ikea) and in food industry
(Granarolo) have been blocked.
Even if state and employers have reacted with a severe repression, these strikes represent
by far the most important struggles that have developed in Italy as a result of the crisis and
the very first attempt to organize a workers struggle outside the social-democratic unions,
which are more and more accepting compromises with capital at the national level."
Alexandru Cistelecan & Dana Domsodi

The Messianic Time of Value. On The Political Theology of the new Wertkritik

"This paper attempts to critically evaluate the philosophical premises and practical
consequences of the new Wertkritik (Postone, Kurz, Jappe etc.) that are responsible for its
oscillation between a non-historical materialism and a historical non-materialism
(formalism). The contemporary interest in this new theory of value is due to the fact that it
responds particularly well to the double nature of our present predicament: the global crisis
of capitalism, together with the evident absence of a really existing social alternative,
reflected into the core arguments of this theory: the bitter emphasis on the inescapable and
impersonal unfolding of the logic of value and the acute irrelevance of the subjective factor.
The first part will critically discuss some of the philosophical premises of this intellectual
direction, namely the articulation between time, history and revelation. Briefly, it will be
argued that this reading of Marxs theory of value entails a direct leap from history (the
contingent birth of capitalism in England) to a fatal and teleological process of unfolding and
revelation of the logic of value. Thus history is merely the intra-apocalyptic distance
between the revelation of its abstract logic and final realization. A sort of messianic time
which strikingly resembles Fukuyamas post-history.
This highly metaphysical touch is also visible in the practical consequences that this theory
entails. On the one hand, an unexplainable rediscovered subjectivism, as program for the
post-capitalist future (already present), and, on the other hand, the retreat into
communitaristic and non-mediated forms of social organization, caused by the theorys
hasty and risky identification of value with social abstraction as such."
Nicola Clewer

How capitalism survives: The neoliberal monument?

"The means by which capitalism survives, the machinations in which it must always
engaged, include ideological and cultural as much as do social and economic
transformations. Since the early 1980s, alongside the rise of neoliberalism, there has been a

renaissance in memorial and monument building in the West and a concomitant burgeoning
of academic interest in this area. This efflorescence in memorial forms and discourses has
commonly been linked to the rise of postmodernism. The complex relationship between
postmodernism and neoliberalism has been subject detailed and insightful analysis by a
number of theorists including, most influentially, Fredric Jameson and David Harvey and,
more recently, the likes of Jodi Dean and Mark Fisher. But what about the relationship
between neoliberalism and this boom in memorialisation?
Focusing on large-scale national memorial projects in the US and Germany, this paper
situates this renaissance in memorial building within the context of a crisis of legitimacy
within capitalists states which began in the 1970s. I argue that, within the context of a wider
transformation from the embedded liberalism of the post-war period to the
contemporary neoliberal conjuncture, there has been a proliferation of memorial projects
which draw on postmodern aesthetics in order, ultimately, to legitimate the state as it
reconfigures itself in light of the contemporary demands of capitalism."
Matthew

Cole

Dynamics of Proletarianisation: Financial Deepening and Class Post-Crisis

"Capitalism has survived for a variety of reasons, but one of the most distinguishing features
of its contemporary formation is a marked polarisation of class in a large number of
developed nations. While many of the conventional conceptions of class as a social identity
have withered away, class as a distinct economic relation is becoming more readily
apparent. Along with financial deepening, shareholder takeovers, deregulation, and free-
market globalisation over the past 30-40 years, we have seen a steady rise in income
inequality, with a distinct acceleration over the past 5-10 years. Additionally, real-terms
wage growth was negative across the board from 2008-2011 and continues to stagnate.
Recent economics research predicts a prolongation of the same trend. In 2011, using
harmonised European Union Labour Force Survey Data, Goos and Manning found that high
and low wage occupations expanded rapidly relative to middle wage occupations in nearly
every European country. This recent trend in the labour market has not received adequate
attention from a political economic perspective.
This paper will explore why proletarianisation is a necessary component for the survival of
capitalism and what changes in the labour market accompany it. It will outline how the
proletarian subjected to crisis is not only excluded from control over their own labour, the
means of production, accumulation, etc. but also pushed farther down the labour-market
hierarchy. It will show how what little pre-crisis stability there may have been is negated
due to the inflation premium i.e. the fact that food, fuel and transport costs have risen
much faster than inflation and inflation has risen faster than wages. A domino-effect,
reminiscent of the financial crisis, becomes apparent as the middle-classes lose workplace
autonomy, assets and income as they effectively become proletarians exposing those

below them to increasing competition for work. Sometimes proletarians are forced out of
work altogether, joining the reserve army of the unemployed or perhaps are exorcised
entirely into the surplus population. A lucid analysis of the dynamics of proletarianisation is
crucial for understanding the underlying social conditions that accompany or enable the
survival of capitalism."
Constantinou Constantinos & Leandros

Savvides

The scientific management of migration in Cyprus: the racialisation of labor

In Cyprus, a historically multicultural island that was homogenized for the purposes of
forming a nation-state in 1960, the rising issue of racism today is considered as an issue of
crisis, an oversimplified approach that encapsulates ideas such that the unemployment
created by the economic crisis that struck the island has created tendencies against
foreigners who steal the jobs of the locals. But if that is true, then Norways Breivik
incident would be inconceivable as well as the rise of the far right even in the most well-off
European countries such as the Scandinavian. With increased employment for Turkish
Cypriots across the divide and a significant influx of migrants to assigned sectors, there is a
worry of the loss of national identity as well as the loss of economic opportunities by
Cypriots, especially young unemployed labour. We claim that the case of Cyprus indicates
how racism in times of crisis is a symptom of long- standing structures of racism that have
been developed over the course of years through a management of migration (which
created a vast underclass) that was adopted to suit the needs of capital. Explanations can be
found in the objective structured mechanics of institutions and the intersubjective dynamics
of capital, ideology and race.
Terry Conway

No pinkwashing

"This paper situates the development of a conscious strategy of Pinkwashing by the Israeli
state in the context of the broader hasbara/Brand Israel campaign; playing on the growth of
Islamaphobia and anti-Arab prejudice in the post-9/11 period. It will explore why the LGBTQ
communities particular gay men - are seen as a target for this propaganda and discuss the
concept of homonationalism in this context.
It will situate pinkwashing, as all aspects of the ideological offensive of the Israeli state in
the complete obliteration of any agency of the Palestinian people. LGBTQ Palestinians only
exist in this grotesque fantasy as victims apparently fleeing to the apparently safe haven of
Israel to distract from and normalize the settler colonial and apartheid reality that the
state of Israel has established on the ground which oppresses all Palestinians regardless of
sexuality or gender identity.

It will explore some of the campaigning tactics used by anti- Pinkwashing activists
particularly in Britain but drawing on experiences in the USA, Canada, Portugal and the
Netherlands including links with LGBTQ Palestinian organisations. It will discuss the extent
to which such activism has impacted on Palestine solidarity campaigning and LGBTQ
activism.
It is submitted as part of the Marxist-feminist stream and relates to topics on
homonationalism, racism and islamaphobia and queer subjects listed as topics for the
stream"
Estelle Cooch

Blurred lines and Trojan horses

"Numerous authors have written on the links between the victories won by second wave
feminism and their consequent manipulation by neoliberal ideology throughout the 1980s.
This paper is the product of extensive interviews with current and past university feminist
society presidents and interviews with those at the heart of organising the burgeoning new
movement in the UK SlutWalk, UK Feminista, Object, International Union of Sexworkers
etc.
It will provide quantitative evidence looking at what the new feminists have taken from the
second wave and to what extent they think the victories won; choice, sexual freedom and
financial independence, have allowed capitalism to reconstitute itself in a more vicious
form. Was feminism a Trojan horse for what has been termed the new sexism. It will
attempt to chart the relationship of the womens movement to other movements
It will ask if the largely anti-racist nature of the movement in the UK is related to the rise of
the anti-war movement in the early 2000s. It will also consider if the class basis to slut
shaming that was identified in a recent study published in Social Psychology Quarterly in the
US is equally applicable to the UK. It will consider how we can transform the more atomised
new feminism into a real social movement. It will conclude by looking at the way in which
new feminists attempt to link personal liberation with social transformation.
Authors considered include Cinzia Arruza, Nancy Fraser, Gail Dines, Laura Bates"
Matthew

Cooper

We are not all multiculturalists now: the recasting of multiculturalism as state policy in
Britain since 2001.
We are not all multiculturalists now: the recasting of multiculturalism as state policy in
Britain since 2001.

There is, even within the left, no agreed understanding of the state policy of
multiculturalism. This paper will attempt to move towards a source based history of
multiculturalism in Britain.
Initially multiculturalism was a policy (or perhaps little more than a series of rhetorical
political stances) pursued by political actors in a period of post-colonial migration which
attempted to manage the position of racialised minorities within class society. The body of
this paper will attempt to understand how popular and popularist narratives of the failure of
such multiculturalism have developed in Britain since the mid-1980s.
This critique from the right coincided with a changing context. If multiculturalism in its first
phase was linked to post-colonial migration, in this second phase the deep context was
given by the increasing dominance of neo-liberal ideas and the globalised economy in which
migration was no longer the legacy of Empire. Multiculturalism became a fractured set of
policies, some only in the imagination of its opponents, mutating through decisive moments
such as the Rushdie affair of 1989 to the riots of 2001 and 9/11.
This paper will conclude with an examination of how diversity is understood in terms of
state policy in the period since 2001 in the context of the 'war on terror' and the evolving
paradigm of community cohesion."
Luke Cooper

Beyond the so-called Russian question: twentieth century communism reconsidered

"Few questions have been more contested amongst Marxists than that concerned with the
nature of the state socialist regimes of the last century. Despite the manifest differences
between the various competing paradigms on the categorization of these regimes, it is the
shared assumptions that underpinned the debate which arguably require the most radical
reconsideration. The shorthand to which the debate was frequently referred, the Russian
question, encapsulates these problems, for it carried with it two dubious implicit
presuppositions. Firstly, it was assumed that a model of politics and economy developed as
a result of largely endogenous challenges faced by Russian society in the 1920s and 1930s.
As such, arguments tended to focus merely on the timing and class dynamic of a process
treated as essentially internal. Secondly, each paradigm also tended to presuppose that this
social structure was largely duplicated in those revolutions that came after; a fallacy that
lead, in turn, to a further tendency for those variations in facets which were recognised, to
be judged against the supposed norm of the Russian-Soviet model. This paper pursues a
recasting of twentieth century communism in power as a truly global phenomenon in its
origins and scope. It argues that by locating Stalinist states within the explosive
contradictions of uneven and combined development a less Eurocentric and more
historically sensitive understanding of the communism of the last century can be
elaborated. This thesis is pursued through an engagement with John Kautskys seminal, but

all too often overlooked, The Political Consequences of Modernization, and the
contemporary literature concerned to creatively re-elaborate the theory of uneven and
combined development.

Ludmila Costhek Ablio

Emerging on two wheels: Brazilian economic development and labour exploitation

The rise of minimum wage, of the rate of formal work and of the credit to low income
population has enabled the Brazilian government to establish an official speech and
propaganda about new Brazilian middle class. This definition is fully disconnected to work
conditions, labour exploitation or lifestyles; on the other hand, the celebration of a new
middle class is entirely connected to the consolidation of a Brazilian neodevelopment
ideology. Based on an empirical analysis of the motorcycle couriers in the City of Sao Paulo
combined with the analysis of this official speech, I discuss the connections between labour
exploitation and economic development. These workers annihilate space by time with their
own bodies, in a very risky way. This very precarious work which is typically associated
with this new middle class - plays a key role to the realisation of the demands of finances
and services that take place at the global city. The principal aims are: 1.To discuss the
disappearance of labour as a reference in the definition of the so called new Brazilian
middle class; 2. To present a broader analysis of the intricate relation between the very
explicit although obfuscated forms of labour exploitation and Brazilian development.
Emily Cousens& Sarah Pine

Cognitive Capitalism and the Instrumentalization of Sexuality as Vulnerability

Contemporary capitalism is characterized by the shift from material to immaterial or

cognitive regimes of accumulation. Drawing on Hardt and Negri we will explore the
centrality of affective labour to the production of immaterial value. Womens roles have
historically involved the majority of emotional or affective labour, meaning this shift has led
to the qualitative, as well as heavily studied quantitative, feminization of labour. Wittig
argues that women are the category of sex; they are made into sex itself. Womens
sexuality produces surplus and exchange value within cognitive capitalism, thereby helping
capitalism to survive. We draw on Skeggs work to explore how women have access to a
source of cultural capital in performing their sexuality and utilize it for their role in the
workplace. Women must perform that sexuality which is considered valuable. We will
explore the nature of feminine sexuality as a necessarily oppositional norm; characterized
by vulnerability in opposition to masculine dominance. Those who cannot approximate this
norm of sexuality as vulnerability; the working class, are depicted as having abject sexuality.
This may be commodified as spectacle but results in further exclusion from the workforce
and citizenry more generally.

Bill

Crane

From Class Struggle to Class Compromise: The Contradictions of Kerala's Developmental

State
"From the 1990s onwards, the ""Kerala model of development"" was a figure lauded by left-
wing scholars and observers of the development process. The Communist-led state, it was
thought, had found a road to prosperity while promoting human rights, the freedom of
women and the lower castes, and access to health and education as well as a healthy
democratic culture.
More recent studies historicize Kerala's ""model"" of development by pointing to the
circumstances that gave rise to it, including a weak capitalist class and a strong labour
movement. Critical work has been done showing that the ""Kerala model"" has continually
failed to address gender, caste and class differences. As Kerala's neoliberal transformation
continues, these critiques can only gain power.
My paper seeks an explanation of the genesis of the Kerala model. Focusing centrally on the
rise of agrarian radicalism led by the CP(M) in the 1970s and the consolidation of a labour-
compromise on the plantations. Drawing on Marxist understandings of social-democracy
from Milliband to Brenner and Przeworski, I explain ""how capitalism survived"" Kerala's
model, a class-compromise laden with contradictions that sowed the seed of its own
downfall and the eventual stripping away of many of its achievements."
Jordy Cummings

Forces of Chaos and Anarchy: Popular Music, the New Left and Social Movements, 1966-
1972
"An iconic 1971 poster shows the faces of leading Black Panthers Bobby Seale and Huey
Newton.. The poster is an advertisement for an Intercommunal Day of Solidarity as well as
a birthday celebration for Newton. The music was to be provided by the Grateful Dead. With
some notable exceptions, the lyrical content and interviews done with well-known
American and British rock and soul musicians seem to take for granted that revolution was
around the corner, unsurprising given that in 1969, over one million American students also
self-identified as revolutionaries.
This paper aims to gain an understanding of the affective contagion that shaped a culture in
which revolutionary politics was inseparable from its musical soundtrack. While much has
been written about the connection between punk culture and radical politics, there has
been little by the way of analysis of the similar role played by popular music for the New
Left. It wasnt merely that young radicals listened to popular music, but of the dialectical
reciprocity between the popular music of the late sixties and early seventies and the social
movements. There was a shared community of belief between cultural producers and

young radicals that went beyond simple lyrical content this was not protest music,
instead it was forming a new subjectivity. To emphasize, this was mass culture at the same
time it was implicitly counter-hegemonic. Critical engagement in the underground press had
Marxist writers, notably Robert Christgau, taking popular music as seriously as critics
continue to treat literature, film and social theory.
Drawing on an engagement with Frederic Jameson, Raymond Williams and Jacques
Ranciere, this paper aims at formulating precisely how organic attempts to develop counter-
hegemony through cultural production occurred in a historically specific sense. Implicit in
this is how a similar counter-hegemony can be developed in the 21st century."
Eduardo
da Motta a Albuquerque, Joo Antonio de Paula, Hugo Eduardo da Gama
Cerqueira, Leonardo Gomes de Deus Carlos & Eduardo Suprinyak
If we have not touched the bottom, how far are we from it?: Marxs unpublished
manuscripts on the 1866 crisis
"Marx's unpublished notebooks on the 1866 crisis (the Exzerpthefte B108, B109, and B113)
are little known. In this paper, we argue that they are a useful source of information about
his investigations on the crisis in general and its role in the capitalist dynamics. We also
suggest that the part V of the third volume of Capital provides guidelines for reading and
understanding Marxs notes and excerpts in the notebooks.
According to Engels, part V placed the greatest difficulties in the work of editing the third
volume: not only it dealt with the most complicated subject but there was a long section
in the manuscript, entitled The Confusion, containing nothing but extracts from
parliamentary reports on the crises of 1848 and 1857. This description hints at the
potential role of the above-mentioned notebooks for the development of Marxs argument
in Capital: they may be seen as parts of Marx's studies in view of the revision of the
manuscript of the third volume.
To explore this conjecture we make a close reading of the part V of the third volume of
Capital and its preparatory manuscripts (MEGA II.4.2 and MEGA II.14), comparing them to
the contents of those three notebooks."
Juan Dal

Maso

Gramsci, Trotsky and the struggle for proletarian hegemony

"Debates about struggle against capitalism are many times determined by an opposition
between theory of hegemony and theory of permanent revolution. But this opposition is
more the result of a theoretical operation than the product of a true contradiction.
In this paper, we will try to deploy some aspects about the marxisms development of the
idea of proletarian hegemony in a relation to the comprehension of the proletarian

revolution in 20 Century. This way, we will underline convergences and differences between
Gramscis and Trotskys theories.
We will analize Peter D. Thomas point of view about central role of theory of hegemony in
Prison Notebooks, making an assessment about positions of The Gramscian Moment and
those of the so-called argentinian gramscian intellectuals, like Jos Mara Aric and Juan
Carlos Portantiero, whose influence were hegemonic in gramscian studies in Latinamerica
many decades; and last but not least, we will make a comparison between Gramsci and
Trotskis points of view and their importance to a strategic reflection today."
Gareth Dale
Polanyi, or colonialism/growth

A paper that tracks the origins of the ideology of economic growth (alongside that of the
economy per se), to the contradictions of the C17 English mercantilistsincluding, and
here I address HMs CfP, their colonial agenda. To say that English mercantilism came into
being to promote the interests of the East India and Royal African companies would be to
exaggerate but not by much. And as is well known, the mercantilists sought to give their
special pleading on behalf of corporate interests the appearance of unimpeachable veracity
by expressing it in a scientific idiom. (This was, after all, the age of Bacon, Newton, etc.) To
drastically simplify the argument: the idea of the self-regulating market emerged as
economists and political theorists of this era revised natural law doctrine. Here, Locke,
North, and Barbon, and perhaps Child, are the crucial figures. The economy came to be
conceived as a mechanism; indeed, as the cosmos appears to a deist. Economy and cosmos
are alike divine machines; they both run like clockwork according to natural laws. Both
require a benevolent fine-tuner-ruler (God; government / the ruling class). Gods role as
divine watchmaker can pretty straightforwardly be deduced, by superstition posing as
reason. But how to justify the analogously divine position of the state / ruling class vis--vis
the economy? Here, the colonial experience was crucialas I argue in the rest of the paper.

Katja Daniels

Protecting Capitalism from Political Protest? The 'Full Protection and Security' Standard in
International Investment Treaties
International investment treaties require national states to protect foreign companies who
have invested within their territory from expropriation, unfair and inequitable treatment,
and discrimination each of which has been interpreted in innovative ways by the
corporate-friendly international investment tribunals that rule on such cases. In so far as
investment treaties place limits on how governments can respond to domestic political
pressures, each of the above treaty standards is implicated in class struggle a civil society

victory at the national level can be challenged by affected corporations at the international
level (e.g. Quebecs moratorium on fracking is currently being challenged as a breach of a
corporations legitimate expectations to extract shale gas and thereby the fair and
equitable treatment standard, while Australias and Uruguays tobacco plain packaging
regulations are being challenged as indirect expropriations of a tobacco companys
intellectual property). However, there is one particular treaty standard that has recently
attracted the attention of companies, and that has the potential to more directly interfere
with the political activities of anti-capitalist movements. Corporations have recently brought
a number of multi-million dollar legal cases against states for their alleged failures to afford
corporations full protection and security from adverse social demonstrations and direct
action protests that have targeted their operations. As such, they have invoked the full
protection and security standard to protect themselves not from government action
motivated by domestic political pressures (as do the other treaty standards), but directly
from the civil society protestors themselves. It is still uncertain what precisely this legal
standard demands of states, but this paper suggests that the political implications of this
clause may well precede any legal consequences the threat of such lawsuits may
themselves incentivise states to strike down on protests.
Brecht De

Smet

Gramsci, Caesarism, and (Counter-)Revolution in Egypt

"This paper explores the Gramscian concept of Caesarism (quantitative and qualitative,
progressive and reactionary) and its relevance for understanding the current process of
revolution and restoration in Egypt.
First, attention is paid to conceptual relations between Caesarism and, on the one hand,
traditional Marxist notions such as Bonapartism and populism, and, on the other, Gramscian
concepts such as passive revolution, hegemony, and historical bloc. Similarities, differences,
and problems of interpretation are accentuated.
Subsequently, the contemporary political process, especially the role of the military and the
position of (former) Field Marshal al-Sissi, is framed within Egypt's historical trajectory,
refracturing the Nasserist episode and the transformations that followed it through the
prism of Gramsci's concepts of Caesarism and passive revolution.
Finally, the discussion returns to Gramsci, concluding that the concept of Caesarism
operates in two interconnected domains.
(1) In the field of class politics, strategy, and hegemony it refers to a botched process of
popular subject constitution - a degenerated Modern Prince. In this tradition, Caesarism is
linked to such concepts as ""substitutionism"" (Trotsky) and ""octroyal socialism"" (Draper).

(2)As a political-economic category it deals with a specific mode of state formation and/or
reconfiguration of a historical bloc. Here the concept is closer to Cox's classical
interpretation of Caesarism as the ""instrumentality of passive revolution"", although it is
argued that it cannot be fully subsumed by the latter notion."
Lvia de Cssia
Godoi Moraes

Financialization as a response to crisis: the case of EMBRAER S.A.
This article summarizes the results of my thesis about the increase of the financialization of
the biggest aeronautic enterprise in Brazil: Embraer S.A. Embraer was created in a context of
military dictatorship, as part of the international division of labor and the condition of
Brazilian dependence, in the context of the structural crisis of capital in the 1970s. Over four
decades of existence, it has sought responses to the crisis for not being crashed. The
company was privatized in 1994 under the implementation of neoliberal policies. Since
then, many changes have been implemented, characterized by the globalization of capital
with the prevalence of the fictitious capital accumulation. According to our studies, fictitious
capital and productive capital are deeply related. The research also demonstrated that the
more the capital is sprayed, the more it intensifies the use of the workforce's labor through
organizational change, outsourcing and imposing standards of corporate governance,
reorganization of the company's layout, changes in the types of hiring, internalization of
toyotists standards behavioral, etc. Moreover, we intended to point out the contradictions
of these movements that directly impact the company workers, always having as
perspective of analyses the relationship between the particularity of EMBRAER and the
social totality.
Simona

De Simoni & Ilaria

Bertazzi

The survival of capitalism and the problem of social reproduction

"The problem of social reproduction is a open question in Marx's thought and it is
directly connected to the issue of the survival of capitalism. It constitutes a ground for
updating the Marxist-Feminist legacy and making it politically active. Taking the perspective
of Federici's thought as the starting point for our discussion, we can assume that in the
transition towards global neoliberalism the temporal sequence between reproduction and
accumulation has collapsed. The social conflict is transformed by the emergence of a
capitalism that not only reproduces itself, but a kind of capitalism that, in the meantime of
its reproduction also extracts value for itself without any mediation.
Starting from this assumption, combining our fields of expertise - economics and
philosophy, we intend to analyze the capitalistic appraisal of social reproduction with
particular attention to the processes of financialization. We consider the mechanism of debt
as a means of analyzing welfare, work and local politics as a part of a general process of

capitalistic restructuring within social reproduction, where this constitutes ground for a
new original accumulation that produces impoverishment and exploitation. At the same
time we assume the ambiguity of reproductive relationships and activities in order to
develop antagonistic practices."
Jodi

Dean

The Party

Critiques of the party in terms of agreement or schism remain at the level of the
imaginary; the party is nothing but a figure of egoism and competition. But the symbolic
dimension of the party, its form as a place from which communists assess themselves and
their actions, is what matters. This paper looks at communist lives for evidence of the
symbolic effect of the communist party. In what ways did the party make itself felt as a
place from which communists looked at themselves and their settings? Instead of focusing
on classic texts, figures, and events, I consider instead narratives from everyday experiences
of rank and file members in the CPUSA and CPGB. I look to examples from these parties
because of their weakness. The US and UK are neither party states nor parliamentary
systems where communists have ever had much electoral success. Even in the 1930s and
1940s when the communist party was at its strongest in the US and UK, actual political
power was out of reach. In the twentieth century, neither country has appeared on the
brink of revolution, but instead has encountered a mix of de-radicalizing middle class
prosperity, working class defeat, and capitalist aggression, not to mention the intense anti-
communism of the Cold War. How, then, under conditions even Moscow agreed were far
from revolutionarily ripe, did a communist sensibility endure? What enabled the communist
party to provide a location from which members in the US and UK could see their actions as
valuable and worthwhile and that even non-members could and would adopt? My claim is
that the affective infrastructure of the party provided the material support for its symbolic
location. So instead of considering the communist party in terms of ideology, program,
leadership, or organizational structure, I am approaching it in terms of its affective
capacities, the dynamics of feeling it generated and mobilized.
William Dixon
Development, Consolidation and the Commodity
This paper sets out an understanding of how capitalism survived by examining the changing
conditions of the system within the context of Britain. The limit of such an approach is that
it examines a global system within a non-global confine. Nevertheless it is a confine of some
importance to the development and survival of capitalism. If the global system were to
prosper it had, arguably, to survive in the UK. In addition in examining how it survived we
must do so in terms of characteristics that define the nature of a capitalist system. The
paper examines the emergence of a bourgeois society in terms of the characteristics of the

commodity and so how struggle and consolidation must both be shaped within that space,
leading to new forms of struggle and consolidation. These issues are investigated through
the works of leading theorists and reformers to show a coherent line of development that, it
is argued, prefigure developments within globalisation.
Caglar Dolek & Deniz Parlak

Class Response to Crisis of Neoliberalism in Peripheral Setting: On the Radicalization of

Labour Struggles in Turkey
The current global crisis and accompanying social uprisings in different national settings
have saliently demonstrated the fragile and contested character of neoliberalism as a world-
historical project of restoration of class power of capital. As a so-called one of the success
stories of neoliberalism at least for the last decade, Turkey provides a significant and
interesting case to make critical sense of the character of current crisis as well as dynamics
of social resistance. While the hegemonic bloc, politically represented by AKP, has been
experiencing deep-rooted crisis, the social and political opposition has been gradually
radicalized as most vividly experienced during the Gezi Park uprisings. Despite its radical
content and massive scale, transformative potential of Gezi resistance has seemed to be
absorbed by the systematic and relentless oppression of police power, which has become
the sole means of bourgeois politics in contemporary Turkey. Though there is much debate
on the class character of the Gezi uprisings, Turkey has also been experiencing numerous
waves of labour resistances as experienced in the struggles of Kazova, Greif, Feni, Zentiva,
iecam, Yataan, etc. workers in the last few years. Organized spontaneously to a large
extent, such resistances raise radical demands against precarious forms of labouring and
living, and resort to strategies destructive of capitals domination in workplaces, which in
turn substantially denounce the already narrowed frontiers of bourgeois law. A qualitative
change has seemed to be underway in the labour movement with the gradual proliferation
of radical strategies like workplace occupation, general strike, destruction of means of
production, direct confrontation with state power, etc. In this paper, we aim to discuss the
radical potential of the currently rising labour resistances as a labour response to the
organic crisis of neoliberal hegemony in Turkey.
Kevin Doogan

Zero Hours Contracts: Underestimated or Overstated?

In the last eighteen months Zero Hours Contracts have become the subject of debate
and controversy in the mainstream of policy, in trades union circles and professional bodies.
Different data sets, based on employers and employees surveys offer contrasting
perspectives on the extent and rise of contracts that do not guarantee minimum hours.
Currently the consensus would suggest that, even if underestimated, about 1% of the
workforce is employed on these contracts. This would appear disproportionate to the level

of concern. This paper looks at the basis for these differences and considers the broader
question as to whether they represent a radical shift in the balance of bargaining power,
particularly since the onset of the Great Recession. It examines whether they indicate an
escalation of the pursuit of labour market flexibility, but also questions whether the wider
process of flexibilisation would be assisted by the broader adoption of Zero Hours Contracts.
By focusing on Zero Hours Contracts this paper will contribute to the wider discussion of
precarity.
Susana Draper

The state and the common -- re thinking the scope of political change in the Latin American
present
In the past decades, there has been a constant tension between the language of "social
(political) movements" and the language of the State. However, some of the questions that
this conflict arises relate to the main points of discussion among heterodox Marxists in the
1970s, a moment in which the language of change was starting to problematize the
relationship between "revolution" and the takeover of the State. This paper proposes a
dialogue between those issues as they were posed in the past and present taking Bolivia as
a problematic nucleus from where to envisage the way in which the State and the common
pose a new political language to approach the notion of "social change".
Richard

Drayton

'Ultraimperialism' and the White International: Transnational Racial Formations in the

global capitalist regime, c. 1850 to the present.

"In September 1914, Kautsky published his famous essay on 'Ultraimperialism'. He
speculated, along lines already opened up by Hobson, about a future age in which the
European imperial powers would operate as a pacific combine rather than making war on
each other.
In reality, as I have argued elsewhere, such trans-European imperial collaboration had been
a fundamental part of European expansion since the sixteenth century, even if imperial
historiography, grounded in the national paradigm, has usually focussed exclusively on
imperial competition. But there is a qualitative change which happens c. 1850 in terms of
the consolidation of a de facto Pan-European 'white international', organised around ideas
of civilisation, modernity, and the international system. The paper will explore how the
transnational construction of racial identities and status differences went along with a
racialised international division of labour, the restriction of migration flows and citizenship,
and the consolidation of structures and mechanisms of European and United States imperial
collaboration.

The 1914-45 period represents a fundamental period of crisis in this regime of global
domination on the one hand, and of white collective privilege on the other. The Russian and
Chinese revolutions, and the age of decolonisation appeared to break apart that European-
centred world order. But even as the formal European empires disintegrated, that nucleus
of 'white' solidarity, remained at the heart of the West's Cold War coalition, informing the
politics of anti-communism and economic and security cooperation. Strikingly also since
1989, there has been a self-conscious attempt to consolidate the 'white international'
around United States hegemony, with ideas such as the 'anglosphere', and the association
of anglo-american political and economic norms with the gold standard for human rights
and economic freedom, underlying the neo-liberal global order. To this extent, the West's
coalition wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya need to be understand in terms of the internal
dynamics of this ultra-imperial combine.
The ascent of the 'white international' had a material foundation: the gap in economic and
military power between the West and the rest which opened up with industrialization. Its
more recent reconfigurations take place in the context of the relative industrial decline of
the ultra-imperial core. Since the 1970s, the solution found by the United States to this lay
in financialisation, and its command, in the midst of 'liberalized' economies, of the goods,
services and savings. Such command has always been premised by strategic hegemony, and
the militarism of our own age is linked to this attempt to translate military and intelligence
power into economic dominance. The transnational racial formations ordered by
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European imperialism continue thus in hidden ways to
shape the organisation of twenty-first century capitalism, even in the midst of the ascent of
China. Pace Kautsky, the ultra-imperial path leads also to perpetual war."
Devi Dumbadze

Commodity and unregimented experience

"The commodity is an intricate, sensuous-supersensuous thing. For exchange value to be
real, it requires a body, which a thing, as use value, becomes, bringing that exchange value
to appearance. So use value turns, according to Marx, into the so-called carrier of its exact
opposite, value. This unity of opposites, which Marx even terms an insane form, is as an
economic relation at the same time an epistemological form. The commodity has a
particular thought form as its underside, one in which the subjective determination, the
concept, is imposed upon nonidentical things in order to constitute them as identical
objects, whose identity can be expressed in a set of distinct attributes. The conditions of the
possibility of experience are, in the materialist critique of epistemology, themselves results
of shifts within natural history, according to Adorno. This history of the regimentation of
mimesis, which proceeds from the biological to the magical stage and, finally, to the
historical in labor, has its counterpoint in the unregimented experience, whose reflected
form is art and aesthetic experience. Though art is itself part of commodification and the

disenchantment of the world, it is nevertheless the foretoken of what a redeemed life - one
without the constraint of labor would be."
Cdric Durand

The violence of ficticious capital

This contribution examines the role of fictitious capital in the contemporary financialisation
and in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. A first section proposes a brief genealogy of
this concept and explicits the subtle intermediary position of Marx on this issue, between
Austrian eocnomists, on the one hand, and keynesian and (neo)chartists, on the other hand.
A second section presents some stylized facts accounting for the rise of this category since
the seventies for the the main high income economies. The elementary forms of fictitious
capital (credit to the private sector, public debt and market capitalization) are distinguished
from the sophisticated forms which have surged in the recent period (derivatives and
shadow banking). A third section specifies the relevance of this category in the conendrum
of financial profits, i.e. its relation to capital gains, levy of domestic non-financial profits,
capture of the gains of unequal exchange and profits from alienation. The fourth section
tries to assess its impact on the survival of capitalism and points to the related mechanisms
of socioeconomic violence by the state in the direct form of dispossessive auteritarian
policies and indirect forms of orthodox and unorthodox central banks 'Lender of last resort'
policies.
Hester Eisenstein

Holding up half the sky? Hegemonic feminism in the service of neoliberalism.

"In my book Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Womens Labor and Ideas to Exploit
the World (Paradigm, 2009) I argued that a particular form of liberal feminism, which I
named hegemonic, had become entrapped in the transition to neoliberalism.
A select composite of some of the ideas of the international womens movement has been
packaged and branded as the logical counterpart to the ideology of capitalist neoliberalism,
encompassing ideas of individual success, competitiveness, personal responsibility, and
above all access to economic and political power for a select few.
Acolytes of hegemonic feminism include New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof and his
Chinese wife Sheryl WuDunn, authors of Half the Sky, former president Jimmy Carter, in his
2014 book, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power; and corporate leaders
such as Sheryl Sandberg in her popular volume Lean In. In this kind of analysis, success for
women in the First World is linked to individual aggression, while aid to individual women is
now widely embraced as the key to ending poverty, and to launching Third World low
income states on the road to prosperity.

It is crucial for Marxist Feminists to unmask the uses of this form of feminism, and to restore
the role of feminist ideology to its rightful place as a partner and friendly critic of Marxist
analysis and practice."
Maria Elisa Cevasco

Brazil in times of riot

Which forms does political commitment take in the rarefied atmosphere of postmodernity?
Fredric Jameson has been mapping the contours of the conditions of possibility for a truly
anti-capitalist politics in book after book, at least since his definitive characterization of the
logic of late capitalism in his justly celebrated essay of 1984 Postmodernism the Cultural
Logic of Late Capitalism. In a recent interview (2011) published in the Minnesota Review
(78, 2013) he uncannily talked about Brazil as a possible site for the emergence of a new
type of politics: It is very important to be able to imagine a space that is somewhere
outside, and a country like Brazil gives a chance to imagine a space where things can be
imagined that are not even conceivable inside this system (p.93). In June 2013 the
inconceivable happened and in less than a month a million protesters had come out in all of
the big cities of the country to protest against the current situation. What had happened to
the success story of a peculiar Brazilian green path in the scorched land of neo-liberal
globalization? What kind of social symptom was being expressed? What do the June Days,
as they came to be called on the Left, tell us about forms of politics in our time? My paper
tries to address those questions and to examine in which sense they can be thought as the
painful construction of this new political space.
Martin Empson

Sustainable Agriculture: Are small-farms the answer in a post-capitalist world?

"One key, but neglected, source of environmental pollution is agriculture. 14% of emissions
come from agricultural production and a further 17% of emissions are from changing land
use and forestry (IPCC, 2007). Modern agriculture is dominated in the developed world by
big-business, which relies on heavy use of chemicals, intensive mono-cropped farming and
over-reliance of technology - the art of turning oil into food (Foster, 2010) and is closely
linked to the imposition of neo-liberal policies on the developing world, encouraging
agriculture for the market, not for the hungry.
Left wing literature on the potential for rational or sustainable agriculture frequently
draws on the experience of radical-agrarian movements in the developing world. All too
often this literature concentrates on the benefits of small farms versus agri-business (eg
Magdoff & Tokar, 2010; Bello , 2009; Klingzell-Brulin & Brulin, 2010); in this they reflect
more liberal views such as those (eg Tudge, 2011) who argue for small-scale farming under a
reformed capitalism. Small-scale farming under capitalism can offer benefits over
multinational driven agriculture such as improved yields, better resilience to environmental

changes and natural disasters and reduced reliance on pesticides and chemicals). Yet small-
scale agriculture is limited by a range of problems associated with peasant production
particularly the limited use of technology and the highly labour-intensive work - and is
associated with patterns of seasonal labour amongst a wider agrarian work force (Bernstein,
2010). Equally there are powerful reasons why we should be critical of large-scale capitalist
agriculture (Magdoff & Tokar, 2010; Bello, 2009; Empson 2014).
This question of agriculture in a post-capitalist society was debated in the aftermath of the
Russian Revolution, as well as by earlier writers in the Marxist tradition (eg Kautsky, 1899),
and it remains relevant today. However within the Communist tradition, from the late
1920s, socialist agriculture was often viewed as synonymous with industrialised collective
farming, ignoring real advantages associated with peasants working their own land.
In this paper I argue that Marxism allows a critique of agriculture under capitalism and a
vision of the transition to a genuine socialist agriculture avoiding either a crude position of
supporting collective industrial farming or a romantic view of small-scale production as a
solution to environmental crisis and food production.
I will outline an alternative that suggests that gains by agrarian movements could lead to a
radically different vision of agriculture based on the experience of a rural peasantry in a
wider socialist economy. But in the first instance this means peasants and rural workers
seizing land and farms and redistributing land, and likely, though not inevitably, giving
private farms a new lease of life. In the longer term it will mean a gradual transition towards
collective agriculture. Socialist prosperity... in the very long run [will] persuade the
peasantry to give up their individual farms. (Cliff, 1964)
Only this can offer the potential to feed seven billion people in a sustainable way."
Sai

Englert

The changing class nature of Israeli Society

"The last 15 years have seen increasingly right-wing governments elected in Israel, with
growing representation for the ultra-nationalist, religious and settler far-right. This has led
commentators to emphasise the importance of the growth of Israels religious population,
while lamenting the liberal or labour Zionist governments of the past.
However, less attention has been paid to the more fundamental transformations in the class
nature of Israeli society, which this paper will argue are crucial to understanding the political
changes in the Israeli state.
The paper will discuss class formation in the Yishuv and Israel in three periods: firstly, the
development of a powerful workers movement and a weak local bourgeoisie (pre-1948);
secondly, the period of economic development led by the Israeli state and labour

bureaucracy (1948-1984); and thirdly, the neoliberal period in which the Israeli bourgeoisie,
supported by US imperialism, rose to political dominance (post 1984).
The paper will focus on changing class relationships within Zionism, as well as the shifting
relationship between Israel and Western imperialism. It will also highlight the continuities in
the overarching political project of expansion and ethnic cleansing throughout the periods
discussed."
Ertan Erol

Re-scaling the peripheral capitalist spatiality and resistance: Autogestional momentum

within the counter-hegemonic socio-spatial movements in Mexico
"It is possible to argue that the three decades of neoliberal re-territorialisation in Mexico led
to the intensification of the neoliberal social relations on different social scales. It is possible
to identify these processes of re-configuration under three areas; privatisation and
marketisation of social services, valorisation and utilisation of the local resources, and
internationalising and elasticising the labour relations. However, these processes are
dialectical socio-spatial processes, and thus, needs to be perceived as dynamic and
contested processes rather than a deterministic consolidation of the capitalist space in the
form of neoliberal capitalist accumulation. The counter-hegemonic social movements in
Mexico is conditioned by these processes of re-structuring whether articulated through and
utilised the urban space like #YoSoy132 or unfolded on the local scales such as the
indigenous movements and Autodefensas.
This paper aims to locate the recent counter hegemonic social movements in Mexico within
the broader processes of neoliberal restructuring of the peripheral capitalist social relations
and spatiality, and thus, attempts to analyse the nature and autogestional potentials and
limits of these movements. It is argued in this paper that the neoliberal hegemonic
consensus in Mexico is facing a socio-spatial crisis which paved way to the proliferation of
series of social struggles with or without the potentials of real transformation or
alternatives. These socio-spatial struggles have been structured by the same structural
dynamics that underpinning the peripheral socio-spatial forms and practices of exploitation,
and their constant reproduction and reconfiguration on different social scales. Therefore, it
can be argued that these peripheral socio-spatial forms will be the sites and stakes of the
counter-hegemonic struggles where the autogestional strategies could/would occupy the
cracks in the neoliberal hegemonic order and widen them."

Asefeh

Esfahlani

State and Crisis of Overproduction: the Case of Film Industry in 1970s Iran

In order to investigate how capitalism survives, it would be helpful to consider the ways
through which capitalism is rescued from a serious crisis. This paper will concentrate on the
role of the state to rescue the capitalist mode of production from the crisis of over-
production. It examines the industry of cinema in the 1970s in Iran when the uncontrollable
drive for more profit by the private sector lead the industry into the crisis of over-producing
films. In order to argue this process, firstly, I will explain the political economy of cinema in
this period. Secondly, I will discuss the intervention of state in the crisis in order to diversify
the film texts and find new markets for them. This was an opportunity which the
independent and radical filmmakers attempted to take up to produce critical and avant-
guard film. Accordingly, it lead to the production of films known as Iranian New Wave
cinema. Thirdly, I will explore the reasons why the state intervention was not successful to
survive the industry as the domestic production collapsed by the end of 1970s.

Teppo Eskelinen
Possibilities and limits of green Keynesianism
The paper on "Possibilities and limits of green Keynesianism" discusses to what extent issues
of equality and sustainability can be addressed by economic policy measures based on
public investment and fiscal stimulus. It seems possible to design a social investment
programme directed at achieving both full employment and a more environmentally
sustainable social order. Yet there are two lines of serious counter-arguments against this
scenario. First, one can question whether a sustainability strategy implying consumption
growth is doomed to fail; second, it needs to be noted that the strategy is based on
naturalizing employment relations rather than treating them as power structures, which
leaves major social inequalities intact. From this basis, the chapter discusses, to what extent
hopes should be given for a "green Keynesian" strategy.
Danny Evans

Class against class in the Spanish Second Republic

"The threat of the Right produced an insurrectionary response from a sector of Spanish
anarchism in the years 1932-1933. The practice of this sector, which at the time dominated
the anarcho-syndicalist trade union, the CNT, has been compared to that adopted by the
German Communist Party during the so-called Third Period. It has been characterised as
sectarian and self-destructive, and derided by some contemporary anarchists as anarcho-
Bolshevik. Its moment of culmination occurred in December 1933, in the wake of general
elections won by the Right and in an atmosphere of pessimism, combined with messianic
rhetoric, in anarchist circles.
The tactics of insurrection appalled certain elements of the CNT, including gradualist
syndicalists and the dissident communists of the BOC, whose criticisms will be addressed by

this paper. But, how far can the comparison with Third Period Communism be taken, and to
what extent does it rely on the assumed virtues and effectiveness of a broad anti-fascist
front? Here, I intend to explore these questions and to look again at anarchist voluntarism in
1930s Spain in the context of anti-fascism as it was then conceived."
Jessica Evans

Understanding white nationalism and racialized class formation in the settler-colonies: A

theoretical proposal
This paper proposes a theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between
race and class in a historically specific set of social formations the settler colonies. Drawing
upon elements of Political Marxism and Trotskys theory of Uneven and Combined
Development (UCD) I make the following argument. First, in the settler colonies nationalism
was a basic, existential precondition of the state. Following this, I argue that nationalism
must be understood in the context of the specific social property relations of the capitalist
mode of production which makes possible horizontal forms of solidarity. And yet, for these
property relations to emerge in the settler states, a grammar of racial exclusion applied to
the indigenous populations was required. Thus, despite the surface appearance of formal,
horizontal equality that nationalism suggests, in the settler colonies this required the
generation of a racially exclusive grammar that manifested in the phenomenon of so-called
white nationalism. As a result, class was understood in explicitly racial terms. Importantly,
this meant that labour was self-consciously white labour. Despite these origins, however,
the settler states were also subject to international processes of uneven and combined
development which would result in myriad strategies of catch-up, among which were
resort to varying forms of politically coerced labour processes through the importation of
racialised immigrant labour. Far from simply a functionalist strategy of capital, however, the
racialized stratification of the labour market which would result emerged from complex
interactions between the formation of settler classes, the geopolitical pressure to which
settler capitalists were subject and the mix of strategies they pursued in order to compete
with established metropoles, as well as the self-interest of 'white labour'.
Andrew

Feenberg

The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukacs and the Frankfurt School

"This paper presents the newly published book The Philosophy of Praxis: Marx, Lukcs, and
the Frankfurt School (Verso 2014). The paper explains the philosophy of praxis of four
Marxist thinkers, the early Marx and Lukcs, and the Frankfurt School philosophers Adorno
and Marcuse. The philosophy of praxis holds that fundamental philosophical problems are
in reality social problems abstractly conceived. This argument has two implications: on the
one hand, philosophical problems are significant insofar as they reflect real social

contradictions; on the other hand, philosophy cannot resolve the problems it identifies
because only social revolution can eliminate their social causes.

I call this a metacritical argument. I argue that metacritique in this sense underlies
the philosophy of praxis and can still inform our thinking about social and philosophical
transformation. The various projections of such transformations distinguish the four
philosophers discussed in this paper. They also differ on the path to social change. They
develop the metacritical argument under the specific historical conditions in which they find
themselves. Differences in these conditions explain much of the difference between them,
especially since philosophy of praxis depends on a historical circumstancethe more or less
plausible revolutionary resolution of the problems at the time they are writing."
Ruth Felder

From the pink tide to new developmentalism: recreating the conditions for capital
accumulation in South America

"In the 2000s, the coming to power of left and centre left governments in South America
and the accompanying challenges to the basic tenets of the neoliberal orthodoxy raised
widespread attention. Many analyses have focused on the nature of the new political
leaders in the region, their relation to social movements, the challenges to the US and the
anti-imperalist nature of this left turn. As these experiences have been ridden with conflict
and contradictions, some critics have stressed the lack of political will of most governments
to deliver on hopes while others have pointed at the external intrusion in domestic politics
in the most radical experiments and the US's attempts to regain control over the region.
Less attention has been paid to the nature of the historical development pattern that
followed the crisis of neoliberalism in the region. The study of the this development pattern
is central to understand the scope and limitations to the recent South American post-
neoliberal experiments and interpret its contradictions, conflicts and prospects.
Building on debates on the nature of the South American new-developmentalism and post-
liberal regionalism, the role of the states in them and the international insertion of the
countries of the region as commodity exporters, this paper will argue that the very active
economic intervention of the states of the region and the recent forms of regional
cooperation going beyond free trade and liberalization have been part of a process of
internationalization of the region's economies and states and have involved the recreation
of the conditions for capital accumulation after the debacle of neoliberal reforms. The paper
will pay special attention to the building of regional arrangements and other mechanisms of
regional cooperation associated to it (namely, MERCOSUR, UNASUR, IIRSA and CELAC) and
will locate them in the context of the balances of forces and patterns of capital
accumulation that underlie them."
Mariano

Fliz

Neodevelopmentalism, accumulation by dispossession and international rent. Argentina,

2003-2013.
"After the crisis of the neoliberal project in Argentina, dominant classes were able to
recreate their social hegemony under the umbrella of a new development project, which
has been labeled neodevelopmentalist (Fliz, 2012). In line with the historical
developmentalist project of dominant fractions of capital in Latin America during the 1950s
and 1960s, a new articulation of productive forces, State-form and constitution of the class
conflict, led by a new hegemonic block dominated by the transnationalized fractions of
capital, dialectically displaced neoliberal adjustment momentum in Argentina. Having
successfully performed the restructuring of capital as a whole (constant and variable, fixed
and circulating, productive and financial, rentier and non-rentier, etc.), a new
developmentalist consensus (DC) has set the pace for capitalist development in the country
(Fliz, 2012b).
This new DC is based on a significantly different role for the articulation between
manufacturing industry and primary (export-led) productions. Much in line with Rosa
Luxemburgs analysis, neodevelopmentalist savoir-fair tries to create the conditions for
sustained capital accumulation while accepting as a question of historical inevitability and,
even, good luck- the place of Argentina as producer-exporter of primary commodities and
basic manufactures of those commodities. In such context, a permanent and systematic
process of primitive accumulation, or accumulation by dispossession to follow Harveys
terminology, becomes tantamount to the production and expanded reproduction of capital
in Argentinas value-space. Transformation of common goods and natural riches into private
natural resources (ie., capital) comes to constitute the basis for a capitalist development
strategy that fuels economic growth on production, appropriation and redistribution of
ground-rent.
In this article we discuss these processes in the light of Rosa Luxemburgs approach,
showing how ground-rent articulates with primitive accumulation to perpetuate accelerated
valorization and accumulation of capital in Argentina after 2003. First, we discuss some
relevant theoretical concepts. After that, we show how Rosas approach can be useful and
enlighten the analysis of the current process of capital accumulation in Argentina. Finally,
we present some brief conclusions and the bibliographical references."
Romain

Felli

Resilience to climate change : neoliberalising adaptation ?

This paper discusses the possible emergence of a new norm in international environmental
politics, reinforcing the existing norm of liberal environmentalism. In the context of growing
scepticism towards the ability to avoid the worse effects of environmental and climatic
change, international organisations have recently turned to a language of "adaptation". The

current goal of international environmental politics is directed less towards the avoidance or
mitigation of environmental changes, than towards creating the conditions in which
individuals, regions, socio-ecological systems, even States, could not only cope with this
change, but actually reinforce the accumulation of capital. This new productive way of
conceiving society-environmental relations is predicated on the concept of "resilience" as an
politico-ethical norm.
Alexandre

Feron

Sartre's Theory of Class

The object of my paper is to present Sartres theory of class in his "Critique of Dialectical
Reason" and to show in what way it is a contribution to Marxist theory. Indeed when
dealing with class, Marxism often hesitates between an objectivist and a subjectivist
conception (class is determined by position in social productive relations or by class
consciousness which is a product of class struggle). I would like to show how the concepts
that Sartre develops in CDR (class as class-being, as a collective, as a group, as an
institution, as a praxis-process), far from making him a subjectivist, help to articulate
these two dimensions. I intend therefore to propose a systematic reconstruction of Sartres
theory of class. More broadly, I would like to show the importance of Sartres attempt to set
the foundations for an anthropologie structurale et historique and its relevance today for
the elaboration of Marxist social sciences.
Robert FIne

Semblance and substance: Marx's critique of the legal forms of capitalist society
My review of Marxs critique of the legal forms of capitalist society tests the following
proposition: that the critique of law is not the same as the trashing of law and that they
should rather be seen as opposites. Whilst trashing has as its end the devaluation of law,
usually by demonstrating the chasm between the concept of universal legal equality and the
actuality of concealed material interests, the critique of law has as its end the revaluation of
law, usually by way of understanding both its downfall and the conditions of its
reconstruction. My case is that Marx was equivocal in his critique of law, but is better read
on the side of critique, not trashing. Indeed, exposing the limits of a form of radicalism that
substitutes trashing law for critique of law, was a pivotal part of his juridical writings.
Hostility to rights, law and the state are enduring elements of all radical traditions, since it
expresses the sense of revulsion thinking people should feel over the gulf between the
rights society espouses and the violence it is capable of practising. However, Marx both
inherited and gave rise to an anti-totalitarian current of critical theory in which the
semblance of freedom, equality and solidarity present in capitalist legal forms is far from
discounted. In my presentation my main reference point will be Marxs own texts, though I
shall not have time to put forward the supporting evidence, which is already published in a

number of books and articles. What I shall argue why it remain as urgent today as it was in
Marxs day to recognise, recover and reconstruct the juridical aspects of capital-critique.
Elmar Flatschart

Does the commodity form really die? A Comparison of Robert Kurz and Michael Heinrichs
answers to questions of crisis theory.
Crisis Theory is probably one of Marxist Critiques most contested terrains. While for a long
time, disputes over the extent and quality of Capitalisms crisis drive had the character of a
niche problem, they certainly gained importance with the factuality of actually existing
crisis phenomena since 2007/8.
Old disputes do however remain. In the German debate, one argument over Crisis Theory
that predates the actual crisis can be traced to the opposition of two currents that share a
common background and are often mixed up: the Neue Marx Lektre (New Marx Reading)
and Wertkritik (value critique). While Neue Marx Lektre authors, who focused an
academic and often philological close reading of Marx, tended to argue against all
historical thesis advancing an internal rupture in the core of the ideal average of
Capitalism, Wertkritik propounded a rather bold and bulky corpus of theorems arguing for a
terminal systemic crisis of Capital that stems from its internal contradictions.
In my presentation I want to give a basic overview of both approachs background, their
central thesis and the different answers to questions of crisis theory. In this, I want to
highlight the advantages and disadvantages of the two opposing currents, focussing on the
work of two well-known proponents, Michael Heinrich on the one and Robert Kurz on the
other side. This can build on existing material, as both authors directly or indirectly referred
to each other in controversial discussions on the character and scope of Marx crisis and
value-theory.
I will maintain that Michael Heinrichs arguments are sound when it comes to the
explanation of a certain immanent type of crisis of more or less limited economic character.
It however fails in terms of ontological and epistemological desiderata when it comes to
taking the step from economic analysis to critique of (political) economy and further on to
critique of society. It can be shown that Heinrichs approach harbours a hidden scientist
reductionism when it comes to contextualising central categories of materialist critique,
which ultimately limits the range of his crisis theory.
I will further argue that the framework proposed by Wertkritik unfolds greater theoretical
potential by overcoming a strictly economist perspective, opening the field for a more
integral critical theory of society that goes beyond Marx (while none the less building on
him). Notwithstanding, there are copious theoretical problems to be resolved as many of
the central thesis are far from being well elaborated and remain to be expanded and

empirically tested. Problems and open questions will be presented by drawing on Kurz
latest book Geld ohne Wert (Money without value)."
Chris Ford

Reconsidering the Ukrainian Revolution 19171921: The Dialectics of National Liberation

and Social Emancipation
"The Bolsheviks and the National Question Reconsidered
When considering the fate of the revolutionary wave in Europe during 1916-1921 the
traditional view has been that the failure of European communism to carry the revolution
beyond its point of origin thus isolated and decided the fate of the infant Soviet Union
negatively. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the Ukrainian question was pivotal to fate
of the revolutionary wave in Europe revolution. It examines the role of the Ukrainian Social-
Democrats and Communists; in their quest for an independent Soviet Ukraine. Their alliance
with Soviet Hungary, and challenges accepted views of the views of the Russian Communist
Party on the national question."
Bridget

Fowler

Re-evaluating Lucien Goldmann, sociologist of literature and Marxist theorist.

This paper will explore in depth the genetic structuralism of the Rumanian-French
thinker, Goldmann (1913-1970), a theorist in danger of being dropped from the collective
memory . It addresses three main areas of his thought - first, his conception of a tragic
vision in the work of Kant, Pascal and Racine, secondly, his abandonment of the base-
superstructure metaphor and its replacement by a theory of structural homologies, and,
thirdly, his considerations of late capitalism, with particular reference to the Post World War
II Keynesian social settlement. Three books especially, Immanuel Kant (1971[1945], The
Hidden God (1964 [1956] and Racine [1956], are argued to offer an illuminating and
enduring understanding of cultural production in the 17th and 18th Centuries. It is also
contended that studies of absolutism (eg Elias's The Court Society, Bourdieu's Sur L'Etat )
have reinforced the insightful analyses made by Goldmann (1964), further strengthening his
interpretation of Pascal's realist paradoxes and Racine's drama in terms of the declining
noblesse de robe. Finally, Goldmann's wider conception of the Pascalian gamble is
addressed (cf MacIntyre (1971), Davidson (2014)). His own wager is on the practical
feasibility of a future that combines the human rights of the Enlightenment tradition and
the egalitarian solidarity of the socialist tradition. Yet, even while reaffirming this wager,
Goldmann considers post-World War II capitalism to have become so re-stabilised as to
have lost its inner tendencies to crisis and oppositional antagonists. This view is questioned,
especially in the light of successive post-1970 recessions and the shift to the "spectacular"
deepening of inequality (Piketty 2014).
Kristen Francis Tran

The Political Economy of Domestic Substitutes: A Critical Assessment of Contemporary

Transfer of Paid Reproductive Labor

"In concert with the increasing interest in paid reproductive labor in contemporary
study on domestic labor, this paper explores how relations of inequality are reproduced via
paid reproductive labor. Implicit is a restructured labor market that reproduces relation of
inequality. A segmented global labor market coupled with the unequal socioeconomic
locations between women, I argue, elevates racial and class statuses of women who are
able to hire domestic substitutes and diminishes the status of those who sell their
reproductive labor in the global labor market of care. The needs to preserve class status
and the illusions of careered women who can do it all have (Hochschild & Ehrenreich, 2002:
4; see also Ismail, 1999; Chin, 1998) I further argue affirm and reproduce gender, class, and
race hierarchies.
What explains the rise to the worldwide transfer of reproductive labor from one set of
women to another? Acknowledged in sociological research on care in general and paid
reproductive labor specifically is a stratified global labor market, where the segmentation of
workers into different sectors gives rise to unequal wages and access to opportunities for
socioeconomic advancement. Global economic restructuring processes therefore create a
disjuncture between high-level professionals, tech-savvy, and managerial sectors and lower
paid service sector (Sassen, 1991).
As I will further show, paid reproductive is structured by a complex set of international,
transnational, and national institutions and social practices as well as by capitalist logic,
(Aguilar, 1999; Appadurai 1990; Cibson and Craham 1986; Coss and Lindquist 1995). On the
one hand, global capital mobilizes all women into income-generating productive labor
activities. On the other hand, the system continues to reify and render women as the
primary care takers of children and as housewives. As housewives, women are expected to
maintain their socially defined roles while at the same time pursue their respective career
and personal interests. Given the expectations of women to fulfill their duties as
housewives and the reality of being a full time worker, accomplishing the double duties
would be improbable without hiring domestic substitutes as part time and full time nannies
and maids.
The transfer of domestic work from one set of women to another set of women represents
a structural separation and subordination of human beings, (Mies, 1986/1998: 74) across
the gender, racial, and class divides. Implied is the reproduction of existing relations of
inequality via the employment of domestic substitutes. The movement of women working
as domestic substitutes across the global divides offers the opportunity to explore the
interactions between gender, race, class, domestic labor (Chang, 2000; Dill, 1994;
Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2002; Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2000; Rollins, 1985; Romero, 1992) and
paid reproductive labor. Gender, therefore, is only one of multiple, interlocking systems of
domination, (Clark 1994, p. 422) representing one dynamic within a global labor force that

is also segmented by class, ethnicity and race, nationality and region, among other factors
(Mills, 2003: 42).
While domestic substitutes shape and reshape gender, class and racial hierarchies, the
employment of the domestic substitutes has not altered womens relation to capitalism. As I
will show, what remains unchanged is the unequal distribution of caretaking activities
women continues to experience within the private sphere and the expectations of women
as productive workers in the public sphere.
Offered in this paper is an analysis of the ways in which relation of inequality is structured
by reinforcement of and reproduction of ideologies on gender, race, and class. This is
because such hierarchies also interact with ideological channels in the allocations of societal
resources such as power and authority to ensure the maintaining of unequal power
relations in the gender, race, and class hierarchies. International capital, as a result of this
interaction, has been able to recruit and discipline workers, to reproduce and cheapen
segmented labor forces within and across national borders (Mills, 2003; see also Enloe
1989, Ong, 1991, Safa 1995)."
Carl

Freedman

Capitalist Realism and Three Recent Science-Fiction Films

"I take the term capitalist realism from Mark Fishers 2009 book of that title, and use it, as
Fisher does, to refer to the hegemonic notionsuccessfully constructed during the 1980s on
both sides of the Atlantic and neatly summarized in Margaret Thatchers aphorism, There is
no alternativethat any realistic appraisal of current socio-economic reality must assume
the inviolability of the capitalist mode of production in comparatively neo-liberal form.
Capitalist realism has proved remarkably durable, even in the wake of the global financial
crisis of 2008, which one might have thought would have discredited neo-liberal capitalism
for good. A cultural index of its strength can be found in todays cinematic science fiction, a
genre formally devoted to the imagining of alternativesof new worlds and new
civilizations, in the famous STAR TREK formulation. The persistence of capitalist realism
can be traced, for example, in three SF films of 2013: Alfonso Cuarns GRAVITY, with its
ultimately mindless glorification of mere spectacle; in Spike Jonzes HER, with its celebration
of the creativity of the commodity structure, a creativity here seen as almost literally
endless; and even in Steven Soderberghs SIDE EFFECTSby far the most intelligent of these
filmswhich suggests a scathing critique of neo-liberal capital while declining to imagine
alternatives.
Diana Fuentes

Modernity and civilizational crisis. A latin american approach.

"This paper intends to present how the ecuadorian-mexican philospher Bolvar Echeverra
has characterized our epoch as a time of crisis, not only for the consequences of the global
depression or the questions of the economic model around the world, but he believes that,
without denying the effects of the economic and the political crisis, this other crisis is below
both, on a deeper level. It is a crisis of more far-reaching and irreversible consequences, as it
puts into question not the effectiveness or viability of a particular political project or the
growth of a nation, but the grounds on which is built the mode of reproduction of human
life in all its dimensions.
It is a crisis that afflicts humanity as a whole, in a world in which the spread of the capitalist
system has reconfigured in ways and to varying degrees, both the totality of social relations,
as the archaic ways of relating to the natural environment . Modernity in its capitalist form,
says Echeverria, by subsuming in his totalizing dynamic all the old forms of identity
configuration and policy coordination has created a kind of unique story or destination
unprecedented. Therefore this form of crisis resembles more a collapse of the entire
civilized project in which modernity is founded."
Eirini Gaitanou

An examination of class structure in Greece, its tendencies of transformation amid the crisis,
and its impacts on the organisational forms and structures of the social movement

The study of the Greek class structure is necessary for approaching and understanding the
forms and structures of the labour and social movement in Greece. The class structure and
the specific characteristics of the Greek social formation present special features compared
to other developed capitalist countries of Europe. These features have historically resulted
to the appearance of broader petty-bourgeois strata, in parallel to (and not competitively
to) capitalist development. The tendency in the last twenty years (during the restructuring
process) has been the expansion of capital into new areas and sectors of capitalist
circulation, leading to the establishment of a range of services as capitalist commodities,
and an expansion of unproductive, but necessary for the realisation of the surplus-value,
activities (expanded reproduction of capitalism). Further, during the current crisis, we are
witnessing a massive job destruction, along with a significant tendency of class polarisation
and violent proletarianisation of the petty-bourgeois strata. Massive unemployment and
precarious work are largely expanded, whilst the stable work model is eroded. This reality
affects both the emergence and the forms of organisation of the labor and social
movement. The working class is highly fragmented and heterogeneous, and the trade union
movement has several weaknesses and pecularities. At the same time, large sections of the
working strata cannot be expressed through the traditional trade unionism, because of
conjunctural and structural reasons. Thus, there appear various forms of organisation that
are beyond the scope of the traditional labor movement. The aim of this paper is to explore
this landscape and the various possibilities open to collective action, its forms and
manifestations at the political level.

Lucia Gallardo

Compensation for keeping fossil fuels in the soil: From within and outside Capitalism

"Ecuador was the first country to propose keeping oil in the soil in exchange for a partial
compensation in order to make a transition to a post-extractivist economy. Keeping fossil
fuels in the soil has been taken into consideration more recently in the academia as an
effective measure to stop global warming, but the issue of compensation has not had a
significant impact on the political debate. This paper discusses such a compensation scheme
in the context of two globally accepted scarcities: the carbon sink and the non-capitalist
development opportunities. The central argument is that compensation for non-extraction
opens a new way to look at combating climate change and provides a non-market,
politicized method of assessing its stakes. How does compensation transform our thinking
about combating climate change? It recognizes that developing countries are engaged in an
unequal international division of labor; in order to overcome their dependency,
compensation might create (at least partially) the material basis for an energetic transition.
Additionally, compensation does not reproduce capitalist form of exchange in terms of
nature valuation; therefore, such scheme is challenging the carbon trade system by
unveiling its fictitious nature. In political terms, compensation is the result of a long-term
collective action of people who consider climate change as the result of power relations
mediated by new imperialisms, including the ecological one. Finally, based on the principles
of climate justice, compensation as a transnational scheme will allow an unprecedented re-
distribution of global wealth.
Maryanne

Galvo

Some reflections on primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession from an

exemplary case of socioenvironmental conflict in Mato Grosso, Brazil

In recent years, in Brazil, a new outbreak of developmentism have stimulated economic
growth: major works, World Cup, Olympics, etc. In the Brazilian Amazon region, this wave of
development with great stimulus and government funding, have transformed the landscape
and changed the lives of people who live in this region, causing many socio-environmental
conflicts. Among several conflicts, we highlight one that occurred in Mato Grosso, midwest
of Brazil, and that became the exemplary case used in our doctoral research (still in
progress) among the indigenous population Enawen-Naw and a business group of
builders of small hydroelectic dams along the Juruena River. In this paper, starting from the
conflict mentioned, we propose a theoretical reflection about the actuallity and the
continuity of primitive accumulation and what Harvey called accumulation by dispossession.
Melissa

Garcia & Maria

Kaika

"Mortgaged Lives": The biopolitics of debt and homeownership in Spain

"The paper aims to expand the theoretical framework within which we examine mortgage
debt, by focusing on the role that mortgages play not only in financialising housing, but also
in promoting a biopolitics of financialising life itself. Conceptualising mortgages as a
technology of power over life (Foucault 2003, 246), we expose the biopolitics linked to
mortgaged homeownership in order to broaden the scope of analysis on the dialectics
between the production of biological futures and the production of future profits.
Our analysis is grounded in a historical geographical examination of the biopolitics of
mortgage debt in Spain, where, during the most recent real estate boom (1997-2007),
mortgages were employed as a technique that was supposed to optimise income by
enrolling livelihoods into the cycle of real estate speculation. But as 800,000 mortgages per
year were issued as average wages fell by 10 per cent, mortgages also became a
punitive/disciplinary technique, which made the population itself the object of financial
speculation. Whilst livelihoods became closely connected to the rent extraction mechanisms
of global finance, their very existence followed the fluctuation of financial markets with
disastrous effects, including the eviction of over 200,000 Spanish families from their
mortgaged homes between 2008-2013. The lived experience of this process will also be
highlighted, based on interviews with over 30 mortgage affected people and participant
observation at anti-eviction assemblies in the Barcelona metropolitan area since October
2013.
This way, we argue, mortgaged homeownership became central in enrolling biological life
into the process of rent extraction, in two distinct ways. First, by making hundreds of
thousands of livelihoods mortgaged, that is, directly dependent on the success or failure of
capital accumulation strategies rooted in the built environment. Second, by producing
hundreds of thousands of indebted subjects who have to be embedded continuously in the
production process in order to meet their debt obligations, and who often remain indebted
even after they are evicted from the home they used to own."
Christakis

Georgiou

What is to be done about the EU? Situating the debate in the long-term tendencies behind
European unification

"The last four years have seen the morphing of the economic crisis unleashed in
2007/8 into a sovereign debt crisis that initially led to wild speculation about the collapse of
the eurozone only for that speculation to steadily die down as of September 2012 and the
ECB's explicit signalling that such a prospect was not conceivable. The speculative dimension
of the eurozone crisis is now over, and this has created conditions (collapsing sovereign
bond yield spreads) that will only quicken the pace at which the real eurozone crisis ie the
competitiveness split between creditor and debtor member states will be fixed by the
European bourgeoisie(s).

The eurozone crisis has spawned a corresponding political crisis which has two dimensions.
One has been the pitting of creditor member states against debtor member states. Another
has been the resurgence of euroscepticism a phenomenon that ebbs and flows with the
economic fortunes of European capitalism.
The radical Left has not watched these developments from the sidelines. A debate has
emerged about the Left's attitude towards the euro and the European Union more broadly.
Different currents have developed diverging, if not outright conflicting, attitudes. Some
argue the Left has to campaign for more fiscal federalism so that transfers can be organised
from creditor to debtor states (either through official debt restructuring or a eurozone
budget) while others argue for withdrawal from the eurozone and even the EU and a
strategy of national economic development in the member states in which the radical Left
can take power. The problem with these debates is the general voluntarism in which
arguments are pitched. This is also reflected in the fact that many on the Left followed the
speculators in 2010/12 in expecting a eurozone implosion. What I want to do in this
contribution is situate the question of European unification in a longterm perspective. I start
by telling the story of how the problem of continental unification emerged in the late
nineteenth century and then gave rise to a long European civil war in the first half of the
twentieth century. I then present the position adopted by the Communist International in
1923 with regards to the issue as well as Trotsky's rationale for it. The third part of the
contribution deals with the unification from above solution that was provided to the
problem in the early fifties by the French and German bourgeoisies and sketches how that
process has unfolded over the past sixty or so years. I conclude with a few considerations on
what this entails for the Left's attitude towards the EU as well as the prospects of the
process of unification from above in the coming decade or so."
Roja Ghahari

Women under the Iranian Welfare System: Charity and Control

Iranian Welfare System: Charity and Control

"Women

under

the

This paper will examine the role that the Iranian welfare system (Islamic charities and
income redistribution policies) has played in the making and maintenance of the Islamic
Republic of Iran. Specifically, the impact of the Iranian social safety net in promoting gender
roles will be assessed.
Challenging the views of the Islamic Republic as an archaic fundamentalist regime or an anti
imperialist state, this paper will draw attention to how neoliberal strategies have
manifested themselves, albeit in different ways, in Iran in the past 30 years. Although it is
claimed that Iran has not been integrated into global capitalism, many of the same
tendencies observed in other capitalist countries- privatization, welfare state retrenchment,
and other general features of neoliberal capitalism -have materialized in Iran. The
dual/parallel welfare system of corporatist institutions and parastatal organizations, able to

target both the middle class and the poorer population, tries to alleviate the impacts of
various neo-liberal policies. The closer examination of the welfare system, however, will
demonstrate its gendered character and the specific ways that it reinforces gender
hierarchies, pacifies dissent and maintains the regimes ideological hegemony."
Paraskevi

Gikopoulou

The Greek Communist Struggle and its Suppression: Prelude to Greeces Right-Wing Politics,
1944-1946
This paper examines the conditions under which the left-wing resistance in Greece was
oppressed and suppressed during the liberation period and until the official civil war begun
in 1946-1949. I seek to examine via archival documents and historical texts the relationship
between the armed and political struggle of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE), and how
this struggle was negated by the Allied forces and the Nazi Collaborators in the post-war
era. This exploration enables us to comprehend clearly the mechanisms under which a
young European country of the time such as Greece entered a family of capitalist and liberal
values at the expense of a left-wing popular movement that was gaining massive support. A
dialogue between the British Foreign policy, Greek bourgeois politicians, Greek monarcho-
fascists and collaborators will be discussed so as to see how right-wing values seized power
by force after the war was over so as to keep Greece within the western sphere of influence.
Michael Goldfield
Coal Miners in the Vanguard
Large numbers of studies have shown that coal miners, throughout history, around the
world, with some notable exceptions, have been among the most militant, solidaristic
workers. In addition, when organized they have gravitated towards political radicalism.
These tendencies also existed in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, and were especially prevalent during the 1930s, as millions of industrial workers
organized. Coal miners during this period engaged in dramatic strikes, inspired other
workers, and came to their aid in numerous situations. In the labor upsurge in the U.S.
during this period, they were the vanguard sector of the working class. Their class
collaborationist leadership, however, personified by miners president John L. Lewis, partly
reflected these aspirations, but also, not only savagely repressed democracy, but effectively
destroyed more radical elements in the union.
Jamie Gough

The crisis in Britain since 2007: why has the resistance so far been weak, and the possibilities
for a socialist response

"This paper explores the evolution of the crisis in Britain since 2007. My analysis sees
neoliberalism as a logical strategy for capital to raise value creations and profitability, as

nevertheless involving severe contradictions for capital, and as consisting of class struggle.
Neoliberalism therefore has deep logic but no stable forms.
British governments from 1990 to 2010 developed a neoliberalism with social-democratic
elements. This reflected contradictions for capital thrown up by 1980s neoliberalism, in the
manifest erosion of production and reproduction. Social democratic elements could be
afforded because of the booms of the mid-1990s and mid-2000s sustained by credit
expansion. But the latter went into crisis in 2007-8. In response, British capital has
embarked on a new strategy of devalorisation and raising the rate of exploitation, despite
knowing the problems this may eventually lead to in productive inefficiency and political
instability.
The burden of the crisis has, consequently, fallen entirely on the working class. Why, then,
has resistance since 2008 so far been weak? The attacks in the private sector have been
met with almost no resistance from workers and trade unions. Resistance to the cuts in the
public sector have so far been limited to some trade union actions, but without successes.
An explanation includes the social-cultural changes in the British working class effected by
neoliberalism over 30 years. But it also involves the fetishistic and reifying forms of this
particular crisis: the origin of the recession, and the governments excuse for public
spending cuts, in a financial crisis. Since the Labour Party accepts these fetishistic forms, it
is incapable of opposing austerity.
This suggests that building successful resistance to austerity needs the working class
movement to address head-on the value forms of the crisis. This can be done through
transitional demands around employment, wages, work intensity, public services, state
benefits, taxation of capital and ecology."
Kevin W. Gray
The Feminization of Labor and Capitalisms Stability
In my paper, I use the so-called feminization of labor as a means to theorize the processes
which stabilize the capitalist system. My basic thesis, following the French pragmatists, is
that new forms of labor are explainable by capitalisms response to emergent lifeworld
protest movement. The feminization of labor, I believe, is explainable, at least in part, by the
capitalist systems exploitation of the artistic critique in its response to emergent protest
movements in the 1960s. While it is true that, the first two (major) employment agencies
were founded in the immediate post-war era:, Kelly Girl Service (1947) and Manpower, Inc,
(1948) to market their jobs to women (Hatton 2011: 7), I argue that the widespread
feminization of labour (at least with respect to temp work) is explainable by capitalisms
exploiting values from the lifeworld. Following Boltanski and others, I argue that the
phenomenon which legitimates feminization (and precarization, to use Standings
vocabulary) is capitalism recourse to the artistic critique of capitalism, which responder t

protests by allowing for new freedoms, new family arrangements, etc. inside the
employment relationship (Boltanski 2002: 14). Capitalisms response to demands for
autonomy permitted the growth of so-called network firms, the decline of strict hierarchy
(and the emergence of fuzzy organizations), increased mobility and the emergence of
projects which gave each employee the possibility to develop his or her future employability
(Chiapello & Fairclough 2002: 189). However, it also gave companies the possibility to
relegate employees (originally women but increasingly men) to contingent, precarious
labour.
Phil

Griffiths

The class origins of the White Australia policy

"For much of the twentieth century, Australian racism revolved around the idea of a
""white"" nation, protected by a government policy that excluded non-white immigrants.
This was a policy that was widely seen as having its origins in working class mobilisation and
its purpose in protecting working class interests. This is, of course, ludicrous, but so
hegemonic that no scholar (or activist) attempted to research any possible ruling class
agenda behind the White Australia policy. Instead, there has been an idealist turn, as more
recent historians have presented the policy as driven by racism, or more recently, by
""whiteness"", as if racism or whiteness themselves did not need to be explained and
historicised.
This paper will attempt to reclaim a materialist understanding of this important example of
western racism, by outlining three core bourgeois agendas that led the dominant elements
in the ruling class to push through the exclusion of, first, Chinese immigrants, and later all
non-whites. In the process, it will suggest a way of understanding the dominant ruling class
strategy for the development of Australian capitalism, from the late nineteenth century
until the early 1970s."
Paul Guillibert

Capitalism and the "space-time appropriation"

"The nature-society metabolic rift and the development of rational agriculture in the
countries of the capitalist core go hand in hand with the implementation of an unequal
ecological exchange, which Marx already described regarding guano imports from Peru
during the 1850s. (Marx, 2009 ; Foster, 2000). Countries of the capitalist core claim
ownership over natural spaces (those of colonized countries or under imperial domination)
as well as embodied labour working-time in order to compensate for loss in soil fertility. Alf
Hornborg describes this double process as space-time appropriation (Hornborg, 2005). For
Hornborg - as well as a number of other authors (Hornborg, McNeill, Martnez-Alier, 2007)-,
the generalization of Marxs unequal ecological exchange hypothesis in enabled by
references to the dependency theory and the world-system analysis paradigm. In this

presentation, our aim is to discuss the pertinence of world-system theories in order to

address the question of unequal ecological exchange by engaging a discussion with classical
imperialism theories. Indeed, world-system theories offer pertinent elaborations that
enable to consider the nature-society metabolic rift on a global scale (Moore, 2003), but
they seem to fail to address forms of colonial-imperial predation that guarantee commercial
domination of countries of the capitalist core and favour capitalist concentration (Marx,
2009 ; Davis, 2001).
Rodrigo

Guimaraes

Nunes

Between Clastres and Lenin: leadership and strategy in networked movements

While it is not accurate to describe the kinds of movements that have irrupted around the
world in the last four years as leaderless, it is not far-fetched to see parallels between the
ways in which leadership manifests itself in them and Pierre Clastres' portrayal of power in
indigenous societies. The distributed leadership characteristic of todays networked
movements entails at once a permanently open possibility for leaders to emerge, and
placing leadership under the requirement of constant legitimation, putting a check on its
development. While the latter is no doubt a good thing in many respects (e.g., effectively
functioning as an informal recall mechanism), it can also curb the strategic capacities of
these movements. In this paper, I seek at first to develop a model of how distributed
leadership functions, comparing it with Clastres work in political anthropology. I then
submit it to questions on strategy and leadership raised from within the Marxist-Leninist
tradition, in order to ask whether it is possible for networked movements to address those
question, and how. What arises is the possibility of there actually being something between
Clastres and Lenin, rather than a merely disjunctive choice between one or the other.
F. H. Pitts

Form-giving fire: creative industries as Marxs work of combustion

Capitalism struggles against the uncertainty of exchange: valorisation depends upon goods
and services attaining commodity status by selling for money. Value is subject to this
validation. I contend that the capitalist use of advertising, design and branding is among the
most important means by which the possibility of this validation is guaranteed. I argue that
these practices, traditionally seen as peripheral to the production of value, may actually be
indispensable to it. This claim is based on a re-reading of the discussion of productive and
unproductive labour found in Marxs most direct treatment of the question of circulation
work, in Capital Vol. 2. Situating the distinction between productive and unproductive
labour as internal rather than prior to the law of value, I question the demarcation of
production and realisation which has been used to relegate circulation work to an
ancillary function. In making possible the conditions for the continued realisation of value
in the face of uncertainty, the services of advertising, design and branding recruited by

capitalists to stave off the possibility of non-validation simultaneously secure the basis for
value to exist at all. In a climate of increasing instability, these sectors are therefore crucial
to capitalisms survival.
Peter Hallward

Guy Lardreau and Political Will

"Guy Lardreau was a leading figure of the Gauche proltarienne, and his under-appreciated
book Le Singe d'or (1973) is often and rightly recognised as the most important and
symptomatic philosophical work to emerge from the French Maoist current in the years
immediately following May 1968. In the mid 1970s, most notably in the idiosyncratic book
L'Ange (1976) that he co-authored with Christian Jambet, Lardreau abandoned his
remarkably strident version of Maoism in favour of positions that soon brought him close to
the reactionary liberalism of the 'nouvelle philosophie'. This paper will assess both the force
and frailty of Lardreau's early neo-Rousseauist voluntarism, before considering the peculiar
form and implications of his subsequent self-criticism.
Barbara

Harriss-White

Towards a lower carbon agriculture: An experiement in expert and situated knowledge in

India
The coming phase of agrarian transformation will have to engage with climate change with
many implications for methods for studying agrarian change. While literatures on
agriculture and climate change currently focus on adaptation to dismal future scenarios and
while the agricultural science establishment awaits a genetic revolution led by private
capital, this paper reports on the public policy implications for mitigation of a project
measuring environmental and social aspects of the agrarian economy.
Environmental factors include greenhouse gases (GHGs), energy and water; social factors
focus on the quantity and quality of work; and the third, economic, element is constituted
through a systematic analysis of market and social costs and returns. The case material is
rice, in four production-distribution systems in E/SE India: intensive; rain-fed; systems of
rice intensification (SRI); and organic.
After synergies and trade-offs between the environmental, social and economic parameters
of agriculture have been measured/calculated, four technological possibilities which would
help the transition towards lower carbon agriculture have been identified. These are rainfed
rice production, SRI, solar pumps and halving T and D losses in the electricity grid.
Technological alternatives are generally evaluated using social cost-benefit analysis from
economics ((S)CBA) in which all costs and benefits are reduced to Rs / $. Having criticised
this orthodox approach, the experiment reported here uses a different method, derived
from multi-criteria analysis which originated in engineering and has been championed and

developed by Sussex University researchers. Multi criteria mapping (MCM) enables a

rigorous socio-political-economic evaluation of alternatives according to criteria which
cannot be reduced to Rs/$ and are thus incommensurable. The incommensurable criteria in
this exercise are costs, work relations/ labour process and GHGs.
The results of an experimental application of this method in two languages (English and
Tamil) compare and contrast the evaluations of a set of expert stakeholders from an elite
class: the urban intelligentsia (scientists, rural development researchers, public
policymakers, bankers, business managers and entrepreneurs, environmental journalists,
and NGO activists (41%female)) with those of a subaltern class: a set of rural producers
with situated knowledge and direct experience (petty producers and landless agricultural
labourers (48%female))."
Daniel Hartley

For a Marxist-Feminist Poetics of the Anthropocene

The name Anthropocene, and the theories of human history it implies, equivocates
between humanism and technological determinism (is it humans who have produced the
Anthropocene or the machines they have invented?). It also potentially implies a
homogeneous, internally undifferentiated protagonist - the so-called anthropos thereby
masking historical class antagonisms. To a certain extent, the Marxist tradition shares some
of the difficulties of representation found in the discourse on the Anthropocene: the more
a Spinozist-cum-Deleuzian Marxism emphasises the mode of production as an (immanent
and non-human) assemblage, the more difficult it becomes to produce diachronic narratives
structured around contradictions and antagonisms; on the other hand, the more one
narrates human history in terms of class antagonism (an element usually missing from
scientific writings on the Anthropocene) the more one reproduces the human-as-
protagonist argument (and hence residual humanism) of the anthropos. This paper aims
to explore these basic problems in order to suggest the ways in which our representations
of the Anthropocene will directly affect our political practices in and towards it. It claims
that the abstractly conceived struggle between man and nature cannot be overcome
until class antagonisms internal to society have been resolved. Moreover, because of the
early Marxs unique conception of the male-female relation as the purest mediation
between man [Mensch] and (historicized) nature, it argues that a Marxist politics of the
Anthropocene indeed, Marxist politics tout court must have feminism at its heart. The
Anthropos should be understood, not as a fact, but as a regulative idea whose realization
would require universal emancipation.
Eva

Hartmann

Competitive solidarity and the Europeanisation of the professions

"Critical scholars of European Studies point out that the EU is ordo-liberal rather than neo-
liberal in its orientation. Along the lines of a Gramscian account of the ideational dimension
of power we can consider ordo-liberal principles as being at the heart of the emerging
European ethico-political project aiming to establish a new hegemony.
However, the critical accounts of ordo-liberalism have provided little insights so far into
changes of the social formation induced by European competition and underpinning the
new hegemony. This paper intends to overcome this shortcoming. It interrelates economic
sociology and state theory with a view to deepening our understanding of the capital's
capacity to survive.
The first part the paper will further refine this line of reasoning by drawing on insights
provided by the sociology of professions and develops the notion of competitive solidarity.
This field of study connects professions to broad sociological issues such as: occupational
closure, social stratification, state formation and the development of a capitalist economic
order. Against this theoretical backdrop, the paper examines, on more empirical grounds,
the EU efforts to bring professional services within the ambit of the Community rules on
competition and the implication this has for existing mediating mechanisms and social
bonds organised through the professions."
Stephen

Hastings-King

Socialisme ou Barbarie and the Contemporary Project of Autonomy

This paper argues that approaches drawn from Socialisme ou Barbarie can serve as
templates for ways to make the socio-cognitive paralysis of the dominant neo-liberal
imaginary and patterns of resistance to it available for a project of autonomy. The paper
emphasizes the sociological orientation of the groups work, which enabled adaptation of
radical politics to the changing geographies and organization of capitalism of the 1950s and
early 60s. SB focused on the close analysis of relations of production to isolate informal
patterns of assimilation and resistance to Fordist production design and technological
organization. Their later notion of total social crisis leaned on the earlier, granular analyses
of worker experience along with a model drawn from the Hungarian Revolution to orient
exploration of newer forms of social contestation. Since 1967, the gradual collapse of the
Marxist Imaginary has pulled down an entire language in terms of which collective desires
for emancipation might have been articulated. This situation is what separates us from SB.
We face starting over. Much recent activity ignores work and related modes of experience.
In so doing, opposition to the dominant capitalist imaginary deprives itself of a necessary
descriptive base and undermines new theoretical approaches.
Michael

Haynes

Neo-Liberalism and the Crimogenic University

"This paper argues that as mass higher education has developed so the form of the
university has changed. In recent decades in societies like the UK this change as led to
universities coming to have an increasingly crimogenic form. Universities are expected to
operate and set goals for themselves that appear to be of the most worthy and ethical kind
but their day to day practices mean that they must and do routinely violate these. Moreover
a case can be made that these violations are as sustained and egregious as many of the
activities that other businesses are condemned for doing. Staffs live out these
contradictions on a daily basis and are expected to be complicit in them even though they
know that if exposed the institution is more likely to condemn and dismiss them than
address the underlying pressures that they are responding to.
Resisting this requires a reinvigoration of critical thinking and more vigorous workplace
resistance that overcomes the sectionalism that characterises the higher education
workforce. It also requires stronger links externally and a more engaged role of academics
as critical public intellectuals. We briefly sketch how the role of the university has
developed with pressures to commodify and marketise the university creating a form of
academic capitalism. We then looks at some of the illicit activities involved in the
recruitment, teaching and assessment of students; research practices; and the running of
the institutions themselves. The final part rehearses some of the arguments about
engagement and the ways in which the space for critical discussion and activism might be
defended and opened up."
James Heartfield

The Manchester Workers, the US Civil War, and the founding of the IWMA
"Ed Hooson and John Edwards launched the Union Emancipation Society in Manchester in
1862, building solidarity with the Union and Lincoln in the American Civil War. Their
campaign across the mill towns of Lancashire helped stop Lords Russell and Palmerston
from joining the war on the side of the Confederacy.
Karl Marx joined their campaign, organising meetings in London, with the men who would
go on to found the International Working Men's Association. Drawing on the material
researched for the pamphlet British Workers and the US Civil War, this introduction will
show how international solidarity helped to re-launch the workers movement in Britain, and
influence it in the world."
Paul Heideman & Jonah Birch

What Does it Mean to Call Neoliberalism a Class Project?

"For the Marxist left, it is axiomatic that the ""neoliberal"" restructuring of world capitalism
during the past thirty years has been a class project, pursued in the interests of capital (or
fractions thereof). For much of the past two decades, this understanding has been

challenged by the institutional scholarship on comparative capitalism. The institutionalist

literature on recent changes in advanced capitalism has stressed the point that in many
regions, key reform efforts have been launched either through negotiated agreements and
cross-class alliances between business and labor, or alternately without the direct
intervention of firms or their interest-group representatives. In fact, social science
researchers have pointed out, employers have often lacked the political will or
organizational wherewithal to oversee neoliberalism, given that they have in many cases
been disorganized to an even greater extent than labor.
What then does it mean to call neoliberalism a class project? I will argue that the class
context of the neoliberal trajectory of capitalist political economies reflects its disparate
impact on the relative power of class actors, as opposed to the nature of the agents that
have driven it. The directionality of recent changes in advanced capitalism has been
determined not by the organized or conscious intervention of any particular social or
political force, but rather by the structural imperatives facing business, labor, and the state,
and the way these have shaped responses to altered conditions of capital accumulation
since the 1970s."
Christoph

Henning

Alienation: Defending the Classical Theory with new arguments

"Marx analyzed alienation as an externalisation and misappropriation of human potentials.
This theory is straightforward so much so that is has been absorbed into the
philosophical mainstream, e.g. of Charles Taylor and even Jrgen Habermas, under the guise
of the concept of 'expressivism'. Ironically, however, at the time of this 'triumph' many
Marxists and Critical theorists of the late 20th century abandonded the concept, following
Althusser's and Foucault's anti-essentialist stance instead, forsaking the chance to strive for
an intellectual 'hegemony'. Even more ironically, this refusal to take on the humanistic
heritage of Critical Marxism dovetailed with a postmodernist resurgence of 'positive'
theories of alienation. Influenced by the Sociology of Georg Simmel, scholars of
Philosophical anthropology (e.g. Arnold Gehlen or Helmuth Plessner) or System theory
(Niklas Luhmann), these theories argue that alienation is the price of modern freedom or
even its condition: It cuts the bonds to traditional authorities and enables individuals to live
according to their own plans. This modernist 'appeal' of alienation partly explains why
capitalist culture is so persisting: It is not necessarily 'false consciousness' to accept a
commodified culture and lifestyle; it may also be the result of a quite reflective choice. Here
my paper wants to ask: What kind of arguments does Marxism have to offer against these
two strands of thought (postmodernist anti-essentialism and post-critical ironicism)? Based
on new research in various fields (such as bioethics or sociology of global labor) I will argue
that the classical theory of alienation still has explanatory power, if applied consistently. In a
globalised neoliberalism, many people suffer even more from processes of alienation then
before. The only difficulty is to demonstrate conceptually in which way these new

phenomena 'fit' the old concept, and why it makes sense to do connect new phenomena
with new concepts at all.

Lars

Henriksson

Auto Workers Can Save the World

"The divide between unions defending jobs and individuals and organizations questioning
the environmental impact of various industries and products is old. The current dual crisis of
economy and climate is simultaneously sharpening this tension and calling for a solution as
it becomes obvious that environmental issues, far from being luxury problems, are
fundamental to our survival.
This is specially evident in the auto industry. Road transports are responsible for a big and
growing share of the green house gas emissions and all measures to reduce these emissions
have been outweighed by the ever increasing road traffic. Continued mass auto transit is
not a sustainable system, not the one that exists today and even less so if the car density of
the industrialized countries would be globalized.
The credit crunch of 2008 triggered a crisis of overproduction that had been endemic in the
auto industry for a long time. Worldwide, unions' response was support totheir
corporations, ranging from demands for state subsidies to contractual concessions.
Ever since then I've been arguing that in stead of giving in to the false choice between
creative destruction and subsidized mass auto transit, unions could and should adopt and
organize around demands for a conversion of the auto industrial complex.
The auto industry is a flexible and versatile machinery for mass production of just about any
high quality industrial goods. A nationalized industry could create safe jobs and supply
society with the goods needed to replace the present fossil dependence.
Merely good arguments will not be sufficient. Industry's main interest in a capitalist society
is expansion and pursuit for profit. The powers that be will defend status quo, however
asocial or destructive. Reason has to be armed with social muscles.
The labor movement, and specially unions in sectors where production is intrinsically
unsustainable, have a possibility of becoming an important part of this necessary social
force in that they have a direct material interest in a transformation, both to save jobs and
the planet. Unions constitute in themselves a strong social force and they can become the
hub of a broad movement involving popular forces from the whole of the society.
The employees also have a first hand knowledge that is essential in a conversion. In
questioning the direction of the production we also have an opportunity to question and
transform our jobs that have been deskilled and deprived of content for so long."

Anna Hermanson

Contesting violent representations in the petrostate: patriarchy, colonialism, and big oil
advertising in Alberta
Extraction and processing of the tar sands in northern Alberta constitute one of the largest
energy projects in the world today. The related environmental, social, and climatic violence
is immense and impossible to fully represent. In this paper I will show that existing
structures of power, such as capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy, work to construct
alternative representations of industrial projects in the Albertan petrostate. I will use an
advertisement for an Edmonton radio station that violently objectifies a womans body to
iterate its support for big oil as a starting point for examining the history of gendered
violence against Indigenous women in Canada and a broader relationship between
patriarchy and extraction. Then, I will examine the government of Alberta and big oils use
of Indigenous bodies in tar sands advocacy campaigns and posit these representations as
tools of contemporary capitalism and colonialism. In my discussion, after illustrating the
connections between patriarchy, colonialism and environmental violence, I will propose
intersectional and anti-colonial contestations of existing representations that do violence as
integral to resistance.
Andy Higginbottom
The multinational corporation - concentration, fiction or rent?
Capitalism survives as globalised imperialism, a world dominated by multinational corporations
whose pre-eminence signifies important changes in the capitalist mode of production. How then
does historical geographical materialism approach the theorisation of multinational corporate
capital?
This paper develops three strands. Firstly, standard Marxist explanations highlight the concentration
and centralisation of capital, processes located in Marxs exposition of the general law of
accumulation. What if the general law is itself modified by imperialism as monopoly capitalism,
how does monopoly correspond with the concentration and centralisation of capital? Secondly the
analysis revisits Hilferdings Finance Capital and the specific focus on fictitious capital and
corporation organisation: promoters profit, credit and the double movement of capital. Thirdly, in
asking what are super-profits in relation to Marxs categories, we come to the theory of imperialist
rent and its application to forms of multinational capital.
These concepts are applied to a concrete study of the City of Londons role as a centre of financing
of global mining capital, conceived as predatory production. The paper ends with observations on
the political implications of the analysis.

Rocio Hiraldo

Classes of labour experience and respond to green grabs: economic consequences of

territorialisation through mangrove conservation in Niombato, Senegal.
As land expropriation for the expansion of capital increases, a wide range of scholars are
using Marxist terms such as primitive accumulation and accumulation by dispossession to
describe these processes, inter alia those studying the conservation-capitalism nexus. This is
leading to revised critiques of these concepts as well as to a return of the agrarian question
debate, in particular to an exploration of the socio-economic consequences of land grabs. By
studying processes of economic and political change in the Sine Saloum Delta, Senegal, this
paper explores the effects of a tourism-oriented protected area in the ways villagers are
securing material reproduction. The paper argues that rather than simply driving villagers
into a class category of producers exploited by the capitalist class, green grabs are
contributing to perpetuate a classes of labour pattern where villagers secure material
reproduction through a complex combination of informal survival activities in and out of
wage-labour. The paper also highlights the need to look at differentiation between different
petty commodity producers (in relation to capital and means of production) in order to
understand the material consequences of land grabs as well as villagers responses to them.
Owen Holland

Orwell's Windows

When the liberal humanist Milan Kundera attacked George Orwells 1984 (1949) as an
example of political thought disguised as a novel he did so on the grounds that there are
no windows in the book. Strictly speaking, this is incorrect. The word appears precisely
thirty-three times in 1984 a point which one hopes was not lost on Georgiy Daneliya, the
director of the 1965 Soviet comedy Thirty-Three. Orwells windows, far more than the
ubiquitous tele-screens, refract an apprehension about transparency whose lineage
encompasses, inter alia, Veras dream of a crystal palace in Nikolai Chernyshevskys What is
to be Done (1863), Ivan Karamazovs legend of the Grand Inquisitor in Fyodor Dostoevskys
philosophical novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880), the glass-world of Yevgeny Zamyatins
We (1924), Walter Benjamins fascination with the glass constructions of nineteenth-
century Parisian arcades and Ernst Blochs ruminations on the Bauhaus. Circa 2014, liberal
humanist mobilisations of dystopian writing as a distorted reflection of an imputed left
totalitarianism require some revision particularly as the fantasy of total transparency can
now be seen to have set in place the technological architecture of a twenty-first century
totalitarianism. What then, if anything, do Orwells windows have to tell us about the NSA?
Alistair Holmes

Race, Class & Empire in Britain: 1837-1914

"This paper looks at the development of racism in Britain during the Victorian and
Edwardian periods. Beginning in the shadow of abolition, I trace the hardening of racial

prejudice into the modern racism of science, Social Darwinism and Eugenics. By looking at
the experience of Black, Irish and Jewish people living in and visiting Britain I examine the
twisting evolution of racism and the construction of whiteness. Above all, this reveals a
complex relationship between class and race, with racist tropes often originating in
perceptions about social class, and a lack of clear distinctions between ethnicity, biology and
civilisation resulting in anything but the established black and white definition of racism
we are familiar with today. I also look at how discourses formed in the colonial context
came to inform analyses of class division at home, and how anti-colonial resistance
impacted on the development of ideas in the metropole. Political changes within Britain
posited the need for an inclusive nationalism as an antidote to the dangers of socialism. At
the same time, growing concerns about the degeneration and decline of the 'residuum'
undermined the liberal ideas of progress and civilisation underpinning British imperial
identity.
The central thrust of my argument is that far from being defined purely in distinction to a
colonial, non-white other, the various strands of racist ideology prevalent in turn-of-the-
century Britain evolved as much out of schisms within British society than without. Most
importantly, these developments were borne of the historically contingent needs of British
capitalism rather than a trans-historical division between East and West embedded in
Western thought. In turn, the nature of this racism crystallised through the experience of
political change and resistance at home and abroad, and the project of constructing a
unifying British nationalism in the context of a global Empire."
Pertti Honkanen

Marx, Mathematics and New Capital-Lectures

In this paper some thesis of the monetary theory of value are analysed and brought into
the context of broader discussions of the Marxist methodology.
In recent years in Marxist discussions much has been written about new Capital Lectures.
Intense studies of the manuscripts and writings published in the MEGA Edition are one
source of inspiration. The discussions and studies consider many aspects of the critique of
political economy, especially the methodology and the theory of value. Obviously some
conclusions of these studies are quite evident or generally approved. So it can be stressed
that we cannot identify the Marxist theory of value with the Ricardian theory of value. The
analysis of the form of value and the theory of money are an essential part of the Marxist
theory of value. It is generally ignored in non-Marxist studies and also often in the so-called
traditional Marxism.
Nevertheless there are some controversies and problems which need more analysis. The so-
called monetary theory of value is one controversial line in these lectures. So the thesis that
abstract labour time cannot be measured with clock and that money is the only measure of

value, are, in my opinion, questionable. So is also the corollary, that the total labour time of
society cannot be understood as some homogenous entity.
If the abstract labour time cannot be measured or, more generally, if it is not a definite
quantity, the quantitative relations between prices and values cannot be analysed on
theoretical level. All discussions about the so-called transformation problem become
obsolete. It is also difficult to make conclusions about the dynamics of capitalism, if
(abstract) labour time is a variable, which cannot be measured or defined. Even in the
elementary concept of productivity of labour the quantitative definition of labour time is
essential.
It seems to me that in the critique of the traditional Marxism sometimes the child is thrown
away with the washing water. The confusion of empirical measurement of labour time and
theoretical understanding value relations is, may be, one reason of this phenomenon.
These questions bring us back to the discussions of the role of quantitative and qualitative
analysis and the role of mathematics in the work of Marxist critique of political economy
and also to the discussions about the status of labour theory of value in Marxist theory."
Peter Hudis

Frantz Fanons Contribution to Hegelian Marxism

Although the work of Frantz Fanon has become an staple of post-colonialist and anti-
imperialist theory over the past several decades, his contribution to Hegelian-Marxism, as
especially found in Black Skin, White Masks and other writings, has been largely neglected
by scholars and activists alike. This paper will seek to correct this oversight by showing that
Fanons critical engagement with the master/slave dialectic in Hegels Phenomenology not
only governed his critique of Negritude and Jean-Paul Sartre, but also formed the basis of
his understanding of the promise and pitfalls of national consciousness found in such later
works as The Wretched of the Earth. I will also argue that Fanons distinctive reading of
Hegel marked an important point of departure from the philosophical positions advanced by
Alexandre Kojve, Theodor Adorno, and contemporary writers on recognition. A critical re-
evaluation of the impact of Fanons study of Hegel will show that he deserves a place as one
of the most important figures within Hegelian Marxism.
Elizabeth Humphrys and Tad Tietze

Abolishing the present state of things: reconstructing Marxs critique of politics and the
state
A range of social critics has pointed to the hollowing out of previously entrenched
representative political institutions and the growth of popular anti-politics sentiment during
the late neoliberal era in Western democracies. Antonio Gramscis prediction of a crisis of
authority where social classes become detached from their traditional parties seems to

have come to pass, yet without a breakdown of bourgeois hegemony or a breakthrough by

revolutionary political projects. By reconstructing Karl Marxs early critique of politics and
the state often inaccurately dismissed as immature and undeveloped as compared with
his later critique of political economy we will outline its relevance to the current anti-
political conjuncture. Drawing on the work of Lucio Colletti, Gary Teeple, Derek Sayer and
Peter Thomas, we will argue that grasping the essential nature of the relationship between
state and civil society, and the limits of political emancipation vis--vis social liberation can
lay the basis for theorising a significantly different approach to the political to that which
has been dominant within the Western revolutionary Left for the last century. Furthermore,
we contend that this new approach is immanent in the practical activity of the emerging
anti-political social movements of our time.
Filip

Ilkowski

"New Warsaw Pact", beggar imperialism and power politics in Central and Eastern Europ
The recent events in Ukraine have shown that imperialism is still an important issue in the
area of former Eastern Bloc. It is important to see it as a newest expression of the
tendencies visible in the last 25 years: in particular NATO enlargement and existence of
"New Warsaw Pact" countries very much loyal to USA, and on the other hand attempts to
rebuild its power position by Russia. But countires within the former Eastern Bloc are not
only pawns in great powers games. One can also see the phemomenon of "beggar
imperialism" - ambitious and independent in its aims but at the same time dependent of
external help to achieve them. In addition, economic and social crisis after 2008, with it
uneven impact in the area, is an important framework of recent geopolitical competition
between bigger and smaller actors in the Eastern Europe.
Orazio Irrera

Environmentality between Primitive Accumulation and Colonial Biopolitics.

The struggle for the use of the forests in Himalayan India (1864-1931) Through
the
notion of Environmentality, coined at first by Arjun Agrawal, this contribution aims at
combining two paradigms in order to approach colonial environmental history from an
innovative point of view: on the one hand the Marxist perspective based on primitive
accumulation and, on the other hand, the Foucauldian biopolitical prism through which
scientific discourses, governmental technologies, and political resistances turn out to be
strictly intertwined also in the case of environmental colonial history (even if Foucault never
dealt with it). More exactly, we focus on the relevant question of the management of the
forests in the circumscribed colonial area of some sub-Himalayan regions and during a
particular period (1864-1931). Thus, we try to link the ecological imperialism featuring the
capitalistic drive in nineteenth century British India to the relationship between the
development of scientific forestry, the creation of the Imperial Forest Department (1864)

regulating the scientific forest management in sub-Himalayan India, and the resistance of
native people threatened by this management. This long period of struggle concluded with
the 1931 Forest Panchayat Rules that sanctioned the emergence of rural communities as
environmental subjectivities able both to provide some forms of self-government in
ecological management and to struggle against market-oriented policies.
Robert Jackson

Postone, Lebowitz and Subjectivity in Marx's Capital

"Marx's characterisation of capital as a self-moving substance, the subject of its own
process, has led Moishe Postone to posit capital as the primary subject of Capital. Whilst
Postones interpretation highlights the function of capital as non-personal social
domination, this paper will argue that his interpretation is challenged by Marxs analysis of
the influence of class struggle on the functioning of the laws of capitalist production.
The paper will discuss the concrete forms of working class self-activity found in Marx's
chapter, The Working Day. It will further examine the interaction between the workers'
movement and the factory inspectors, and their significance for the role of a knowing
subject in the process of class struggle.
For Michael Lebowitz, Postones argument is possible because of a crucial silence in Capital.
The paper will also assess Lebowitz's claim that Marx does not explore the subjective side of
the capital/wage-labour relation in his later writings. It will evaluate Lebowitzs project to
overcome a one-sided reading of Marxs project by theorising the creation of new social
needs for workers."
Daniel Jakopovich

The Class Functions of British Militarism

"The presentation examines the structural functions of the military-industrial complex, and
the bases of its power. I demonstrate its continued relevance for the global economic and
geopolitical positioning of the British ruling class, its capitalist and state elites. The UK
military-industrial complex has a uniquely important place among the mechanisms and
apparatuses of class power due to its designated purpose of protecting the existing system
of domestic and global class relations, and of increasing British economic and geopolitical
leverage on the global level. British militarism is a multi-faceted form of intervention in the
processes of international (political and economic) competition, and it supports the entire
architecture of global capitalism, including the international rule-making and agenda-setting
institutions. The long-term Anglo-American political and military alliance in particular is a
highly ambitious and expansionistic form of global power projection and systemic
organisation.

The presentation shall also elaborate the main features of this system of militarised state
capitalism, which is founded on the increasing privatisation and oligarchisation of the
politics and of the state, the institutional capture of the state and the wider public sphere by
oligopolistic private interests. Militarised state capitalism is based on the neo-colonial
extraction of global resources and the redistribution of wealth from the British taxpayers to
private military companies, a privileged oligopolistic fraction of the capitalist class. I shall
demonstrate that militarism functions as a method of subordinating the state in accordance
with oligopolistic and monopolistic private corporate interests. Additionally, the
presentation will show that the military-industrial complex helps to ensure the domestic
and international political security and reliability required to secure the investment of
wealthy Oriental despots and other segments of the Middle Eastern and global capitalist
elite, on whose support the continued dominance of the City of London, of other powerful
British industries, and of the UK offshore system partly depend. I shall also discuss the
integration of the energy and financial industries within the military-industrial complex, as
well as the role of the military-industrial complex in the integration of the ruling class
(through shared socialisation, lobbying and the contribution of the military-industrial
complex to political campaigning, cronyism, the revolving door between senior military
and corporate positions and political office, financialisation, interlocking directorships, etc.).
In conclusion, I shall indicate how the military-industrial complex and the security state
contribute to an increasingly totalitarian concentration of social, economic and political
power.
(In the discussion afterwards I might also have time to properly discuss the issue of military
""Keynesianism"". This research is based on my PhD thesis on class power in Britain at the
University of Cambridge, which is a couple of weeks away from completion. I gave a two
hour guest lecture on the British military-industrial complex at Cambridge, and an article on
the topic has been accepted for publication by Cuadernos de Marte, a South American
journal specialising in the sociology of war.)"
Muhammad Ali

Jan

Class, State and the 'making' of Indigeneous capital in a global milieu: a case study of the
Pakistani Punjab
Perhaps nowhere in the historical materialist tradition has the tension between theory and
history been greater than in the analysis of Imperialism and the global political economy. As
the most abstract yet necessary concept, the global or the world has been the source of
endless debate within Marxism - from Lenins analysis of inter-imperialist rivalry, to
dependency and 'world-systems' theories to present day debates over the transnational
capitalist class. Among these, no framework has invited greater enthusiasm or criticism than
the world-systems approach; scholars have chided world-systems theorists for their
functionalist and deterministic view of exploitation while the latter have accused their critics

of glossing over a highly unequal international order and its effects on the nature and
pattern of capitalist development in the periphery. This paper argues that while many of
the debates among both defenders and detractors of world-systems and dependency
approaches brought about considerable advances in our understanding of capitalist
accumulation on a world-scale, 3 fundamental elements are essential if we are to grasp
unequal development more fully; firstly, unlike dependency theory and world-systems, it is
not the nation but the international social relation between national capitals of different
strengths in the framework of what Marx called the competition of capitals which should
be the focus of attention; second, in order to avoid purely economistic understandings of
class formation and capital accumulation the role of the state must be central to the
analysis. Finally, it must be recognized that this relationship of hierarchy is historically
constituted so that a long term perspective on the 'making' and development of national
capitalist classes is crucial for an understanding of both the continuities and discontinuities
in its relationship both to international capital and domestic working classes. Drawing on
South Asian economic history and with a particular focus on Pakistani Punjab, this paper
then demonstrates how the historical interplay between British and indigenous capital as
well as the colonial state, was crucial in the making of an indigenous capitalist class, drawn
from landed, mercantile and bureaucratic groups, that came to rely not on technological
improvement, but cheapening of labour-power as its differencia specifica and whose
patterns of investment were crucial in determining the nature of accumulation and its
outcomes for the exploitation and welfare of labour. If the survival of capitalism is to be fully
understood then one needs to analyze this making of state and capital as an interplay with
the global so that not only the strengths of capital are revealed, but its vulnerabilities
exposed so that radical praxis can transform it.
Heesang

Jeon

Knowledge and the contradiction between the forces of production and the relations of
production in capitalism
Commodities have the dual characteristic, being both value and use-value, and so does
knowledge: knowledge specifies what to produce, i.e. use-value, and how to produce
(production technologies); at the same time, it determines the complexity and productivity
of commodity-producing labour, that is, the value productivity of commodity-producing
labour, see Jeon (2011) *. Deriving from the abstract and fundamental opposition between
value and use-value, the dual characteristics of knowledge is distinguished from other forms
such as the opposition between money and commodities and the separation of purchase
and sale. These developed and concrete forms are the abstract (but real) basis of economic
crisis, which not only reveals the contradictory and unstable nature of the capitalist mode of
production, but also enables the economy to recover from crises, by restoring balance
between sectors, increasing profit rates or eradicating overproduction facilities. By contrast,
the dual characteristics of knowledge, as expressed in the contradiction between the forces

of the capitalist production and its relations of production, points to the eventual demise of
capitalism. Value production, driving incessant accumulation of knowledge, will eventually
reach the point where production stops being the means of satisfying human needs and
reproducing the society, the basis of value production. * Heesang Jeon (2011), The Value
and Price of Information Commodities: An Assessment of the South Korean Controversy, in
Paul Zarembka, Radhika Desai (ed.) Revitalizing Marxist Theory for Today's Capitalism
(Research in Political Economy, Volume 27), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, pp.191-222.
Cedric Johnson

Between Revolution and the Racial Ghetto: Harold Cruse and Harry Haywood Debate Class
Struggle and the Negro Question, 1962-1968

This paper revisits an historic exchange between two black ex-Communists, Harold Cruse
and Harry Haywood. Their debate was precipitated by Cruses influential 1962 essay for
Studies on the Left, Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American, which declared
that the American Negro was a subject of domestic colonialism. Written against the
prevailing liberal integrationist commitments of the civil rights movement, his essay called
for black economic and political independence, and inspired many of the younger activists
who would give birth to the black power movement. In a series of essays for the Bay Area
black radical journal, Soulbook, Haywood criticized Cruses mishandling of class politics
among blacks, and his retreat from anti-capitalism. Their exchange was in many ways, a
debate with the wider American Left, old and new, during an historical epoch when the
struggles against southern Jim Crow segregation gave way to black power militancy and
urban revolt, and many activists proclaimed that the black vanguard had supplanted the
mass worker as the leading edge of left revolutionary politics in the United States and
beyond. This forgotten episode is important on its own terms, for what it says about the
character and limitations of left political thinking during the sixties, and equally for
understanding commonsensical notions of African American public life in our times which
too often remain rooted in the vanished sociological context and political realities of the
twentieth century racial ghetto.
Jonny Jones

Some thoughts on 'anti-politics' in austerity Britain
The Australian Marxists Elizabeth Humphrys and Tad Tietze have suggested that there presently
exists a widespread mood of anti-politics, stemming from a crisis of representation that leads most
people to see politics as completely detached from their lives. Their analysis proceeds from an
interpretation of Marxs critique of politics and the state, as well as from Gramscis insights into the
processes by which classes and class fractions become detached from their traditional parties.
In analyses of the Australian political class, and in Luke Stobarts work on the 15-M movement and
the growth of Podemos in the Spanish state, it appears that this rejection of the political mainstream

can lead to disparate outcomes depending on, among other factors, the balance of class forces and
the strategies pursued by the political classes and the left to relate to the anti-politics mood and the
movements that it imbues.
In this paper, I hope to assess the applicability of Humphrys and Tietzes broad conception of anti-
politics to analysis of political developments in Britain since the 2010 student revolt, such as the
anti-austerity movement and the recent emergence of UKIP as an electoral force; and to examine its
implications for revolutionary strategy in Britain.

Timothy

Joubert

Gendering the Social Factory: Marxism, Social Reproduction, and Women's Oppression
"This paper examines the ability of Marxist theory to comprehend gender oppression and
trace the material base(s) of womens oppression. A critical survey of relevant literature and
discussion is presented in the two main topic areas of reproductive labour, a concept some
Marxists have used to attempt to locate the basis of gender oppression, and sexual violence,
which Marxists have often been hesitant to theorise about. In particular, this paper focuses
on the arguments of feminist-Marxists in the Italian Autonomist tradition to interrogate the
relationship between womens particular relation to capitalist production (exploitation in
the domestic sphere) and their ideological and material subordination. It is argued that the
gendered organisation of social reproduction is determinate of a broader social labour
relation between women and men, articulated through immaterial affective labours, and
disciplined by sexual violence. Building on the Autonomist concept of the social factory,
these relations of gender form a fundamental constituent part of capitalist class relations
and are central to the circuit of capitalist accumulation, an understanding that Marxism
must grasp in order to confront womens oppression.
Christoph Jnke

Leo Koflers Marxism and the New Left in postwar Germany: Mentor and persona non grata
at the same time
"Leo Kofler (1907-1995) was an Austrian-German social philosopher and social theorist who
ranks with Ernst Bloch, the Marburg politicologist Wolfgang Abendroth and the Frankfurt
school theoretician Adorno among the few well-known Marxist intellectuals in post-war
Germany. However, almost nothing of his work was ever translated into English, and he is
therefore little known in the English-speaking world. More than that, even in Germany this
major leftwing thinker, proponent of the first generation of a German New Left in the
1950s and 1960s, is virtually absent from left discourses.
In trying to explain the deeper causes of that split, Christoph Jnke explores the main
outlines of Koflers distinctive interpretation of Marxism, which connected sociology and

history with aesthetics and philosophical anthropology. On this background he portrays him
and his theory of a progressive elite as an original and fruitful answer to the structural
problems not only of the German left; as an interesting attempt to situate the struggles of
the 60s and 70s in the historical continuum of the transition from classical socialism to
postmodernism; and as an early attempt to clear the problems of the contemporary
multitude.
Trish Kahle

The Graveyard Shift: Energy Industry Reorganization and Rank and File Rebellion in the
United Mine Workers of America, 1963-1973

This paper examines the link between reorganization of American energy production and
the ability of workers to forge political spaces to challenge capital within their unions, thus
illuminating how capitalism survived the energy and political crises of the 1970s. Energy
production in the United States underwent a striking transformation in the 1960s and 1970s
as nuclear power expanded rapidly. The struggle over what fuelcoal or uraniumwould
power the United States placed Appalachian coal miners at the center of a process that less
represented a struggle between fuels as it did a process of capitalist consolidation and
industry reorganization. Within a decade, energy production transformed from a series of
discrete industries rooted in a single source fuel to a smaller number of energy
conglomerates with diverse fuel investments. Contextualized by this transformation, the
union democracy movement in the United Mine Workers of America appears not only as an
internal struggle over democratic practices, but also a broad political struggle. The political
space forged in the UMWA by the Miners for Democracy was able to entertain radical
solutions to long-standing problems exacerbated by a series of concurrent crises: mine
safety, rank and file power, and environmental destruction.
Giorgos

Kalampokas

Violence, history, encounter: Political, philosophical and historical implications of Marxs

theory of primitive accumulation

"The object of this paper is the theoretical approach of Marxs theory of primitive
accumulation as a theory of the emergence of the capitalist mode of production. Following
Marxs text, we seek the theoretical status of Marxs analysis central notions, such as
encounter and violence, and also its theoretical place inside the overall Marxian work.
Tracking Marxs texts internal tensions as well as the tension between Marxs analysis of
primitive accumulation and a teleological, determinist and productivist approach of history
and of the succession of the modes of production -an approach which can also be met
elsewhere in Marxs work and dominates many of its interpretations-, we try to
acknowledge in his analysis of primitive accumulation those elements that can renew the
theoretical grounds of historical materialism and some of its most important categories

like the mode of production and value- as well as their historicity. In this context, we seek
the possible consequences of Marxs view of primitive accumulation for a philosophical and
theoretical approach of history and politics.
Following Louis Althussers trail, our thesis resides on the argument that, contrary to an
approach of history as a predefined, evolutionary, in the final analysis smooth, succession
of modes of production that follows the growth of productive forces a process like the one
Marx himself presents in the 1859 Preface-, in his study of primitive accumulation he
presents the emergence of the capitalist mode of production as a long process of social
transformation, both the starting point and the progress of which are as such aleatory and
subjected only to class struggle and its new emerging forms. In our view Marx sets the
encounter between social forms that have historically emerged independently from one
another right at the center of his analysis of the emergence of the capitalist mode of
production. We argue that this specific interaction between these social forms is, as we call
it, an overdetermined encounter which historically modulates new relations of production
and a new mode of production.
For Marx violence is also set at the very core of primitive accumulation. Contrary to the
common Marxian theorization according to which violence holds nothing but a secondary
part in historical progress standing only as the needed friction of social phenomena with
reality -phenomena that as such are determined by different laws-, we argue that Marx
attributes a transformative and constitutive character to violence. In this framework, Marx
also highlights the crucial part of the state in the emergence of capitalist relations thus
providing a new perspective to the relation between the political and the economical
element during the emergence of capitalism, as opposed to another common Marxian
approach that would consider the first to be only an expression of the latter attributing to
the economic element an absolute casual primacy. We argue that Marx, on the contrary,
highlights from the very beginning the significance of state intervention and of the political,
extra-economical coercion for the making of new relations of social production and their
reproduction.
Given this analysis, in our final remarks we will try to put forward a political and
philosophical practice of Marxs theory of primitive accumulation appealing to the
contemporary pursue of a communist revolutionary strategy."
Onur Kapdan

Irregular Times: Gezi Uprising in Turkey - Radical Subjectivity vs. The States Capitalism
"The 2013 Gezi Park protests constituted a new type of horizontal social struggle that went
beyond earlier Turkish politics, whether leftist or nationalist. This movement, which
organized horizontally and involved a new generation of youth occupying public space
added yet another node to the global upheavals since 2011. The movement, however,

complicates the discontent with capitalism and representative democracy shared by all of
these movements. Turkey has been one of the emerging economies of the last decade
under the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which also continues to draw
significant support from the population.
In this context, the anti-capitalism in the youths radical subjectivity is often concealed by
their immediate anti-authoritarian demands against Prime Minister Erdoan and the AKP.
Consequently, Gezi appears to be a cultural uprising of the new petty bourgeoisie, la
Poulantzas. This paper argues against this appearance based on an ongoing dissertation
research into the roots of Gezi and the consequent neighborhood assemblies. Doing so, it
assesses the validity of following strict capitalist class divisions to understand the Turkish
context, and contends that capitalism in Turkey is primarily driven by the states chosen
capitalists, as the recent carnage at the Soma coalmine has further revealed. The paper
asserts that the States capacity to choose who and what accumulates capital, and Erdoans
attempt to build an ideological hegemony, shows youths radical subjectivity is a negation of
capitalism, whose own contradictions are also preliminarily analyzed in the paper."
Elif

Karacimen & Annina Kaltenbrunner

Financialisation in the Middle Income Countries: An Analysis of the Changing Investment and
Financing Behaviours of Non-Financial Corporations in Turkey and Brazil
The last few decades have been marked by the broadening and deepening role of finance,
which is often discussed with reference to the term financialisation. It is evident that
much has been written on the subject in the context of core capitalist countries. This paper
discusses how financialisation might fit as an analytical tool for exploring changes in the
economies of middle income countries, by drawing on the experiences of Brazil and Turkey.
In adopting the financialisation approach, this study aims to go beyond the dichotomous
understanding of finance and real economy. It focuses on the new dynamics in both
realms and the interconnections between the two. It argues that one of the crucial points to
consider in analysing the financialisation in middle income countries is to understand the
changes in the mode of integration of those countries into the world economy and
accompanied transformations in the financial and non-financial sectors of these economies
vis--vis their internal dynamics. One of the major characteristics of middle income
countries over the last decade has been their deepening integration into the world economy
through trade, foreign direct investment and capital flows, a process which has been
supported by the changes in their monetary policies. Throughout the period, there have
been important changes in the financing and investment behaviour of non-financial
companies. The aim of this study is to discuss these changes in the behaviour of NFCs in
relation to an array of transformations that those economies have undergone over the last
decade. It addresses the dearth of empirical work on financialisation of NFCs in middle
income countries by examining the changes in the asset and liability structures of the major
NFCs in Turkey and Brazil. Situated in a broader context, this analysis sheds lights on the

how NFCs have been integrated into production chains centred in advanced economies and
how they have also been able to raise funds through international capital markets. Based
upon its analysis, this study addresses two major questions. First, it explores the
implications of the changes in practices and behaviours of NFCs for the capital accumulation
processes of these countries. Second, it discusses the increased exposure of NFCs to
financial risk posed by volatile exchange rates and international capital flows and its
implications for those economies.
smail Karatepe

Housing, the state and intervention: Placing Turkey in an international context

"Since November 2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) swept the victory in
Turkeys parliamentary elections with an overwhelming majority, the governments direct
involvement into the construction industry has been drastically expanded. Concerning the
increasing government activities in the construction industry, a public agency, the Housing
Development Administration of Turkey (TOKI) deserves special attention. The
administration, which had been initially established to carry out social housing projects in
the year 1984, became a significant player in the construction industry, especially in the
residential unit provision.
I seek to find an answer to the question of whether successive AKP governments direct
involvement in the dwelling provisions is in line with ongoing trends in the world. To this
end, one of the main components of this study is designed to discuss the trends elsewhere.
Housing policies in Turkey appears to have undergone major transformations in the last
decade, involving drastic expansions in public housing provision. Yet, neither the presence
of public housing nor its transformation is unique to Turkey. Regarding with public housing
and its regulatory institution, indeed, several counterparts all around the world can be
identified, and variety ways of transformation can be observed. However, I claim that the
social housing through TOKI is reasonably interesting case. I will discuss that the public
housing in Turkey can be distinguished operationally (how and to what extent it involves in
the sector), financially (how is social housing financed) and institutionally (how is the
Administration institutionally structured) from other examples.
This study is expected to shed light on the construction industry state nexus from this
particular angle. The construction industry in Turkey has been believed to play important
role in its GDP growth rates. Besides, the existing construction boom started to play a more
prominent role in politics as we have witnessed with the AKPs mega projects (e.g. Channel
Istanbul) as well as the recent protest wave triggered by a shopping mall project on Gezi
Park, on very last green spaces near Taksim square in Istanbul.
Samir Karnik Hinks

A "Tribune of the Oppressed": Positioning Claudia Jones' Leninism

This paper looks at the ways Claudia Jones synthesised her experiences as a black
Trinidadian working class woman to move beyond the Stalinist orthodoxy of the CPUSA and
develop a proto-intersectional analysis of the oppression of black women. The final section
focuses upon Jones work organising the Caribbean diaspora in London through the anti-
racist, anti-imperialist paper the West Indian Gazette. However, Claudia Jones remained a
Leninist to the end of her life, and whilst the axis of her political praxis was fighting against
oppression, this paper employs a Leninist prism to understand Jones thought. In doing so
Jones can be seen as both a product of the Harlem Popular Front and internal debates of the
CPUSA, but also an original and imaginative thinker who embodied the principle that
Leninism should be a politics for the oppressed.
Nektarios Kastrinakis
The stillbirth of Communist Russia
The collapse of the Soviet Union is today one of the main reasons why the left has difficulty
to threaten bourgeois ideological hegemony. One way to deal with this problem is to
radically dissociate the Soviet Union from the communist program. This paper sets to
investigate how far the claim that Soviet Union was a communist social formation is
justified. We examine the first two formative decades of Soviet Union (1917-1938) and we
argue that the revolution was already going amiss from its outset because of the social
structure of Russia and the absence or failure of the revolutions in Europe.
On the political level, we take Marxs analysis of the Paris Commune in his The Civil War in
France as his opinion about the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat and we compare
it with the reality of revolutionary Russia. We argue that the specific social structure and
historical conditions of the revolution in Russia, combined with Lenins theory about the
organisation and nature of the revolutionary party, lead to a reduction of the dictatorship of
the working class to a dictatorship of the party of the working class and then to a silencing
of the democracy inside the party which had a debilitating effect on the course of the
revolution.
On the economic level, we build on Paresh Chattopadhyays argument that capital was
always at work in the Soviet Union despite claims to the contrary in east and west alike, and
we argue that transformation of the social relations of production (workers control of the
working place and of the economy) was never established.
Our sources are the works of the classics of Marxism (Marx, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg) and
later and more recent authors like Charles Bettelheim, Robert Vincent Daniels, Alec Nove
and Paresh Chattopadhyay.
Paul Kellogg

For unity against war and capitalism the half-remembered contribution of Leon Trotsky,
1914-1917
"It is one hundred years since socialisms greatest crime. August 4 1914, the parliamentary
caucus of the worlds then largest Marxist organization the mass Social Democratic Party
of Germany voted to support financing Germanys war effort. Most European socialist
parties followed suit, sending their members into the horror of the trenches in what was to
become the Great War of 1914-1918. Prominent among the small minority of socialists
who stood firm against militarism, were two Russians Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky.
Each took a very strong anti-war position, but did so in quite different ways. Lenins
positions are well-known particularly his call for revolutionary defeatism. Trotskys quite
distinct positions in spite of his role as main author of the pivotal Zimmerwald manifesto
have largely faded from memory. This paper will argue, there is much in these half-
forgotten positions that are relevant to socialist, anti-war activists in the 21st century, in
some important ways more relevant than the positions adopted by Lenin and the
Bolsheviks. The paper will survey three aspects of Trotskys anti-war work in this period: a)
the positions he saw as central to the movement, in particular the adoption of the quite
simple slogan end the imperialist war and the promotion of the call for the formation of a
United States of Europe; b) his role as the main figure in a daily anti-war newspaper, Our
Word (Nashe Slovo); and c) his orientation towards a group of internationalist, anti-war
worker-militants in St. Petersburg, members of the Inter-District Committee or
Mezhrayonka. The paper will then conclude with some reflections on why Trotskys distinct
positions and activity have been only half-remembered in the decades since.
This paper flows from research being prepared for an edited collection reflecting on the
politics and practice of the Mezhrayonka."
Sinead Kennedy

Disciplining the Precarious Body: Biopolitical regulation in an era of chronic crisis. "Stream:
How capitalism survives? A Marxist-Feminist perspective.
We live in a time of the massification of insecurity an insecurity that is, we are told, the
necessary condition to escape from crisis and secure the future for a so-called neoliberal
global order. Yet, for large sections of the population this temporality of crisis has been
replaced with a crisis of ordinariness. What is termed crisis is now a defining fact of life as
peoples lives become characterised as one of long-term wearing down and wearing out and
where existence is increasing precarious. This precaritisation is characterised by the
breaching of hygienic borders political and territorial borders, the borders between the
global north and south, as well as the borders of race, class and gender. Every aspect of
social relations is now subjected to discipline and control not just through institutions but
through the control of the processes of life itself. This paper will argue that repertoire of
neoliberal strategies of subjectivation and governance are particularly explicit in the

treatment and representation of women under austerity. It will focus on exploring the
construction of a neoliberal logic where some bodies become recognisable subjects, entitled
to protection, while others are constructed as internal enemies and rendered disposable.
Sami Khatib

From Creative to Messianic Destruction: How a Zombies Dies

Capital is a purely social relation that valorizes itself while temporalizing its own historical
time. The value of a commodity, as Marx put it, is defined by its substance which is itself a
relation: abstract labor. The latter is produced through the employment of living labor.
Value, however, is not just congealed or dead labor, but most of all undead labor. Within
the spurious infinity of the ac- and decelerating cycles of capital accumulation, dead labor is
valorized and, always anew, survives its own death as undead labor. The undeadness of
value as capital is not simply speculative or supra-sensuous; rather, it is also sensuous and
violently destructive. What Schumpeter called creative destruction is not only an
immanent necessity within the process of capital accumulation but also the eternal
recurrence of capitalisms Urszene, which Marx famously coined original accumulation
(ursprngliche Akkumulation). If capitalisms modus vivendi is actually a modus moriendi,
capitalisms eternal resurrection has to always anew destroy earlier stages of capitalism and
non-capitalist economies. Against this spurious infinity of creative destruction, Walter
Benjamin proposed a different form of destruction a certain non-violent or even messianic
destruction, which could deposit the flawed dialectics of capitalist positions and negations.
However, Benjamins peculiar constellation of messianic nihilism and historical materialism
cannot be mapped from the perspective of the self-valorizing cycles of capitalist
accumulation. Be it divine violence, the modern barbarian, or the destructive
character, his theoretical figures of de-figuration propose an asymmetrical negation to
both capitalist creation and capitalist destruction. Benjamins paradoxical strategy of
accelerationist decelerationism a lightning-fast pulling of the emergency break of the
racing train of capitalist modernity alludes to a new way of conceiving of the end of
capitalism to a communist strategy of survival which exceeds capitalisms undeadness. In
my paper I will discuss Benjamins messianic nihilism as an attempt to theorize a communist
cessation of capitalisms modus moriendi.
Seungman

Kim

Two financial crises and neoliberal financialization in Korean welfare regime

Since the 1997 East Asian financial crisis, two competing claims on characteristics of Korean
society have coexisted. On the one hand, Korean society was said to undergo a rapid shift
into neoliberal financialization that gave rise to harmful effects on the society gradually. On
the other hand, Korea was regarded as a country that has somewhat completed a transition
to the welfare state. The latter opinion has received much stronger public supports since the

2008 financial crisis. As class struggles have been weakened since 1997, citizen solidarity
replaced class hostilities, and many liberals who were disguised as lefties have been trying
to spread a discourse of the universal welfare state as its final goal. The purpose of this
study is to criticize fundamental premises of Korean welfare state discourse. Neoliberal
financialization can be compatible with a regime of universal welfare, which may establish a
complementary relationship with the former because of their subordinated status of East
Asian countries in global capital market. Among others, a giant public pension fund emerged
as one of the most important financial agencies after the first financial crisis and formed a
Korean Capital market by managing the huge financial assets. A discourse on the universal
welfare regime in South Korea should be analyzed as a symptom of neoliberal
financialization, not as its 'alternative'."
Jim

Kincaid

Worries about the rate of profit

"Rightly, the rate of profit continues to be central in Marxist work on the world economy.
But in much current research, rate of profit concepts and data are being used in too
reductionist and mechanical a way. We cannot now make the assumption, as Marx usually
did, that the profit rate equals the amount of surplus-value extracted from labour, divided
by capital advanced. Huge quantities of surplus-value are drained from companies in the
form of payments to executives. Even for declared profits, the official data sources on
which Marxist research relies are failing to reflect increasing levels of corporate tax evasion,
made easier by globalisation and the ready availability of tax havens. Also missed are profits
made invisible because disguised as exaggerated estimates for tax-exempt depreciation.
The profitability of past investment is only one influence in current investment decisions.
Corporate cash piles have been building up on a gigantic scale because the rate of realised
profitability is in fact relatively high. It is the level of investment which lags and this is of
course, in part, because future profitability is expected to be lower or, at least, more
uncertain. But cash piles are also accumulating because companies want a large war-chest
of cash reserves to raise profits by playing the market in corporate control through mergers
and acquisitions or in order to fight off unwelcome raiders."
Stefan Kipfer & Parastou

Saberi

Populism, Fascism and the Survival of Capitalism

Capitalism has repeatedly survived through fascism. In our current conjuncture,
authoritarian populism and fascism have helped reorganize rule in various parts of the
capitalist world. Recent elections from India to Europe have indicated the disturbing
comeback of explicit forms of fascism. One complicated question in this context relates to
subaltern support for the hard right. In our two contexts, Paris (France) and Toronto
(Canada), recent electoral results (for Mayor Ford in Toronto and the Front National in Paris)

have spurred debates about the sources of right-wing electoral behaviour among both
white and non-white fractions of the working class. Informed by Antonio Gramsci, Henri
Lefebvre, Frantz Fanon, Himani Bannerji, and Gill Hart, our approach to the question of
subaltern support for authoritarian politics is multifaceted. We emphasize the contingency
of voting choices in relationship to the deeper - and always contradictory - terrains of
everyday life. We suggest that spatialized public discourses (often reified by means of
electoral maps) force us to deal with the relationship between electoral geographies,
racialized socio-spatial restructuring and territorialized state intervention (notably in
segregated working-class suburban spaces). We conclude that the contradictory realities of
working class support for hard right populism have major implications for counter-colonial
left political strategies, not least with respect to the national question in its various thorny
forms.
Sebastian

Klauke

The Rise of Authoritarian Statism

The multiple crises of economics, democracy, representation, ecology and so forth are
not over or solved, capitalism has not come to its end. Quite the reverse can be observed:
capitalism is illustrating once again its flexibility and its ability to survive. What state theorist
Nicos Poulantzas back in the 1970ies analyzed as Authoritarian Statism is actually having its
breakthrough by now in Europe: the strengthening of the executive branches of politics and
the states new role in regulating economic processes and the strategically bypassing of
rules for legal and constitutional development are some of the main features of
Authoritarian Statism. On a more general level capitalism is experiencing its authoritarian
turn. What we witness are two kinds of realities at the same time: while there are on
average no serious governmental crises throughout Europe, besides at least a crisis of
hegemony in the sense of Antonio Gramsci of (pure) neoliberal thinking and political
acting, the European societies are suffering from a deep multiple crisis, particularly in the
domain of social reproduction on a individual as well on social level. This contribution wants
to examine the current paths of the crisis, by developing an own notion of the rising
Authoritarian Statism.
Samuel

Knafo & Benno

Teschke

Escaping Brenner's Rules of Reproduction: Political Marxism & Historicity

"Marxism has long been pulled apart by two different legacies. The first is a strong critique
of the logic of capitalism which has been grounded in a systematic analysis of the rules of
reproduction of capitalism as a system. This structural critique has often led to an emphasis
on the limited ability of capitalism to overcome its internal contradictions. The second
legacy is a strong historicist perspective which stems from Marxs Hegelian background and
his own critique of the German philosophers trajectory. This historicism has seen him put

forward a conception of social relations and an emphasis the centrality of power and class
struggle for our account of history.
While most Marxists see themselves as heir to these two defining features of Marx, it is no
secret that it has often been difficult to properly marry them. Political Marxism itself, we
argue, has been caught within this contradictory legacy. As a result, what was once a
promising historicist alternative became mired in economistic readings of capitalism which
hinder the practice of historicisation it was supposed to buttress. This article seeks to make
good on the initial promise of Political Marxist by radicalizing the agent-centered and
historicist legacy of Marx."
Samuel

Knafo

The Imperialism of Financialisation: Marxism and the Uneven History of Global Finance
This paper analyses the Marxist literature on financialisation and criticises its structuralist
bias and its tendency to work on the basis of aggregates that obfuscate complex and diverse
social relations. As I argue, this lens casts financialisation in largely asocial and de-
contextualised ways which make it difficult to historicise this phenomenon and understand
the power relations involved. As a challenge, this paper uses a Political Marxist framework
to offer an alternative account based on agency. In particular, I ask, why has financialisation
become such a generalised process? This very fact has generally been taken as a proof in
itself of the need for a structural approach. For this seems to suggest a more structural
driving force at work. To counter such pervasive narrative about financialisation, this paper
traces the uneven development of financialisation from its American origins, its spread
through Euromarkets and its impact on financial systems in Germany and Japan. It seeks in
the process to reframe our understanding of the essential features of financialisation and
provide the foundations for a 'social history' of its evolution.
Ece

Kocabicak

How capitalism survives without women workers in Turkey

"Since the early decades of capitalist development, the composition of free wage-labour has
always been entirely men in Turkey. Consequently, share of women in the non-agricultural
sectors in Turkey is much lower than other countries. In order to investigate the reasons of
womens lower level of paid employment, I will provide a comparative analysis among the
countries which level of capitalist development is same as Turkey, yet the share of women
in the paid employment is much higher than Turkey.
The evidence that I have analysed thus far, suggests that in comparison to the selected
sample of countries, the feminisation of free wage-labour in Turkey has delayed
approximately by a half century. This situation has complicated implications on the
proletarianisation process and capital accumulation. With this paper, my aim is to present

the initial outcomes of my data analysis with regard to the distinctive features of capitalist
development in Turkey. These include the conditions of primitive accumulation, the
composition of capital accumulation, sectoral distribution of free wage-labour, class struggle
and the state. In doing so, I expect to contribute to the literature by demonstrating the
mutually shaping relationship between patriarchy and capitalism."
ANGELOS

KONTOGIANNIS-MANDROS

Neofascism in the era of crisis: The case of Golden Dawn

"In this paper we aim to illuminate the key factors that underlie Golden Dawns emergence
as a major political force in the Greek political scene in the aftermath of the massive social
mobilizations experienced in the country the period 2010-12 and in the context of the
ongoing socio-economic crisis.
Our goal is to provide an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of the neofascist
discourse, its influence in the broader political debate and its rather dialogical relation with
the discourse and policies of the mainstream right. This will enable us to proceed in a more
sound examination of its electoral profile (i.e. sociodemographic characteristics of its voters)
and its political dynamic.
The surprisingly high results of the party both in the euro-elections and the municipality
and prefecture elections that preceded, despite the criminal prosecutions against its
leadership, consists for us the ultimate proof that we are dealing here with a deep socio-
political current of crucial significance for the understanding of the dynamics that currently
interplay in the restructuring of the Greek party system. Furthermore it is our conviction
that Golden Dawns rise consist a very interesting case for the examination of the political
limits of contemporary neoliberal capitalism as part or outcome of the authoritarian
transformation that complements the management of the economic crisis.
We hope that such an analysis will not only contribute to a more sound understanding of
Greek politics but will be of importance for the examination of the emergence and
outspread of radical right and neo-fascist currents though out the continent."
Paavo Kotiaho

Tales of Transformismo: International Human Rights Law and the Onslaught of Neoliberal
Capitalism

Since the publication of Samuel Moyns 2010 ground-breaking study on the contemporary
history of international human rights law - The Last Utopia: Human Rights in History
scholarship on international human rights law and its history has been shaken. Rather than
focusing on the age-old debate on the relationship of humanitarianism to human rights
(Moyn: 2013), Moyns 2010 study has demanded a shift of focus that brings to light
questions that touch directly on the contemporary era. Amongst these questions and lines

of inquiry the one that stands out in its significance for the 2014 Historical Materialism
conference has been that which interrogates the relationship between the international
human rights movement and neoliberalism. Yet, despite being alternatively seen as frre
enemis (Moyn: 2013), historical companions (Wills: 2014) or competing sites of hegemonic
contestation (Marks: 2012), contemporary accounts fail to consider the relationship
systematically as one of mutual constitution existing within the same ensemble of social
relations. To ameliorate this state of affairs this paper will argue that lessons ought to be
learned from the research agenda of Antonio Gramsci in relation to the development of
Italian capitalism of the 19th century. In particular, drawing on three historical vignettes
(the 1970s rise of the human rights movement in the Southern Cone, the 1980s
incorporation of human rights with structural adjustment programs, and the late 1980s turn
by the World Bank to the social) this paper will suggest that the concept of transformismo
which Gramsci invoked to describe the tactic of co-optation, pacification and eventual
decapitation of progressive tendencies by the powers that be, provides a particularly apt
theoretical tool to explain the tendencies within international human rights law that
propagated from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. And in so doing, this paper hopes to
contribute to the general thematic of the conference and suggest ways in which
transformative forces may consider interacting with human rights while at the same time
avoiding such engagements co-optive potential.

Despina Koutsoumba & Panagiotis Sotiris

Creating laboratories of hope: rethinking the question of organization today

During the past few years, the question of organization has returned both in positive and
negative terms. The experience of impressive mass protest movements, based upon forms
of direct democracy, horizontal coordination, equal voicing, along with their inability to be
translated into political movements and dynamics has opened up the great debates upon
organization, either towards a direction of a refusal of party form or to the direction of a
rethinking of the party form as connection between movements. At the same time the
various expressions of a crisis of the anticapitalist Left, at least in some of its variants, not
only in the sense of its politics but also in the sense of its organizational culture, have
brought again forward the importance of the question of organization. The same goes for
the contradictory results of various attempts at creating broad left electoral fronts. To
answer all these challenges we need a profound rethinking of the question of organization,
by going back to Gramscis conception of the party as elaborator and laboratory of
programs, strategies and political intellectualities but also to the gnoseology of politics
inherent in the leninist project. To these we also need to add the strategic importance of
the United Front, as a means to facilitate the encounter of different experiences, histories of
struggles, political traditions, and sensitivities and also to transform the experiences coming
from the movement into political strategy. Consequently, instead of traditional forms of

building the party or tactical electoral fronts, we suggest -based upon our experience both
positive and negative from the attempts to facilitate the realignment of the anticapitalist
Left in Greece but also upon important new theoretical contributions to these debates - the
need to think exactly of new, original, necessarily contradictory, democratic variations of
the united front strategy as laboratories, knowledge processes and facilitators of the
encounter between struggles, discourses and anticapitalist strategies.
Benjamin

Kunkel

Stationary Revolution? Implications for Socialism and Capitalism of an End to Growth

The idea of a stationary state or growthless economy has haunted the margins of economic
thought since the early days of industrial or fossil capitalism, discussed suggestively, but not
systematically, by Smith, Ricardo, Mill, and others. Since the 1970s and especially over the
past decade, the prospectwelcomed of fearedof an end to growth has gained new
prominence. How is a stationary or steady-state economy to be conceivedin GDP or
biophysical terms? Is the end of per capita growth a medium-term possibility? If so, what
would bring it about? A confluence of factors make the arrival of a stationary state within
this century, for many advanced economies if not the entire world, a plausible though
hardly certain development. These factors include geologically or politically imposed limits
to fossil fuel extraction; declining productivity gains from the greater share of services in the
economy relative to agriculture and industry; an arrest or even reversal of industrial
productivity through higher energy costs; the threat to agricultural production from costly
energy and environmental degradation; climate-induced damage to infrastructure; and the
economically depressive effects of a surplus population idled by the unavailability of
waged work. The political opportunities and risks of a stationary state are worth
considering. Is it true, as Schumpeter said, that a stationary capitalism would be a
contradictio in adjecto? Ora grim scenariomight capital accumulation outlast growth?
Growthlessness would open up a new terrain for left strategy. Private profit, and financial
profit in particular, may seem less tolerable to a general public that sees itself losing a zero-
sum game: an opening for the international left (as well as the chauvinist right). The
liquidity preference of private capital would likely increase where overall growth is not
assured, lending a further rationale to the socialization of investment. The reduction of
average working hours would be another attractive and rational choice where consumption
of physical goods was flat or falling. Yet a society no longer expanding in terms of
biophysical throughput (Herman Daly) might still provide an equal or even wider array of
so-called services, commodified or not. A service-heavy economy is by no means naturally
or inevitably egalitarian, but may be more conducive to socialism or communism than past
economies in which industry and agriculture bulked larger. (A purpose of the present paper
is to outline the reasoning behind this suggestion.) Mill wrote in 1848 that he did not regard
the stationary state of capital and wealth with the unaffected aversion so generally
manifested toward it by political economists of the old school. I am inclined to believe that

it would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement of our condition. One
question for the century ahead is whether socialists can arrive at the same conclusion by
different means, proper to our tradition and consistent with the times.

Silvia L. Lpez

Brazil: Development as Counterinsurgency in the New World Order

Paulo Arantes, the premier Marxist philosopher of Brazil, provides us in his most recent
book "O Novo Tempo do Mundo" (2014) with a new understanding of social development
as a form of counterinsurgency and as a technology of security deployed by the state in this
new phase of Brazilian capitalism. Arantes contends that Brazil lives in a permanent state of
civil war where power reconfigures itself only to give orders about its state of exception.
How do we make sense of this new order of the capitalist world in Brazil? Is the "emergent"
in economic powers inevitably linked to the "emergency" the state invokes to rule in a
permanent state of exception? I will analyze this and other key ideas of Paulo Arantes for an
Anglophone audience, who has not had access to his work before.
Ishay Landa

Capitalism, History, and Progress: Marxist Perspectives Re-examined

In this talk I wish to tackle the historical question of capitalisms resilience by returning to
the fundamental concept of progress. The prospects of socialist strategy in our times
(continue to) depend to a large extent on the way progress is appreciated. Different
understanding of progress entail different strategic resolutions: a fatalistic belief in progress
as an unstoppable development a belief which is today largely extinct entails a reformist
politics, leading to post-capitalism; historical pessimism and disillusion, on the other hand,
bring forth either resignation or a desperate, sometimes messianic search for loopholes that
will allow an escape from a nearly inevitable doom. A third approach, which I deem more
properly dialectical and in tune with Marxist thought, vigorously defends progress but only
as a possibility. Here, progress is seen as both immanent to capitalist history and at the
same time as only potential, facing enormous obstacles and powerful enemies. If progress is
to be enacted, revolutionary transformation will be essential but not as some voluntaristic
gesture. Rather, revolutionary political action is called upon to activate and fulfill the real
contradictions and potentialities which capitalist history itself both harbors and frustrates.
These ideas will be discussed with reference to key questions associated with the idea of
progress material civilization, technological advance, or the historical significance of
fascism and to several seminal interpretations of history and progress, as propounded by
such authors as Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin, and J. R.
R. Tolkien.

Sean Larson

Representing Capitalism: Jamesonian Totality or Brechtian Bullets?

"In recent years, Frederic Jameson has theorized various aspects of the problem of
representation, frequently drawing upon the rich history of Marxist aesthetics. The Brecht-
Lukcs dispute of the 1930s is a key reference point in this history. This paper is an effort to
draw out the consequences of that dispute especially with regard to its engagement with
the political and strategic questions of its day for the problem of representing capitalism
and the conjuncture today.
Lukcs aesthetic and representational strategy of the totality played a determinant role in
his early analysis of fascism, and consequently in the development of his Blum Theses
the prototype of the Popular Front strategy. Specifically, it was the primacy of the
epistemological aspect in his analysis of class determinants and antagonisms at the core of
capitalism that led to the mischaracterization of fascism as a phenomenon, and thus to a
political strategy that failed to provide a way forward for the revolutionary struggle.
In several recent books, Jameson is concerned with the representation of capitalism under
neoliberalism, or what he calls Late Capitalism. This paper demonstrates how Jamesons
explicitly Lukcsian prioritization of epistemological, rather than structural, determinants of
class in his representation of the capitalist totality effectively shifts the terrain of his analysis
away from capital itself as a structuring principle. Just as the Popular Front analysis of
Lukcs effectively misrecognized the nature of fascism as something other than capitalist,
Jamesons representation misrecognizes the capitalist structuring principle of Late
Capitalism. The totality Jameson represents is no longer a capitalist totality, and this leads
him to suggest a politics for our period that is problematic insofar as it does not offer a way
forward.
The Brechtian aesthetic, particularly as it was developed in his Me-Ti, Buch der Wendungen
from the mid 1930s onward, was designed to sustain the possibility of resistance and
organization by transmitting valuable theoretical insights from the workers movement to a
socially atomized and suspicious people living under the Nazi dictatorship. For Brecht in his
dark times, an analysis of fascism as fundamentally a form of capitalism was the only
representation that could produce an effective strategy to combat fascism: the United
Front. Brechts intervention into the 1935 International Writers Congress and his famous
essay, Writing the Truth: Five Difficulties, illuminate his efforts to link aesthetic and
conjunctural representation with political strategy. Above all, the Brechtian strategy for
representation was designed to adapt to changing realities, and therefore offers insights
into burning questions of representation under neoliberalism, such as the value of perpetual
optimism in political analyses, the development of cognitive maps in the era of social
atomization and the decline of working class institutions, and the terms of anti-capitalist
alliance politics. Though these types of questions differ from those posed to revolutionaries

in the 1930s, the problem of representation continues to have political and strategic
consequences. Rooted as it is in a rigorous analysis of capitalism, whatever form it takes, the
Brechtian method of representation still has much to teach us."
Nick Lawrence

Uneven and Combined Development: Commodity Survival and the Colonized Everyday in
Postwar Critical Theory
Writing in 1961 toward the close of the second volume of his sociological study of _la vie
quotidienne_, Henri Lefebvre makes emphatic his assertion that critique of everyday life
generalizes [the] experience of the backward or underdeveloped nations and extends it
to the everyday in the highly developed industrial countries. In adapting Trotskys
terminology of uneven and combined development to the situation of colonized lifeworlds
in core and periphery alike, Lefebvre points up the pressures, evacuations and asymmetries
of the concept of the everyday at the moment when it achieves definition as a focused
object of analysis. This paper examines the stress tests put to the everyday as both
frontline and back-formation of capitals advance into hitherto unoccupied territory,
primarily in the work of Lefebvre, but also of Adorno, Debord and such Marxist-feminists as
Silvia Federici, Selma James and Mariarosa Dallacosta. Addressing related problems of work
and leisure, the division of labour and the question of social reproduction, these thinkers
grapple above all with the logic of capitals simultaneous production of homogeneity and
inequality as this logic pertains to the commodification of everyday life. It is in and through
the colonization of the everyday, their analyses suggest, that the commodity-form extends
its reach.
Athanasios

Lazarou

The Event in Architecture: Space as Concrete Abstraction in Eurozone-crisis Athens

"At the height of the Eurozone crisis in 2011 protestors scaled the Acropolis to place a
banner against the Greek governments austerity policies. Presented in full view to the
rooftop caf of Greeces most prominent Eurozone project Bernard Tschumis New
Acropolis Museum the demonstration highlighted the visible role of architecture in
facilitating events during the political crisis. This paper engages the dialogue between these
monumental architectural objects as products of the contradictions of capitalism expressed
during a crisis; where changes in spatial syntax conceive themselves through temporary or
semi-permanent interventions under the conditions of event.
Expanding upon spatial dialectics, the paper presents architecture as both subject and
object of its own historical transformation. To resolve the antithetical position of the two
terms subject and object, the paper employs Henri Lefebvres notion of space as concrete
abstraction to demonstrate that as capitalism comes under crisis, events can be understood
as systems of measurement for spatial registrations of change and the re-organisation of

spatial relations. Critically, the event is being propositioned from the philosophical principle
of a 'break' to question the link between theory and built forms regarding architectural
outputs against ideological outputs."
Paul LeBlanc

Class consciousness, Labour-radical sub-culture, and revolutionary strategy

The truism without revolutionary theory, there can be no revolutionary movement poses
a challenge for activists in the tradition of Lenin, Luxemburg, and Trotsky. All too often such
activists fetishize the ideas of these revolutionary heroes without being able to connect
them to the material realities and practical struggles of our own time. Their relevance in
twenty-first century contexts requires the development of concepts that can guide practical
efforts in the face of new realities. Notions developed by cultural anthropologists intersect
with Marxist theorizations to suggest the analytical concept of radical labor subculture.
This will be illustrated by reference to U.S. labor history. The actuality of this radical labor
subculture was essential in the development of radical class-consciousness within the U.S.
working class, and sheds light on the growth of the powerful and influential left-wing
currents within the mainstream of the U.S. labor movement from the 1860s through the
1930s. Political, economic, social, and cultural transformations stretching from the 1940s
through the 1960s resulted in the erosion and decline of that subculture, with a consequent
disconnect of left-wing radicalism from the working class. Political, social and economic
transformations since the 1970s have generated cultural shifts and openings that appear to
be feeding into the re-creation of a new radical labor subculture. A blending of such insights
with the classical Marxist strategic orientation may provide a path forward for the creation
of a mass movement capable of challenging capitalism.
Tobin LeBlanc

Haley

Pathologizing Mad Women: A feminist political economy analysis of the role of biopsychiatry
in the neoliberal age
"Effects of neoliberal policy trends for mad women are erased through the mobilization of
bio-psychiatry. Marxist scholarship documents the symbiotic relationship between
biopsychiatry and neoliberalism (e.g. Cohen 2014). Yet there is an absence of scholarship on
the regulation of the gender order by biopsychiatry. Critiques of the role of biopsychiatry in
stabilizing a (gendered) social order necessary to capitalism were popular in the last century
(Busfield 1986, 1996, DUren 1997). Recently, these critiques have waned despite the
strengthening of the biomedical model of health under neoliberalism (Raphael & Curry-
Stevens 2009).
This paper explores how gendered neoliberal trends are enacted and how the effects are
neutralized in the lives of mad women through the mobilization of bio-psychiatry. This
paper uses archival and documentary research and data from interviews with mad people

living in high-support homes in Ontario. Feminist political economy scholarship, especially

work on social reproduction (e.g. Bezanson and Luxton 2006), provides a framework for
analyzing how neoliberal trends in labour and social policy deepen mad womens inequality
while biopsychiatry attributes inequality to individual pathology. Applying these insights to
the situation of mad women in Ontarios high-support homes demonstrates the role of
biopsychiatry in maintaining the gendered social order of neoliberalism."
Taek-Gwang Lee

The Natural Ontology of Commodification: How Could Commodity Be Our Own Identity?
The aim of my presentation is to analyze the relationship between the logic of commodity
form and subjectivity. Marxs conceptualization of fetishism was an attempt to understand
the effect of commodity form producing the formal equality. The problem of commodity
form is the fetishism of the equal exchanges by which everything is simply transformed into
an equalized value whatever its substantive differences in use value. Lukcas developed
further the theory of reification from Marxs discussion of commodity fetishism and defined
its essential aspect as the ghostly objectivity of commodity form. Recounting Marxist
theorization of commodification, I would like to focus on how commodity form reinforces
the fetishistic status of subjectivity through consumerism. Most of critical approach to
consumerism has seemed to shed light on the immorality of market-centered economic
system or the pleasure principle of consumers ignorant to the cruelty of capitalism. From
this perspective, I will critically consider Evgeny Pashukanis theory of the relation between
commodity form and legal system. The limit of his theory is undeniable in understanding the
procedure of the subjectivation, but still insightful for theorizing the natural ontology of
commodities. My contention is that the logic of commodity form is closely related to the
legalization of political economy in capitalism and the normalization of the truth of a
market for everyday life. Pashukanis claims, all law was inherently related to the
commodity exchange relationship which reaches its highest point under capitalism
(Michael Head, 2008). I think his understanding of the legal form is useful to delve into the
secret of commodity form, which naturalizes capitalism.
Emanuele

Leonardi

Carbon Trading Dogma: Financial Dimensions and Political Implications of Global Carbon
Markets
"The paper presents two interrelated sections. In the first, global carbon markets are
historically contextualized, analytically described and politically articulated against the
background of a twofold hypothesis: a) the process of progressive marketization of climate
change occurs in connection with the emergence of a new modality of value production
(which can be generically defined as 'cognitive capitalism'); b) the governance of
contemporary circuits of valorization tends to be located within the financial sphere and

poses a constitutive and ongoing uncertainty/instability as a necessary condition for their

reproduction.
Such a twofold hypothesis is tested in the second part of the paper, with specific reference
to the Clean Development Mechanism as established by the Kyoto Protocol. In particular,
the analysis will focus on the carbon commodities enacted by the Protocol, which is to say
the Certified Emission Reductions. The argument advanced by the paper is twofold: a) such
commodities depend on an instrumental use of theoretical innovation ceaselessly produced
by climate science; b) the wealth creation activated by these commodities almost entirely
occurs within the space defined by financial markets.
Overall, the paper aims at demonstrating how the value produced in global carbon markets
exclusively rests on the social actors' arbitrary acceptance of the carbon trading dogma,
namely the assertion empirically inconsistent as much as impossible to be accounted for
that only market agents can efficiently tackle the critical issues raised by global warming.
Holly Lewis

The Problem of Experience in Marxist and Feminist Epistemologies

"This paper addresses the Western feminist and poststructuralist critique of classical
Marxism's reliance on objective knowledge for political assessment. Feminism claims that
Marxism's rational objectivity (considered 'masculinist' in itself) elides the lived experience
of political subjects resulting in organizational conclusions that ignore differences and
contingencies. Feminist standpoint epistemology pins knowledge to experience and
perspective. While rationality is still suspect for poststructuralist (i.e. queer theoretical,
intersectional) epistemology, it goes further, even critiquing standpoint epistemology for
appealing to a stable political subject possessing agency. Both routinely charge Marxists
with epistemological overreach since Marxists draw analyses from economic processes
rather than from comparing aspects of intersectional subjectivities.
But, contrary to this critique, Marxists don't only draw information from mathematical
accounts and historical laws: Marxists also maintain that knowledge is produced from a
ruling class standpoint, that the working-class life engages in sensuous activity, and that
emancipatory politics depend on the capacity of self-aware agents situated at myriad
cultural/gendered intersections to not only achieve solidarity but to make collective
decisions in the pursuit of 'losing their chains'.
I intend to develop Marxist-feminist epistemological methods that navigate the poles of
universal and particular by synthesizing the more useful feminist and queer theoretical
critiques of Marxist epistemological habits in order to assess their potential impact on
current Marxist (particularly Leninist) organizing practices."
Sophie Lewis

Eco-Marxisms: beyond the "unproduced" nature

The analytic framework of metabolic rift contains ongoing promise for the social sciences,
particularly insofar as it can be expanded to include social-reproductive aspects of life on
earth. This influential and persistent form of Marxist political ecology pioneered by John
Bellamy Foster now confronts imperatives to broaden, hybridize and radicalize. Identifying
the conceptual freight of limits, irreversible change, and waste Foster attaches to the
metaphor of universal metabolic rift, I survey Fosters oeuvre with an eye to dualist
inconsistencies in his handling of the socio-natural relations of labour production. I argue
that his ultimately limits-centred framing of capitalist ecology, while made in a traditional
humanist mode, actually leaves humans out of the picture in their capacity, not as capitalists
or workers, but as (also finite) natural resources. Concomitant under-emphasis on the
work of nature obscures the material and epistemic inseparability of capital and nature
under current conditions; while simultaneously de-animating the webs of life declared in
Marxs Ecology (2000) to be metabolically lively. This methodological lapse between stated
holism and an applied recourse to external nature, although an all-too familiar one in
nature-theoretic scholarship, persists in limiting the ambition of eco-revolutionary politics.
This problem presents obstacles for evolving a truly co-productive political account of
alternate, non-capitalist ecologies. Symptomatic is the absence of a developed social
reproduction lens, for Foster, which ultimately limits his ability to transcend the ideology of
unproduced nature.

Lars

Lih

Inescapable Torments: Bukharins Vision of the Russian Revolution

In early 1920, Bukharin published a 160-page treatise entitled Economy of the Transition
Period. This small book is Bukharins magnum opus as a Marxist theoretician. Unfortunately,
it has acquired a very misleading reputation as an expression of the illusions alleged to be
part of so-called war communismillusions that supposedly were rejected within a year
with the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in spring 1921. One reason for this
persistent misreading is the books very idiosyncratic style. Essentially Bukharin created his
own mix of Marxist jargon, sociological jargon, and jargon especially coined for the occasion.
Far from depicting a leap into communism, the book focuses on the titanic economic
breakdown in the aftermath of the 1917 revolution in Russia. Bukharin in no way evades the
massive dimensions of the economic crisis, but strives to present it as the inevitable result
of a profound popular revolution. The Bolshevik Party is thus an essentially constructive
force, striving to reconstitute a minimal equilibrium. In making his case, Bukharin gives an
account of the major economic policies of the new Soviet government. As a result, the book
is probably the most comprehensive defense of Bolshevik policy by a major party
spokesman.

Nancy Lindisfarne

Gendered Inequality, Intimacy, Class and Historical Change

"Because patriarchy that is, the systematic patterns of inequality between women and
men in any particular setting - long antedates capitalism, so too must analyses of gender
account for forms of patriarchy in all class societies. Class elites use violence enforce
privilege, but to sustain inequality over time, they must make inequality ideologically
compelling. Racialized differences sometimes do this job, but sexual imagery and gendered
stereotypes always do so. Everywhere they combine, most powerfully, love with the injuries
of class. This most intimate of all contradictions is the key to ideologies of gender inequality.
Such ideologies confuse us about what is natural about our bodies, before birth and after
death, and in our every interaction and very being in the world. Inequality between women
and men is thus deeply naturalized and makes inequality everywhere seem natural. Put this
way, class, material relations, causality and historical change lie at the heart analyses of
gender. As can be seen in the recent history of neoliberalism, when modes of production
change, class relations change, and ideological changes follow. New forms of sexual imagery
appear to naturalize new forms of inequality, and these, in turn, are met with new forms of
gendered resistance and struggle."
Alexander

Locascio

Why the Commodity Form Doesn't Die: An Introduction to the work of Wolfgang Pohrt
Completely unknown to English-speaking audiences, Wolfgang Pohrt is one of the major
figures in the German radical left to emerge from SDS and the tradition of the Frankfurt
School. Achieving his greatest prominence as a polemical essayist in the 1980s attacking the
resurgence of nationalist and reactionary ideology in the German peace and early Green
movements, his writing career is bookended by two theoretical works, 1976's The Theory of
Use-Value, a recasting of the totally administered world thesis of the Frankfurt School in
more explicitly Marxological terms, and 1995's Brothers in Crime: People in the Age of their
Superfluity, an examination of the racket as the form of social organization predating
capitalism and characterizing capitalism in its decline. In his pessimistic assessment of the
foreclosure of revolutionary possibility in late capitalism, as well as his pursuit of a ruthless
criticism of the ideological degeneration of the German New Left into Green capitalism and
national renewal, Pohrt represents the most authentic heir of the tradition of critical
theory."
Larry Lohmann

Neoliberalism's Climate

Popular unrest over climate change is a threat to capital accumulation in that it implicitly
challenges the amplified labour exploitation and speedier circulation that became possible

in the 19th century through thermodynamic energy and fossil fuels. The cobbled-together
official responses to this challenge that have emerged in the past two decades pre-
eminently, national and international carbon markets partake of virtually all of the
characteristic elements of neoliberalism. They assume that tackling social issues is largely a
matter of discovering prices inhering in new commodities developed for the purpose (in
this case pollution allowances and offsets). The commodities themselves are treated, via a
typically neoliberal fetish, as if they created and produced themselves automatically (or as if
they were unproblematic translations of ecological or social goods into a quantifiable and
circulatable form), while at the same time the most strenuous and violent efforts are
devoted to constructing the institutions needed to define, maintain and defend them
through dispossession and exploitation. Given the role of the state in creating demand,
guaranteeing supply, and underwriting the profits of a galaxy of private-sector partners,
contractors, consultants and technocrats who carry out most of the work of producing,
circulating, standardizing and regulating the new commodities, conventional dualisms
opposing state and market have become of as little use in analyzing climate policy as
they are in understanding other areas of neoliberal policy. Not least, the new markets follow
the general thrust of neoliberalism in that they help both state and corporate actors evade
much of the burden of addressing the social problems that the markets are advertised as
cheaply solving, while simultaneously holding out the promise of expanding and deepening
opportunities for capital accumulation at a time of profound crisis and sclerosis.
Evan Loker

Opening to a Pessimist Dialectic: On Schwarzs turn to the Value-Form

"The defining concern of Marxist criticism of literature Roberto Schwarz writes, is the
dialectic of literary form and social process. This watchword is easily uttered but difficult to
act upon. This paper seeks to examine a shift in the critical work of Roberto Schwarz that
has eluded many of his Anglophone readers: the Brazilian critics engagement with the
writings of several German theorists associated with Wertkritik, or Value-Form theory.
Many of Schwarzs critical concepts (e.gs. misplaced idea, or more recently objective
form) have become widespread among cultural theorists writing on the global south.
However, grasping the far-reaching implications of the dialectic of cultural form to social
process, which Schwarz offers in his essays on City of God or the novels of Machado de
Assis, requires two levels of historical consideration that remain comparatively lesser-known
to the English-speaking academy: first, the manner in which Schwarzs own conception of
capitalist accumulation and its historical consequences (especially with respect to Brazil)
have changed since the early 1990s; second, how the political-economic situation of what
was called the third or developing world has changed, along with the concepts through
which this situation have been understood. This paper endeavors to contribute to beginning
such a theoretical portrait.

Starting with a review of several key debates within the Brazilian social sciences (which
Schwarz has been engaging with since his formative years), several of his early interventions
will be re-examined. In doing so, I will emphasize how Schwarzs theories are solutions to
the aporia resulting from the application of dominant theoretical models to peripheral
countries such as Brazil. Returning to the (largely) heterodox and neo-Marxian debates on
historiography and capitalist development within Brazil is essential for understanding both
the larger significance of notions like the misplaced idea and the manner in which Schwarz
pioneered a cultural sociology in the manner of Theodor Adorno (one of Schwarzs early
mentors). The innovative aspects examined in the early essays on culture and aesthetic
theory anticipate the later turn to value theory in the early 1990s, culminating in Schwarzs
influential essay on Robert Kurzs 1991 book, The Collapse of Modernization. I hope to show
how Schwarzs engagement with Kurz marks a fundamental shift within his theoretical
framework as a whole; specifically, in his move away from viewing Brazils paradoxical
modernity through the lens of dependency-theory, toward the critique of modernization
outlined in Kurzs text. It will become clear in the process how much of Schwarzs recent
work has been concerned with grasping how Brazils recent history as well as the
Brazilian affects and experiences condensed in its cultural objects are also moments in
the history of capitals larger, contradictory dynamics and developments. The task will not
be intervening into intellectual history for its own sake, so much as distilling the significance
and implications of social process as developed within the critical writings of Roberto
Schwarz."
Ottokar Luban

Ottokar Luban:Left German Social Democrats against the Great War

"In case of an outbreak of war a unanimously approved resolution of the International
Socialist Congress of 1907 obliged the socialist parties to intervene in favor of its speedy
termination, and to do all in their power to utilize the economic and political crisis caused by
the war to rouse the people and thereby to hasten the abolition of capitalist class rule.
While the majority of the German Social Democratic leadership and of its Reichstag group
gave up its oppositional politics and supported the war efforts of the imperial government a
little group around Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring - due
to the resolution of the Socialist International - tried to win the party back for an
antimilitaristic policy. Slowly this tiny minority was joined by more and more other militants
in the party. Finally this growing minority was kicked off the Social Democratic Party of
Germany (SPD) and was forced to found an own party the Independent Party of Germany
(USPD) in April 1917.
The paper will show the efforts of the left socialists (Spartacus Group, Bremen Left Radicals,
Revolutionary Shop Stewards, and left Centrists) in the inner party struggles for an offensive
anti war policy (August 1914-April 1917) and their clandestine activities to initiate mass
actions for peace and democracy (Bread Strike in April 1917, Mass Strike of the Ammunition

Workers in January 1919, the Uprising in Berlin on November 9th 1919). I will emphasize the
special social, economic, mental and political conditions of the late German Empire in war
time hindering or supporting the development towards revolutionary mass movements.
In case of an outbreak of war a unanimously approved resolution of the International
Socialist Congress of 1907 obliged the socialist parties to intervene in favor of its speedy
termination, and to do all in their power to utilize the economic and political crisis caused by
the war to rouse the people and thereby to hasten the abolition of capitalist class rule.
While the majority of the German Social Democratic leadership and of its Reichstag group
gave up its oppositional politics and supported the war efforts of the imperial government a
little group around Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin and Franz Mehring - due
to the resolution of the Socialist International - tried to win the party back for an
antimilitaristic policy. Slowly this tiny minority was joined by more and more other militants
in the party. Finally this growing minority was kicked off the Social Democratic Party of
Germany (SPD) and was forced to found an own party the Independent Party of Germany
(USPD) in April 1917.
The paper will show the efforts of the left socialists (Spartacus Group, Bremen Left Radicals,
Revolutionary Shop Stewards, and left Centrists) in the inner party struggles for an offensive
anti war policy (August 1914-April 1917) and their clandestine activities to initiate mass
actions for peace and democracy (Bread Strike in April 1917, Mass Strike of the Ammunition
Workers in January 1919, the Uprising in Berlin on November 9th 1919). I will emphasize the
special social, economic, mental and political conditions of the late German Empire in war
time time (especially the hard suppression by the military and police authorities, the
immense war propaganda in 99 % of the media, the more and more increasing food
shortage) hindering or supporting the development towards revolutionary mass
movements."
Lutz Luithlen
Marx and crises in capitalism
The aim of this paper is to show that Marxs writings on economic crises in Capital are still
relevant and instructive. The paper starts with an introduction to the dynamics of capitalist
crises as rooted in the inherent contradictions of capitalist development. It then sets out the
major events during the build-up to the financial (sub-prime) crisis between 2000 and 2010
and invites Marx to comment on both events and circumstances to be followed by an
investigation into Marxs own categories of interest-bearing capital in the light of the
financial weapons of mass destruction that fuelled the debt-laden investment boom.
Finally, the question of the relative detachment of the financial system from its bedrock of
production will be addressed. The conclusion is that, although Marx could not have
anticipated the particular form of modern financial instruments, the strategies, excesses and
trickeries of modern finance can be read off his script.

David Mabb

A Romance in Fourteen Parts.

"In A Romance in Fourteen Parts, a copy of El Lissitzkys About Two Squares A Suprematist
Story from 1920-22 will be painted onto facsimile pages of William Morris Kelmscott Press
edition of Wood beyond the World from 1892.
Lissitzkys About Two Squares is a short picture book for children that experiments with
typography, image and narrative to tells the story of two squares, one red, one black, which
travel to earth from outer space and transform the world. Each Lissitzky image will be
painted over pages from William Morris Wood beyond the World in facsimile from the
Kelmscott Press edition which Morris founded and worked on as a typographer and
designer. In Morris romance the hero sets out on a sea voyage anxious to see and learn
more of the outside world, eventually winning for himself the kingdom of Stark-Wall and the
love of a beautiful maiden. They then live happily ever after.
In A Romance in Fourteen Parts, the publications will cease to be separate objects that can
be held and digested. Instead they will be constructed into a fourteen-part installation. The
books will become interwoven: parts of the Wood beyond the World will be left unpainted
to disrupt the geometric Lissitzky designs. A dialogue between Lissitzkys revolutionary
narrative and Morris late romance will be created. The two will be simultaneously frozen
but never fixed, unable to fully merge or separate, unable to transform the world or live
happily ever after."

Mike Macnair & Ben

Lewis

From the Anti-Imperialist Left to the Social-Chauvinist Right: the Die Glocke group and the
theory of imperialism
"100 years on from the outbreak of World War I, this presentation will contend that the
ideas of the German social chauvinists are worth revisiting, interrogating and understanding.
Obviously this will be because German nationalism and social imperialism are ways forward
for our movement today, but because the transformation of some of those around Parvuss
social-chauvinist publication, Die Glocke, from staunchly anti-imperialist lefts in the pre-
war SPD to some of the biggest cheerleaders of a German victory during that horrific war
raises a number of important and interesting questions: not least regarding the Marxist
theory of imperialism and its development within the Second International.
How could it come to pass that politicians such as Konrad Haenisch, Paul Lensch and Parvus
- once all champions of the anti-imperialist left of the SPD - could embrace the August 4
vote for war credits and war socialism and even on occasion see this position as a
continuation of their pre-1914 anti-imperialist politics? How were concrete assessments of

the political situation and the global powers involved in WWI transformed into an
overarching theory of imperialism and world policy? How were the categories of Marxism
deployed to justify such positions? What are the continuities and discontinuities between
the positions adopted by this group in the pre-war congresses of the SPD and those during
WWI?
Based on recent research and translation work conducted with Ben Lewis, this paper will
explore these questions. It will analyse the groups understanding of imperialism and war
against the backdrop of the extensive debates in the Second International, seeking to draw
out the implications of these controversies for thinking about imperialism and anti-
imperialism today."
Ewa Majewska

Capitalism in semi-peripheries. Errors, failures or back side of success?

In my presentation I would like to focus on capitalism's survival within its
peripheral investments showing, how what could be seen as a series of mistakes
and failures in a liberal narrative preoccupied with political institutions proves to
be a field of excellency in terms of political economy with its preoccupation with
the accumulation of capital, wild exploitation and alienating ideological
structures. Eastern Europe, and Poland specifically, is a perfect example of the
phenomenon of the semi-peripheriality as it was depicted by Immanuel
Wallerstein. I would like to show, how the current precarious lives of the new
capitalist state has been perpetuated as what was called "immaturity" (Buden,
Ost) and gender inequality (Federici, Dunn) and to see how resistance can still
be seen and accelerated.
In order to discuss the semi-peripheriality and its peculiar forms of political
agency, which can be seen as failures or infancy but also often present
themselves as resistance and alternatives to the profit-orientation, I would like
to look into Walter Benjamins essay on the work of art in the times of
reproductibility. I think that just like the cinema in the 1930s, also the semiperipheries of today can and often do show their potential for disagreement and
change. A redefinition of the semi-peripheries, which would escape the
patronizing, colonial simplifications, could provide tools and critiques necessary
for resistance, could make the persistance of capitalism weaker. The discussions
of modernity and modernisation should not ignore the feminist and decolonial
analysis of the production of women/other and they could instead of a
chasing Europe set of mimetic practices, try to see in the semi-peripheries
agents of change also in a non, or better counter-neoliberal sense.

Nivedita Majumdar

Class, Culture and Postcoloniality

The recent economic crisis showed yet again that class contradictions remain as central to
our current economic moment they were in the pages of Marxs Capital. The system's
smooth functioning relies on an obfuscation of the role of class both by the state and in civic
institutions and culture. Academia in general, and culture studies, in particular, participates
in the undermining of class politics. David Harvey notes that in academia, the broad
adhesion to postmodern and post-structuralist ideas which celebrate the particular at the
expense of big picture participate in a similar obfuscation of class contradictions. A key
claim that is made is that universal categories like class are incompatible with a nuanced
appreciation of everyday culture. I discuss the marginalization of the category of class in
postcolonial theory. Postcolonial theory emerged, in crucial ways, as a discourse that
defined itself in opposition to Marxism. It privileges the marginalized elements of social
structures; thus its emphasis on the study of the local or the "fragment." Conversely,
postcolonial theory is characterized by its rejection of the idea of human nature, by
questioning the concept of human rights, and by its demotion of class to a peripheral status.
Through analyses of industrial strikes and social movements in India and the UK, I question
the posited binary between the structural and the experiential. Contrary to the basic
assumptions of postcolonial theory, I argue that universal categories like class are
compatible with a nuanced appreciation of everyday culture.
Andreas

Malm

Steamroll all the brutes: Fossil energy and British imperialism in the nineteenth century
"Poor people in the peripheries of the world-economy suffer most from global warming.
This has lead some to suggest that rich nations have amassed a climate debt by engaging in
fossil fuel-based development, the by-products of which now fall from the sky onto the
poor, who have reaped none of the benefits. Others retort that two centuries of such
development have in fact created the opportunities for everyone to leap into modernity
witness China and India, or even countries such as Nigeria and Egypt and so the advanced
economies should be thanked for their services, or at least walk free from any special duties
to slash emissions or compensate victims. In the annually recurring clashes between rich
and poor nations over the sharing of climate burdens, history is never far from view but it
is rarely explored in any depth. How did the fossil economy first reach the shores of the
peripheries? What happened when the English tradition of coal combustion spread to other
parts of the world? What did fossil fuel-based development really mean for those on the
receiving end of steamboats and railroads, coalmines and cotton spinning machines?
Until the first Anglo-Burmese war in 1824, the British maritime empire had been sailing with
the whims of the wind. Dependency on sail locked it in a near military balance with some of
its peripheral adversaries, severely restricting the reach of British trade: unable to penetrate
rivers upstream, merchants were often relegated to the coastal margins of potentially vast

markets at the mercy of domestic rulers, the factories at Canton being the archetypal
example. The rise of the steamboat in imperial warfare changed all this. By relying on coal
an energy source oblivious to weather and landscape the British Empire could use
waterways to break into the interior of continents and smash resistance from fleets and
armies incapable of withstanding the novel force. In China, the steamboats forced their way
up to Nanking and opened the Celestial Empire for trade; in India, natives were herded into
coalmines to extract the fuels for the boats, the much faster to ship out wealth from the
colony; in Nigeria, armed crews drove inland to seize control over the production of palm oil
a crucial lubricant for steam-engines and other machines and defeat tribal guerrillas; in
Egypt, Muhammed Alis experiment in industrial modernisation was shattered by the
grenades from coal-fired warships.
By exploring the role of fossil energy on some of the frontiers of imperial expansion in the
second quarter of the nineteenth century, this paper will seek to radicalise the notion of
climate debt. When a drought becomes permanent or the sea submerges a delta, it is not
the first time people in the peripheries suffer the consequences of fossil fuel combustion,
nor is such development a train to modernity that has merely passed them by. They were
run over from day one: fossil energy an indispensible source of power for the appropriation
of resources from the peripheries, the history of the imperialist world-order is written in
letters of coal and fire. On a global scale, the longue dure of the fossil economy begins with
the devastation of Akka by British steamboats in 1840 and continues in the next extreme
weather event to ravage communities and set back development by several decades in the
Philippines or Haiti. The political purpose of such a historiography is, of course, to fan the
flames of climate militancy in the peripheries; the theoretical resources for it, drawn on in
this paper, are Rosa Luxemburgs theories of imperialism, Ernest Mandels sketches on the
role of energy in the long waves of capitalist development, and the debates between
political Marxism and world-systems theory.
Grant Mandarino

One of the very few true originals of our time: Reviving Eduard Fuchs

"Outside of Walter Benjamins 1937 article Eduard Fuchs, Collector and Historian,
commissioned by Max Horkheimer for the Zeitschrift fr Sozialforschung, the life and works
of Eduard Fuchs (1870-1940) remain little known among Marxist cultural historians and
theorists. Fuchs was a key player on the German left his entire life, from joining the
outlawed Sozialistiche Arbeiterpartei in his hometown of Stuttgart as a journeyman printer
in 1886 to his decisive role in the formation of the Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands in
1918-1919 and subsequent activity in the Right Opposition after 1928. His time as editor of
the popular satirical newspaper Suddeutsche Postillon and publication of numerous
illustrated histories of satirical and erotic imagery brought him notoriety, a substantial
amount of money, and multiple prison sentences. The artist George Grosz, who met Fuchs
for the first time in the early 1920s, later described him as one of the very few true

originals of our time, yet he is today remembered, if at all, as a collector of objets dart and
a somewhat nave historian of social mores. This is largely the result of Benjamins
assessment of Fuchs, which, as Frederic J. Schwartz has argued, is less about Fuchs himself
and more about the methods he employs in his various writings, in Benjamins view wholly
representative of the cruder aspects of historical materialism as theorized by reformist
Social Democrats. More recent studies, such as Ulrich Weitzs Eduard Fuchs: Der Mann im
Schatten (2014), take the opposite view, placing Fuchs at the center of Weimars left-wing
milieu as a uniquely charismatic individual whose historical significance is not reducible to
broader structures of thought. Weitz succeeds in presenting a more favorable view of Fuchs
as a person, but fails to show why we should care about Fuchs as a cultural historian.
While a revival of interest in Fuchs is to be welcomed, especially outside of Germany, the
question remains: how should one engage his work? My paper takes up this question by
reassessing Benjamins evaluation of Fuchs art historical methods, playing particular
attention to the histories of caricature Fuchs published and how these studies influenced
the practice and interpretation of satirical imagery within the Communist milieu during the
Weimar period."
Jaleh Mansoor

Santiago Sierra: The Biopolitics of Abstraction

"This paper explores the lacunae between theories of bare life on the one hand and
debates around histories of capitalist accumulation and subsumption on the other through a
case studies of the work of controversial Spanish artist Santiago Sierras practice, a cultural
mediation that locates key shifts in political economy in Europe and the United States in an
era of globalization and migration. This paper thus asks the following questions: How can
Marxist theory be transformed to integrate an understanding of corporeality, identity, and
subjectivity in its analysis of capitalism and class politics?
Much of Spanish artist Santiago Sierras practice addresses the fundamental violence
inscribed in the wage relation, in which surplus value necessary to the expansion of capital is
extracted through labor and compensated in a self reproducing matrix of remuneration
reticulated to time in which the worker works against her own interest. A 2004 piece
entitled 584 Horas de Trabajo (584 Hours of Work) sets the problem of labor against the art
work in a retort to the legacy of minimalist sculpture, one of the last traditional artistic
idioms of the 20th Century. By documenting the man-hours spent constructing a massive
cubic monument mimicking those of Tony Smith, Richard Serra, and Carl Andre emblazoned
on the side, Sierra undermines the myth of any solidarity between minimalism and labor, a
false solidarity that has underscored the canonization of American minimalists in accounts
such as Art Workers (2011). At the same time, Sierra explores the ways in which the
imposition of the wage is compounded by constraints imposed by the state: citizenship,
il/legality, immigration.

The double bind of the state-to-market relation which binds the wage against illegal forms
of survival and thereby enforced it is Sierras projects primary problem-set. In June 2001,
Sierra collected 133 persons to take part in his project for the Spanish Pavilion at the 49th
Venice Biennale. Sierras action, which took place on the opening day of this auspicious art
world event, entailed his directing the men to an area in the Arsenale where he bleached all
133 persons hair, producing a visibly artificial appearance, in effect marking each person as
though with a yellow highlighter. The delimiting criteria in selecting 133 men were as
follows: they were to originate from Eastern Europe, Africa, Asia, or the Middle East and
have dark hair. The participants had to be immigrants and refugees, legal or otherwise. The
role of the artist in turn was to manage, direct, and process these persons. The yellow
headed 133 then dispersed, returning to their everyday activities: predominantly illegal
street vending on and around Piazza San Marco.
In the preoccupation with law and exception that has prevailed in much critical discourse on
culture over the last decade (see Demoss The Migrant Image), the reciprocal necessity of
both optics (Marxian theories of the wage, and of subsumption) has fallen out of the
picture. Insofar as capital totalizes by forms of separation and re-constitution of social
relations, the mutually entwinement of law and wage become all the more urgent an object
of analysis. It might be argued that the organization of surplus labor pools readies for fresh
rounds of resource extraction and primitive accumulation is enabled only by laws of
passage, of the regulation of boundaries and borders. This is globalization. Likewise, the
state of exception, about which we have heard maybe too often, is a structuring principle
for wage relations under threat, under duress of right to live or let die. Besides simply and
tendentiously dismissing it as part of the symptomatic cruelty of the art world as
transparent analog of capital in general, why is it that we see so many art projects
addressing the crossroads of immigrant labor pools?"
Josep Maria Antentas

Anti-austerity protest, regime crisis and political strategy in the Spanish State
"The emergence of M15 movement in Spain in 15th May 2011 marked a turning point in
Spanish politics. It was the biggest social upsurge since the establishment of the current
Regime in 1978 and the beginning of mass resistance to austerity policies after a period in
which resistance to social cuts was relatively small although real. The movement expressed
a vague antisystemic consciousness targeting financial powers and political institutions.
Soon after its emergence M15 as such vanished, but mutated into a wide range of different
initiatives and movements. Since the first push of May and June 2011 anti-austerity protests
have had a less visible existence, experienced fragmentation and dispersion, although some
relevant episodes of social unrest have taken place. The overall dynamic of resistance to
austerity since may 15th has been very defensive, with few political and concrete victories,
but with elements of counter-ofensive and capability of disruption.

The upsurge of may 15th represented the beginning of a new political cycle in the Spanish
state and changed the ideological, cultural and political landscape. The outcome of three
years of anti-austerity protest is contradictory. On the one hand, very few victories were
achieved and social situation continued to deteriorate. On the other hand the has been an
important, although contradictory and limited, politicisation of society. The economic crisis
has become a political crisis and a regime crisis. The erosion of all the political architecture
built in 1978 has deepen and the main pillars of the State are in question, but there is no yet
an alternative counter-hegemonic project that can overcome.
The experience of three-year dynamics of anti-austerity struggles rises some important
strategic questions. The most important one refers to the link between social resistance and
politics. Spanish social movements in the 1990s and 2000s were traditionally influenced by
the strategic perspectives that advocated changing the world without taking power or
abstaining from politics. The deepening of the economic and political crisis and the limits of
social resistance to achieve victories have caused a return of politics, a shift towards the
search of political alternatives and have relaunched the strategic debate (in the sense that
Daniel Bensad gave to these two ideas). The big strategic question that hovers the debate
among activists and left organisations is how is it possible to win?, that is, how is it
possible to articulate a social majority and transform it into a political one. This relaunch of
strategic debates and search for political alternatives and solutions is quite confusing and
hurried concerning issues as electoral tactics, organizational forms, the relationship
between political institutions and social movements, modes of leadership, programme and
demands, and other matters that I'll examine in this paper. There are two underlying
questions at stake: if it will possible or not to forge a sociopolitical alternative with a
relevant political audience than can make the current party system explode, and if in this
process will prevail currents that carry more superficial or more deep projects of social
change."
Abelardo Marina-Flores & Sergio Camara
Profitability and Accumulation Trends in Mexico, 1939-2013
"The paper analyses the structural trends of profitability and capital accumulation in Mexico
in the long period. The analysis, based on a new estimation of the profit rate and its
decomposition in Mexico, is divided into 4 periods:
i)
The consolidation of the structural transformations during the Mexican Revolution
and the Great Depression (second half of the 1930s-1945). This period is characterized by a
steep increase in profitability, the basis of the expansive long wave of capital accumulation
associated to the Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI) model. The accumulation process
in this period was mainly driven by the government.

ii)
The consolidation and peak of the expansive long wave of capitalist accumulation
(1946-1968), characterized by its elevated profitability and the vigorous process of capital
accumulation, with the private capitalist investment being now the main driver of the
process.
iii)
The falling rate of profit implied the collapse of private investment and the structural
crisis of profitability (1969-1982). A relatively strong accumulation process was extended by
the anti-cyclical policies and the government involvement in the economy.
iv)
The neoliberal restructuring process (from 1983 onwards) implied a complete
abandonment of the government intervention in the process of capital accumulation. There
has been an important recovery of the general rate of profit that was not followed by a
similar recovery in the rate of productive investment given the neoliberal bias of the
economy towards labor-intensive industries and the financialisation."
Helena Marroig

Barreto

Marini yesterday and today: highlights on the marxist theory of dependency and new
perspectives
The aim of the this study is to introduce the basis of the work of Ruy Mauro Marini, a
brasilian autor from the 60's, through his central categories such as dependency,
subordinated insertion, and superexploitation of the work force. Also, the study intends to
show some concepts presented by the critically renewed marxist theory of dependency,
especially regarding the pattern of capital accumulation, already introduced by Marini. By
that, this work hopes to be able to provide tools to operate an analysis of the current
situation in Latin America, demystifying the conventional diagnosis on the matter, and
revealing that the underdevelopment is still reproduced, and amplified, in the continent.
Wiktor Marzec

Marxism as a subjectifying device. Remarks form the empirical inquiry into the mobilizing
power of Marxism
"The stubborn survival of capitalism redirected the focus of Marxist scholars into the past.
The histories of borderland Marxisms, successful labour hegemonies and even Bolshevik
politics are searched for new insights into contemporary struggles. However, this
scholarship tirelessly retains a bias towards theoretical debates, remaining the vernacular
Marxisms of workers underresearched.
Drawing from extensive empirical research, in my contribution I suggest to investigate
Marxism as a subjectifying device, a discursive resource mobilizing and modifying its
addressees and their relational positions in the political regime. The Marxist ideological
content (speeches, agitation, proclamations) and practices induced a certain construction of
the self, integrated in broader discourses, ideological dispositives and institutions. This

political communication induced contentious stances, positions disrupting the existing

imaginary institution of society. Marxism was for a long time the main political language
bringing about polemicization of the commonplace, thus activating new enunciatory
positions and order of appearances in acts of discursive, political intervention. Presented
insights into Marxists (re)subjectifications are an extract from a larger project investigating
workers' reading and writing practices in early 20th century Russian Poland. I argue that it
was this resubjectifying dimension of Marxism which gripped the workers, and it has to be
rediscovered to make Marxism powerful yet another time."
Christopher Mastrocola

Kosik Today:The Dialectic of Knowledge as Emancipatory Project

One of the central themes running through the four chapters of karel Kosiks 'Dialectic of
the Concrete: A Study on Problems of Man and World', is that dialectical knowledge (or a
dialectical epistemology) is an emancipatory approach to understanding social reality. In
contrast to reductionist and positivist approaches, Kosik stresses the necessity of grasping
social reality as a concrete totality: of grasping the unity of opposing categories such as
present and history, matter and consciousness and most importantly for the present
purpose, essence and appearance. The last of these involves grasping any aspect of reality
through the unity and difference of its appearance and underlying essence, both of which
are the products (whether intended or not) of historical human activity. Much of this, of
course, is common enough to Hegelian and Marxist traditions. What Kosik uniquely
introduces to this method, however, is the incorporation of Husserlian phenomenology. My
presentation will seek to elaborate on this method and demonstrate the potentially positive
benefits such a method can have for modern social movements. More specifically, it will
suggest ways in which this method can help social movements overcome their all too
common fragmented nature and disrupt the otherwise smooth reproduction and
internalization of dominant ideologies.
Juan Pablo Mateo
The Reconfiguration of Global Capitalism and Basic Trends of Accummulation and
Profitability
The purpose of this paper is to identify the mechanisms through which the reconfiguration
of the world economy has impacted on the dynamics of profitability and capital
accumulation. In recent decades, and particularly during the expansion phase of 2003-07,
the accumulation process has been characterized by a weak productive investment (and as
such low relative GDP and labor productivity rates of growth), the recurrence of speculative
phenomena (the housing bubble) and an apparent high level of profitability. In these
circumstances, most Marxist writers have not explained the Great Recession from the basic
tendencies of the capitalist economy as enunciated by K. Marx. In opposition to these

explanations, this article addresses a number of factors that explain these features, also
consistent with the Law of the falling profit rate: i) the fragmentation of the production
process towards certain semi-peripheral areas; ii) the international monetary system and
the accumulation of reserves, which have led to a significant flow of capital from periphery
to the more developed economies; iii) The incorporation of the old planned economies to
the global law of value; iv) the transformations experienced by China; v) the housing bubble
and the profitability of capital.
Luk Matoka & Ondej

Lnsk

The Romani People and Racist Oppression in Central Europe

The Romani people are now described as a forgotten minority. The only visible attention
that this ethnic group is receiving across Europe is explicitly or implicitly racist. In our
contribution we will focus on searching for the roots of contemporary racism mainly in
Central Europe, which cannot be found without an analysis of neoliberalism and the crisis of
capitalism. Although we may find more than one similarity between the situation of the
Romani people and the Jewish community in the late Weimar Republic, it would be a
mistake not to analyse this particular situation with respect to the social and historical
specificity of oppression faced by the Romani community. Ghettoization practices affecting
the Romani people can be compared to (post-) colonial rule, understood in terms of past
and present global capitalist expansion. These practices are no longer determined
geographically, since they are also implemented at national state level as internal
colonialism. This is why we call these Central European ghettos islands of the Third World.
In this context, we will focus on present-day attempts to consider the Romani minority as a
socially excluded group, varying from traditional classifications (e. g. lumpenproletariat) to
more recent ones (e. g. precariat).
Wendy Matsumura

Uno Kozo's theorization of Japan's post-World War I agrarian question

"Japanese Marxist Uno Kozo argued in his July 1950 essay, ""Methods and Objectives of a
Theory of Global Political Economy"" that the post-World War I agricultural crises and
general capitalist crisis of the late 1920s were outcomes of the failures by individual states
to address the global agrarian question. Using extensive empirical data from Germany,
Great Britain, and the United States and he showed that even states dominated by
monopoly capital turned to a policy of self-sufficiency in foodstuffs after the war. This global
condition, which required extensive state intervention in agriculture, expressed to Uno the
increasingly complex and global nature of the postwar agrarian question.
What set Uno apart from his peers who also theorized the agrarian question during the first
half of the 20th century was that he focused on the global condition, but just as importantly,
on subjectivities. He problematized Japan's condition, in which small peasantry submitted to

overwork, underconsumption, and high rents in an effort to remain engaged in petty

agricultural production despite the fact that the prerequisites for their liberation from
agriculture and their land had been laid with the land tax reforms of 1873. He argued that a
'true resolution' of the global agrarian question was not simply a matter of the installation
of capitalist relations of production in agriculture but required a transformation of these
subjectivities - 'feudal' barriers to their acquisition of a capitalist logic in which they to, try
to endlessly expand other peoples' labor power as capital.
This presentation will clarify Uno's argument that World War I constituted an epochal
moment for the agrarian question and will consider how his theorization may contribute to
an understanding of the way that resolutions are sought by capitalist countries through a
reconfiguration of empire. It will also critically engage with Uno's understanding of feudality
in Japan's agrarian villages by referring to Kautsky's 1899 The Agrarian Question."
Ilya

Matveev

Neoliberalism, Neopatrimonialism, and The Nature of The Political Regime in Russia

Neoliberalism and neopatrimonialism are distinct (and sometimes competing) theories used
to explain the nature of the political regime in Russia. While neoliberal explanations focus
on reforms which violently introduce market conditions and market logic in all spheres of
life, theories of neopatrimonialism emphasize the authoritarian and clientelistic character of
politics, the privatization of the state by various groups, and endemic corruption. The
objective of my research is to use these two theories not as separate interpretations of
Russian politics, but as indicators of two real logics operating within the Russian political
regime. Neoliberal and neopatrimonial processes coexist and form a relationship with one
another. I will present some preliminary remarks regarding the precise nature of this
relationship, based on the analysis of the discursive struggle between the neoliberal and the
'anti-neoliberal' experts and think tanks with connections to various sections of the Russian
political establishment. The analysis reveals the constant presence of these two positions in
the public sphere and their frequent collision. Both neoliberals and their opponents, despite
the tension between them, are crucial for the logic of the Russian political regime.
Brendan

McGeever

The Bolsheviks and Antisemitism in the Russian Revolution, 1917-1919

This paper sets out to make an original contribution towards the critical understanding of
the October Revolution through a unique case study of the Bolshevik attempt to confront
antisemitism in the immediate aftermath of 1917. Based on extensive fieldwork in the
Russian archives, the paper offers an analysis of the antiracist political formations that
coalesced around the early Soviet state apparatus during the Revolution and Civil War
(19171919). The paper develops and builds on Gramscis conception of the hegemonic
apparatus by bringing into sharp focus the various types of individual and collective agency

that actualised the struggle against antisemitism during the Civil War. Whilst traditional
interpretations of the Russian Revolution have assumed that the campaigns against racism
and antisemitism were conceived and carried out by the Party leadership (i.e. Lenin and
Trotsky etc), this paper will show that in the case of antisemitism, the anti-racist project that
emerged within the Soviet state was in fact the product of a unique racial formation
composed largely of non-Bolshevik Jewish Marxists and leftwing Zionists. The paper will
then go on to reflect on these findings, arguing that they raise critical questions for how we
conceptualise and understand not only the relationship between race and class, but also the
legacy of Marxist attempts to arrest the racialisation of social relations more generally."
Scott McLemee

From "the Russian Question" to China (and Back Again): Debating China in Trotskyist Theory,
1950-58

"The historiography of Trotskyism too often tends to be an instance of Trotskyist
historiography: a matter of political combat continued by other means. And nowhere has
position-taking and line-consolidation been more obvious than in narrative treatments of
debates on the Russian question, i.e. the problem of characterizing the political economy
that developed under the Stalin regime and of assessing the precise class position and
dynamics of the party-state apparatus. Three major answers were formulated within the
movement during Trotskys lifetime, identifying the USSR as either a degenerated workers
state, state capitalism, or bureaucratic collectivism. Many (possibly most) subsequent
accounts of the debate have been written on the behalf of one position or the other.
Creedal affirmation is typically accompanied by a sort of cod sociology-of-knowledge
explaining the source and ideological function of the other positions.
The advance made by Marcel Van Der Linden's Western Marxism and the Soviet Union: A
Survey of Critical Theories and Debates Since 1917 (2007) comes only in part through its
non-polemical perspective. Besides reconstructing the arguments developed within the
Trotskyist movement alongside the theoretical approaches and conclusions of figures never
in its ranks (such as Korsch, Hilferding, and Bordiga), Linden also offers a suggestive
periodization of various Russian-question analyses, placing their emergence and
development in the context of major phases in Soviet history.
In short, Western Marxism and the Soviet Union presents a major challenge to approaches
that have prevailed in the secondary literature concerning the history of Left Opposition-
derived political organizations. It breaks up the established and self-enforced patterning of
differences. New constellations begin to form. And the charting of them is not exhausted by
the typology and metatheoretical remarks that the book offers in conclusion.
Neither Linden nor anyone else has taken up the topic I will pursue. The victory of the
Peoples Liberation Army in 1949 and the system that then emerged under the rule of the

Chinese Communist Party were inevitably taken up by Trotskyists in terms derived from the
various positions they had already formulated regarding the Russian question. But for some
tendencies the degree of fit between concept and phenomenon was unclear or problematic.
Complicating things still more was the rise of dirigiste states in other countries then winning
national liberation. Zhou Enlais role at the Bandung Conference in 1955 underscored the
need to understand the relationship between the Chinese system and the emerging
postcolonial regimes. Finally, there was the need to assess how well the theory of
permanent revolution accounted for any of these developments -- or if it did at all.
A number of articles and internal documents by the Philips-Miller group within the Socialist
Workers Party in the U.S. expressed the clearest recognition that China and the Third World
regimes posed a set of problems linked with, but distinct from, the Russian question.
(Named after the party names of Art Fox and Steve Zeluck, respectively, the Philips-Miller
current held a state-capitalist analysis. Based largely in Detroit, it was formed by supporters
of the Johnson-Forest Tendency who remained within the SWP after C.L.R. James led most
of his supporters out of it in 1951.)
Neither the Philips-Miller material nor the positions regarding China formulated by other
tendencies are treated in Western Marxism and the Soviet Union. In its periodization and
logic, the whole discussion moves at a diagonal to Lindens lines of argument. But it offers
the advantage of continuing his project of reframing the Russian question as a discursive
field with implications not limited to the terms or the stakes of internal combat. In
particular, reconstructing the China discussion will show that the the Russian-question
debate itself involves a number of relays among basic concepts (including capitalism,
bureaucracy, the bourgeois revolution, and the stratification and composition of the
bourgeoisie itself) and how they articulate upon one another."
James Meadway

Surplus population, secular stagnation, and the ghost of Malthus: Rosa Luxemburgs Anti-
Kritik reconsidered

"The mainstream of economics, from Robert Barro to Larry Summers, has slowly
begun to identify the problem of secular stagnation and decaying growth in the developed
world. Meanwhile, the extraordinary reception given to Thomas Pikettys work has strongly
restated the notion of capitalism as a system driven not so much by its dynamic potential as
the potential for enrichment by a powerful few. He, like other authors, has pointed to
secular trends in population dynamics as perhaps holding the key to slowing growth rates
into the future.
Rosa Luxemburgs vigorous defence of her great work, The Accumulation of Capital, dealt
directly with the mainstream of her day. Attacking the emergent, strongly neoclassical
notion that economic growth could be read off population growth rates, she provided a

detailed defence of Marxs alternative reasoning, in which the dynamic of capital

accumulation in turn determined the dynamic of labour force growth. This paper links
together the crisis of work, the problem of surplus labour, and the global demographic
shift through a reconsideration of Luxemburgs analysis. It demonstrates that the crisis of
realisation relates directly to the expansion of capital accumulation into non-capitalist
sectors and the expansion of the sphere of labour."
Kathryn

Medien

Desiring the Monster: The Regulation of Intimacy in Israel/Palestine

"How is the regulation of sexual intimacy central to Israeli occupation of Palestine?
This paper examines how the regulation of homo and heterosexuality is central to the
(re)production of the Israeli nation, and its positioning of itself as a modern, progressive
liberal state. Through an examination of Israeli state and non-state activism that seeks to
maximise reproduction between Jewish Israeli citizens, and Israeli gay rights discourse, it
will be argued that the regulation of intimacy is central to the occupation, harnessed to
protect the Israeli nation and its citizens from sexually deviant Palestinians. Recent years
have seen a growth in the literature examining the relationship between Israeli nationalism
and sexuality (Puar 2013; Kuntsman 2008; Ritchie 2010). This paper shall contribute and
push forward these debates, examining how the regulation of desire is central to the
imagining and survival of Israel, linked to homo and heterosexual norms, and older colonial
discourses of the sexually repressed, yet violent, Oriental male. Considering how desire is
regulated is important, this paper concludes, if we are to better understand the tactics of
survival employed by the Israeli state, and the myriad ways that sexuality and race are
brought to bear on life.
Relevant streams: Homophobia and homonationalism before and after 9/11; Moving
borders, regenerating boundaries: states, bodies, temporality; Social reproduction and
capitalist transformation: micro and macro-analyses; Racism, femonationalism,
Islamophobia: the bigger picture"
Pedro Mendes Loureiro

Open-ended, agential and growingly (too?) complex: comments on Bob Jessops approaches
to the relationship between state power and capital

This paper analyses the evolution of Bob Jessops understanding of the relationship
between state power and capital. We identify two inter-related tendencies behind the
authors theoretical developments, which are i) denying the a priori substantive unity of
various aspects of social formations necessary for regularising capital accumulation, and ii)
proposing an agential concept which can, under certain conditions, guarantee this unity in a
partial, precarious and contradictory way. This leads to a growingly complex and open-
ended framework. In light of this, and by identifying the debates and contexts in which the

arguments were successively put forward, we propose a general interpretation of the

authors theoretical propositions. We argue they are most meaningful as elements of an
anti-politicist, anti-structuralist and anti-teleological approach, which stresses that the
economic and extra-economic requisites of accumulation must be reproduced in and
through agency. Finally, we comment on the drawbacks this implies for applied research. As
it creates an ever-growing demand for substantiating the concepts in concrete, historical
practices, pragmatic considerations of research feasibility might contradictorily lead to the
necessity of taking for granted certain conditions of accumulation effectively arriving at a
structuralist and determinist approach, as many critics have argued.
Tobias Menely

Verdampft: Energy, Air, and History in Marx

Marx developed an indispensable theory of capitalas crisis-prone, self-expanding value

only by emphasizing social relation in place of the interchange between human and natural
production. In my talk, Ill discuss the figural instability in Marxs invocations of the energy
inputs and atmospheric outputs of economic activity, with the goal of identifying some
challenges historical materialism faces in the Anthropocene. Im interested in Marxs explicit
discussion, in Capital, of the significance of Britains transition to coal, but also in the more
subtle metaphors of energy and atmosphere that underlie his conceptualization of history.
The example from which I take my title is the famous Alles stndische und stehende
verdampft, wherein the elemental transmutation involved in steam powerthe turning of
all that is solid into air, as Moore evocatively translated itis made to describe a
sociological transformation, the supplanting of the old social estates by capitalist class
relations. While Marx recognizes the crucial role of coal in industrial production, as well as
an essential thermodynamic alignment between forces of nature [Naturekraft] and
human labor-power [Arbeitskraft], he defines the surplus-energy stored in coal freely
given: natural forces appropriate to productive processes, such as steam [and] water . . .
cost nothing. In the second part of my talk, Ill turn to Marxs language of atmosphere (air,
mist, ether), as a synecdoche for environment, an infinite container inviting dispersal, and
as a privileged figure for mystification, our haunted experience of absent causality.
Morgane

Merteuil

sexwork against work : analyzing sexwork as a reproductive work issue

"It is argued here that the major legal framework proposed by European states to tackle the
issue of prostitution either the abolition or the legalization perspective are
serving a neoliberal agenda. If both these models are refused by most of the sex workers
organizations, their own demands and analyses are still unheard, and fought against by
large parts of the left and of the feminist movement, especially these last months in
Western Europe. From a marxist perspective, this case is pretty unique: while ""the left"" (or

most radical left parties) as a whole do not have homogenous policies towards unions and
social movements, they still cling to a general notion of ""working class"" politics. The left's
disorientation towards sex workers unionists is a puzzling fact: how does one account for it
in a materialist perspective?
This refusal from the progressive political forces to support sex workers has to be
understood as an expression of the more general difficulties for these forces to think about
reproductive work. If ""doing sex"" is to be considered as a form of reproductive work (as
the author would argue), the arguments faced by sexworkers today boil down to one and
the same claim: the idea that campaigning for wages in compensation for domestic labor (or
reproductive work) amounts to a trivialization of it. This is pretty close to what the feminist
movement argued against the Wages for Housework campaign. This is even more
problematic today at the very moment when neoliberalism succeed in more and more
commodify this work on a global scale.
This paper then aims at considering the struggles around reproductive work from a sex
workers issues perspective, in order to draw the potential revolutionary perspectives to
which the ""sex work is work"" claim invites us to. While escaping the dual pitfalls of
""soft"" prohibitionism and a liberal ideology of ""choice"", this perspective has notably the
merit of uniting waged and unwaged women workers against both gender and class
oppression ( then understood as different ""attributes"" of the same ""substance"")."
Atle

Mikkola

Kjosen

Anticipating Realization: Value's Logic of Movement and Amazon's Anticipatory Shipping "
The online retail giant Amazon was recently awarded a patent for its method and system
for anticipatory package shipping. In essence, this patent describes how the retailer wants
to build a system for delivering commodities to potential buyers before they place an order.
Based on previous orders, items in the shipping cart, and tracking of web-browsing, the
package is sent to a specified geographic area and while the package is in transit or waiting
at a hub, the final delivery address is specified. What is the logic behind such methods? Why
must exchange be anticipated?
This paper will use Amazons anticipatory shipping as an example with which to explore why
and how value (and by extension capital) must move and accelerate. The paper will focus on
the relationship between movement, the value-form and form-determination to account for
why value must move, how it moves and by what means. The paper argues that the formal
reason for why value must move can be located in the immanent contradiction of the
commodity, which requires value to appear in its form. Prior to exchange, products are
merely products of labour, use-values, but not yet consummated as values. There is an
imperative to transport commodities as fast as possible to the market for value to be
realized; anticipatory shipping is thus an articulation of this imperative."

Marcelo

Milan

Demographic changes, Pension Reforms and Absolute Surplus Value: Intertemporal

Exploitation in Contemporary Capitalism
This article proposes a Marxian interpretation of contemporary pension reforms around the
world. Demographic changes that have been happening since the first industrial revolution,
in particular population aging, imply a difficulty in replenishing the labor force, due to
retirement, in a growing number of countries. This phenomenon has important
consequences for the production of value and surplus value, insofar as it affects the inflow
and outflow of labor power in the circuit of capital as well as the redistribution of social
funds by means of taxes and government transfers. These reforms of pension and social
security systems help keeping the flow of labor power into the circuit of capital for a longer
time, mainly by means of imposing an increased minimum retirement age. This work
analyses this increased working time as a form of intertemporal absolute surplus-value
extraction. **Note to readers: there is no Honneth in my paper, but I simply cannot get rid
of it from my key words**
Simon Mohun

Class and Class Struggle in the US economy 1918-2011

A Marxist approach to economic analysis focuses on social class rather than on individual
agents. Class incomes depend upon a functional distribution of income, with wages earned
by workers and profits earned by capitalists. But even the very richest in the US economy
earn a substantial portion of their total income from employment. Wages do not only
accrue to the working class. Accounting for this entails deriving time series (for the US
economy 1918-2011) of a tri-partite classification of working class, managers who depend
upon their labour income, and managers who could choose not to be employed by anyone;
or, for short, workers, managers and capitalists. This enables a quantitative analysis of US
classes and their dynamics over nearly a century, which can substitute for the more usual
qualitative analysis coupled with quantitative guesswork.
Lorenza

Monaco

India, NCR: Capital Strategies and Labour Resistance in a Globalising Auto sector
The intense wave of Labour unrest which has substantially shaken the Indian Sub-continent,
and the recently industrialised National Capital Region in particular, somewhat leads to
question the India Shining picture and poses difficult challenges to the newly elected Modi
Government. Undoubtedly, the Neoliberal development model pursued in the past few
decades, supported by a progressively globalising elite, reveals a profound detachment from
grassroots movements and Working Class demands. Examples of Labour organisation in the
Automotive sector, and the unprecedented strikes which have occurred at the Maruti-

Suzuki Manesar plant in between 2011 and 2012, represent a very interesting case to look
at Industrial Conflict and Capital Labour relations within the Indian Democracy. Issues of
Political Representativeness, of Workers Autonomy vs traditional forms of Union
organisation , of sustainability of the implemented Labour regime are raised, together with
an analysis of Capital onslaught which, with the active support of the State, has shifted from
an initial attack to Workers rights to an open, utter violation of basic Human Rights.
Frederic

Monferrand

Value-Form Theory as Critical Social Ontology

"In this paper, I would like to subtantiate the following hypothesis : the various trends of
Marx's Capital interpretations that have (re-)emerged these past ten years under the name
of value-form theory can and should be interpreted as part of an attempt to develop a
critical social ontology.
Despite the deep differences that one can highlight between the works of Backhaus and
Rancire (in Reading Capital) Postone and Arthur, or Kurz and Heinrich, all these researchers
share an emphasis on the foundationnal (rather than historical) aspect of the first section of
Marx's Capital and a critique of capitalism in terms of abstraction rather than in terms of
alienation or exploitation. Even though some of them refuse the very concept of ontology,
they all tend to present their work as an attempt to grasp the deep structures (Postone;
1993) or the ontological ground (Arthur; 2004) of capitalism. As opposed to most
contemporary mainstream social ontology (Searle; 1995), or even to Western Marxist
attempts to reconstruct Marx's ontology (Lukacs; 1978, Gould; 1978), they are not engaged
in a description of the transhistorical features of society but rather in a historically specific
analysis of how the value-form and its process of valorization shape the basic structures of
social life. The social ontology they sketch can thus be said to be historical in the double
sense that they apprehend social being as a process rather than as a substance and that
they argue that it is only with the capitalist reification of social structures that the social
can appear as an object of ontological inquiery.
I will try to elaborate on what I take to be to three main features of this critical social
ontology: first, drawing on Marx's theory of fetishism, I will show that the value-form should
be understood as a structure of daily-life social experience in capitalist social formations,
that is, as what transcendantally circumscribes what is doable and thinkable under
capitalism. Therefore, elaborating on Marx's theory of money, I will then argue that a critical
social ontology should be a relationnal one, according to which the conditions of possibility
of social objectivity should not be looked for in mental structures, as in mainstream social
ontology, but rather in social structures. Finally I will turn to Marx's concept of organic
system in the Grundrisse in order to examine how a critical social ontology should
determine the interdependance of all the moments (production, consumption, distribution)
that constitute capital as a social totality if it is to account for the differencieted forms of

exploitation and subsumption that characterize actually existing capitalism on a global

scale."
Sourayan

Mookerjea

Intersections of domination and exploitation: Tar sand mega-development, accumulated

violence and the crises of social reproduction in the Athabaskan forest.
"This paper interrogates the critical encounter of Marxist feminist theory with postcolonial
critique and intersectionality theory through an exploration of the crises and contradictions
of community social reproduction in the boom towns of tar sand mega-development in
northern Alberta. After the complications and critiques of the politics of identity and
difference, what lessons regarding class politics do we draw from such crisis of social
reproduction in the northern boom-towns of Alberta? Given the diversity of subject
positions mobilized in opposition to this mega-development, including the aboriginal
feminist led Idle No More movement, how do we understand the affinity or alliance that is
emerging here as a new kind of politics, a new form of subjectivity or becoming in common
the social crises of this mega-development brings to life?
In addressing such questions, this paper examines the implications of reconsiderations of
Marxs critique of the discourse on primitive accumulation, from Rosa Luxemburg and Sylvia
Federici to Kalyan Sanyal and David Harvey for critiques of intersectionality theory by Sylvia
Walby, Mariarosa Dalla Costa, and Eve Mitchell. The paper thereby retheorizes class politics
in terms of a dialectic of accumulated violence articulating the coloniality of power to
biopolitical exploitation."
Javier Moreno Zacars

Tracing the Transition to Capitalism in Spain

"Ever since Robert Brenner called into question prevalent theorisations of capitalist
development (Brenner, 1976) and sparked off the 'Transition Debate', the theoretical
implications of his thesis have had a lasting impact on historical materialism. His argument
that capitalism first emerged in the English countryside, as a contingent outcome of agrarian
class struggle within the specificity of England's unique social-property relations, unsettled
established conceptions about the history and nature of capitalism. While Brenner's
interventions have led to much heated debates within Marxist theory (Wood, 2000), a much
more obvious, and equally important implication of his work has received much less
attention: if capitalist transformation was not an inevitable European-wide process, but a
much more historically and geographically specific development, how exactly, and when,
did it expand to other European countries?
While George Comninel's (Comninel, 1987) has already conducted extensive research on the
transition in France, most of the existing literature has focused on backing the Brenner

thesis by explaining how capitalism did not emerge in other countries, rather than by taking
one step further and exploring the plurality of other 'transitions'. In this context of inquiry,
the case of Spain has been truly neglected, probably the only exception being Julie
Marfany's very recent work on the Catalan transition (Marfany, 2012). Building and moving
Brenner's work, Marfany has begun to carve some important inroads into what is perhaps a
much more complex transition to capitalism. She points out at some stark contrasts with the
English experience, like the much larger role of rural industry or Catalonia's unique property
relations (rabassa morta), that sit uneasily with Brenner's model of the transition. In
contrast to England, a much more centralised and homogenous country at the time of its
transition, the Spanish countryside is a pluriverse institutional diversity, where parts of the
country experienced diverging historical trajectories and almost every region operated
along unique property relations.
This paper will sketch the problematique of a Spanish transition to capitalism, outlining the
complexity of the Spanish case and presenting the challenges it poses. For example, if
Brenner's model stresses the importance of depriving peasants of their means of material
reproduction, forcing them off the land, how do we explain that Andalusian agriculture has
relied on a huge mass of landless peasants since at least the 16th century? Does the
institutional plurality of the Spanish case force us to speak of the transition as an uneven
process, where capitalism 'arrived' in different stages, or do we need to focus on what may
have been multiple transitions? The paper will present the Spanish case, raise some
hypotheses on these issues, and address methodological and theoretical questions on how
to theorise the transition to capitalism outside of England."

Kevin Morgan

Cult and anti-cult: Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky in the 1920s

The systematic promotion of the Lenin cult can be dated from immediately after
Lenins death in January 1924. Conventionally, the cult is regarded, correctly, as an
instrument of bureaucratic centralisation and forerunner of the Stalin cult that was grafted
onto Lenins as Stalin consolidated his grip on power. What is less widely recognised is how
far Trotsky, like other leading Bolsheviks, also lent his voice to the Lenin cult, and indeed
had helped in paving the way for it even during Lenins lifetime. In exploring these
conflicting uses of Lenins legacy, this paper describes how Leninism as the cult of party was
used to isolate Trotsky, while Trotsky himself sought to focus on the qualities of
revolutionary leadership with which he no less than Lenin was universally identified. The
broader issue raised is that of why the left, including disparate strands of Marxism, has
proved so susceptible to the cult of the individual. The more specific issue is that of how far
Trotskys failure to contest this terrain, if not indeed that of Lenin himself, facilitated Stalins
deployment of this instrument which became so central to the political culture of Stalinism.

Chana Morgenstern

Committed Literature in a Partitioned Land: The al-Jadid Communist Journal and the Making
of a Palestinian and Arab-Jewish Literary Culture in 1950s Israel/Palestine

In the 1950s and 1960s, a group of young Palestinian and Arab-Jewish (Mizrahi) Communist
writerswho would later become prominent poets and authors in Israel and Palestine
began their careers as editors and writers for the Arabic arts and literature magazine al-
Jadid, a cultural arm of the Israeli communist party. Palestinian writers such as Mahmoud
Darwish, Emile Habibi, Hana Ibrahim and Emile Tuma and Arab-Jewish (Mizrahi) writers such
as Sami Michael, Shimon Ballas and Sasson Somekh coalesced around the journal as a space
in which they could engage in the formation of a Communist cultural front to preserve
Arabic culture and combat the developing milieu of Zionism and partition in Israel/Palestine.
This paper will trace the literary history of this community of writers and their works, paying
special attention to the cultural program that the journal developed and the way in which
this program catalyzed literary production in the journal. Through an analysis of articles and
manifestos, I will show how the journal advanced an aesthetic program that advocated for
the development of a committed, internationalist and socialist realist Arabic literature that
reimagined notions of Arab-Jewish collectivity. By uncovering and examining the lost literary
archive of al-Jadid, I demonstrate the way in which the joint literature that the journal
fostered provides us with critical proof of an anti-partition resistance culture rooted in the
local development of Arab Marxist and decolonizing practices. This literature is an integral
but under-researched part of the root system of Arab-Jewish (Mizrahi) and Palestinian
literatures in Israel/Palestine. We need only consider the impact of writers such as Emile
Habibi, Mahmoud Darwish, Shimon Ballas and Sami Michael on the intellectual history and
literature of Palestine and Israel to understand the import of their common political and
cultural foundations. The literary history of al-Jadid challenges the canonical separation of
these writers into two hostile literary camps, and allows us to see their common roots in a
Marxist, anti-partition literature that greatly impacted subsequent generations of Israeli and
Palestinian writers.

Fred Moseley
Introduction to the English translation of Marxs Manuscript of 1863-65
Marxs only full draft of Volume 3 of Capital was written in the Economic Manuscript of
1863-65. Marxs Book III manuscript was heavily edited by Engels for the first German
edition of Volume 3 in 1894. It has been a long-standing question in Marxian scholarship
concerning how much did Engels change Marxs manuscript and are there significant
differences between the two. Marxs original manuscript was published for the first time in
German in 1992 in the Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (MEGA), Section II, Volume 4.2, and this

important manuscript has now been translated into English (by Ben Fowkes) and will be
published by Brill. I am the editor of the translation and have written an Introduction, which
highlights the main differences between Marxs original manuscript and Engels edited
Volume 3, in my view. My paper will be this Introduction.
Baris Mucen

Constructing the Object of Analysis through the Category of Labour

"In my presentation I will attempt to show in which ways Marxs methodology was
constructed through the category of labour, yet in many of the Marxist (or non-Marxist)
critical studies it was put into work through the category of capital. I will argue that this
methodological shift took place in favor of a scientific analysis of the formation of the
existing social inequalities (in economic or non-economic forms). Without negating the
critical power of such studies I will problematize them by showing the ways in which they
reduce the socio-historical reality to the social relations and process that are constructed as
an object of analysis through the category of capital (i.e. in which ways the analytical object
presents a reality subsumed by the category of capital.). Moishe Postone developed a
similar critique of Marxist studies that focused on modes of distribution early on in his
work Time, Labor, and Social Domination. Yet he also analyzed the category of labour in its
historical form within the relations of capital. In my presentation I will particularly analyze
Lukacs late texts in which he tries to develop the concept of labour as an ontological
category. Without getting into a debate whether we can consider labour as an ontological
category or not, my aim will be to see its methodological consequences: how to construct
an object of analysis through the category of labour. This attempt involves neither giving a
central position to the labourer (as a subject position), nor focusing on the material
production processes. Instead, I will reconsider our main categories and concepts (such as
temporality, knowledge, fact, historicity) that we use while constructing objects of analysis
through the category of capital.
Marieke

Mueller

How the Bourgeoisie survives: class and collective subjectivities in Sartres later work

"This paper examines Jean-Paul Sartres theory of class, focussing particularly on the
theorisation of the bourgeoisie in 'LIdiot de la famille' (1971-2), his biography of Flaubert.
My paper will argue that Sartres concern with the reproduction of the bourgeoisie in his
later texts suggests the formation of a conception of class subjectivity which combines
elements of class consciousness and ideology and which further often resonates with Pierre
Bourdieus theory of class, despite the latters well-known criticism of 'LIdiot'.
Whilst 'LIdiot' upholds the fundamental concepts of Sartres earlier notion of class, such as
the absence of any organic class unity, my paper will suggest that 'LIdiot' re-evaluates the
social realm, marking a shift towards collective subjectivities. Sartres analysis of the school

system as conveyor of serialized competition (opposed to Flauberts feudal attitude), and

Sartres recurrent reference to the idea of distinction will serve to highlight the presence of
opposed class subjectivities in 'LIdiot' and to further suggest a pre-figuration of Bourdieus
thought.
The theory of generations in Sartres later work will then be interpreted as part of the same
concern, namely to theorise the coming-into-being and the re-generation of bourgeois class
subjectivity. My paper will conclude that Sartres historical and theoretical interest in class is
further inscribed in his concern for the political situation after 1968, again suggesting a
convergence of interests between Sartre and Bourdieu."
Andrew

Murray

Socialised and Specialised Labour on the Charterhouse of Champmol

The sculptural program of the Charterhouse of Champmol (built c. 1370-1410) has been
argued by many to have been the most innovative and influential in northern Europe in the
late fourteenth- and early fifteenth-centuries. Its sculpture was often life-size, fully rounded
or in deep relief, highly naturalised and comprised complex combinations of materials.
Previous art-historians have argued that the key condition for this sculpture were the talent
and skills and of the sculptors. But this skill has been inadequately theorised either as their
genius, or as the freedom provided to them by the long-term patronage of the Valois-
Burgundian dukes. By closely examining the receipts and account entry records of the
Charterhouse, this paper will provide an alternative understanding of skill: that it involves a
combination of socialised labour (the need for sculptors to interact with other workers) and
specialised labour (defined as managerial authority being devolved to sculptors themselves,
rather than seeing their work directed by masons). Such an understanding of skill gives us
some insights into the appearance of the sculpture of the Champmol. But it also allows us to
periodize it to the intensified division of labour developing in the towns of Northern Europe
in the fourteenth century, the towns where these sculptors were initially trained.
Matthew

Myers

Cars, Crisis, Conflict: British car workers in the 1970s and the unmaking of the British working
class
This paper focuses on the experiences of British car workers during the global economic
crisis in the 1970s using a social historical perspective. At its heart are the everyday
experiences of work, political agitation, and shop-floor conflicts, which characterised the
British car industry in the 1970s. As the British car industry attempted to confront
competition from overseas and decreasing profits at home, conflicts over jobs, conditions,
and wage-rates affected the whole industry, and provided one of the key industrial
battlegrounds. The shift from a militant, confident, and well organised network of car
workers across Britain in the late 1960s to a weakened and neutered one in the mid 1980s

has hereto been largely an undervalued aspect of our industrial history, yet which has many
lessons over how workers confront capitalisms attempt to restore profitability to the
system. Through analysing the specific historical experience of British car workers during the
1970s crisis we can better understand this global process. The paper will also explore the
role of revolutionary politics within the industry, the role of gender inside and outside the
car factories, and attempt to draw lessons for present struggles.
Miryam

Nacimento.

Capital accumulation in the Alternative Development industry and the reproduction of drug
policies in Peru
"The current international drug regime has established a variety of measures aimed at
suppressing the production, distribution and consumption of cocaine. Coca leaves are the
raw material for this illicit substance, which is traditionally grown by a large number of
peasants (cocaleros) in the Andean region. In order to limit their production diverted to the
illegal market, Alternative Development policies have been promoted by the United Nations
and implemented by coca growing countries like Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador for the past 20
years. These interventions have sought alternatives for the cultivation of illegal crops by
promoting broad sustainable rural development strategies directed to coca-growing
peasants.
In this context, and following the shared responsibility principle, big amounts of foreign
aid have been directed to fund Alternative Development programs in Peru. Donors like the
United Nations, the United States and the European Union have played a central role in the
implementation of these programs. However, over the years evidence confirms that despite
AD interventions have caused some reductions in drug crop cultivation, this has occurred
only within specific areas and without having a deeper impact in global drug supply.
In this presentation I will address the problem of the inertial reproduction of ineffective
drug control policies like Alternative Development by analyzing its relationships with foreign
aid dynamics in the Andean countries. I will examine the Alternative Development policy
model as an industry where different fractions of capital steaming from the international
cooperation institutions, governmental agencies, civil society advocates and cocalero
organizations meet in complex (and uneasy) ways. As I will show, these different fractions
struggle, negotiate and organize a particular form of capital accumulation that ends up
allowing and nurturing the drug policy inertia.
I will discuss these matters by focusing my analysis on the implementation of an Alternative
Development program located in Satipo, a longstanding coca growing region in Peru. First, I
will depict the everyday practices of the different actors involved in the implementation of
this program. In doing so, I will also explain the organic relations of capital formation within
which each of these actors are embedded. Secondly, I will analyze the different narratives

about Alternative Development that are advanced by these actors and how they are
informed and recreated through their everyday interaction. Finally, I will link both aspects
in order to examine how these interactions are framed in a particular form of capital
accumulation that ends up supporting the perpetuation of the Alternative Development
industry.
In this way, my analysis will seek to explain the reproduction of this policy model by
disentangling its internal organic properties as well as the common senses that are present
in the dynamic governing of the Alternative Development industry. In doing so, I will use a
neo Gramscian theoretical approach, which acknowledges the capitalist conditions of
existence underlying every social practice. In this sense, I will highlight the interactions
between ideas and its material circumstances as well as the way in which these interactions
help to reproduce a particular type of drug control policies, like Alternative Development
interventions."
Selim Nadi

Why do we need an indigenous party in France?

In January 2005, several anti-racist activists and organizations send out a call (l'Appel des
Indignes de la Rpublique). This call is the founding document of the Mouvement des
Indignes de la Rpublique (M.I.R) which became the Parti des Indignes de la Rpublique
(P.I.R) in 2010. The project of the M.I.R/P.I.R was not to build a lobby but to create a real
political force for the non-whites in France and a grassroots popular movement . In France,
non-whites are excluded by the political system and this is the basis of what Sadri Khiari
called the neo-indigeneity (no-indignat, in reference to the oppressive status of colonial
subjects in the French Empire). The main French parties both from the right and from the
left have pursued policies that are more and more against the interest of the non-white
population. This is why the creation of the P.I.R was a political necessity; although a large
part of the left criticize the P.I.R because they think that it is a racialist organization and
not an anticapitalist one. The creation of the P.I.R put the concept of social-race into the
French political field which was obsessed by the class question in an abstract way and
totally forget the race in the struggle (this is why a lot of non-white from the french
banlieues consider the french left as traitors). In front of the P.I.R the French left is
politically and theoretically disarmed : they do not understand why is the P.I.R an
autonomous non-white organization necessary to fight capitalism and to show how race
contributes to the perpetuation of capitalism. The goal of this organization was to
contribute to a new popular bloc congenial to the interests of non-white people in the
French Metropolis and to analyze racism in a materialist way, a way that the French left
does not understand. The moralistic version of antiracism conveyed by the French left, that
the latter asserts against the PIR's analyses , is a true nemesis for struggles led by people of
color. This is partly due to the overwhelming French left ideology according to which the
main problem is to fight capitalism which has no color and that organizing non-white

people is not an anti-capitalist struggle but just a cultural struggle or identity-politics. The
main accusation against the P.I.R was the accusation of communautarisme (this word
does not exist in the english vocabulary but can be translated by cultural-sectarianism),
but the P.I.R is not a cultural organization, it is a political one which is focusing it struggle
against racism as a system (which was theorized, in the French context, by Sadri Khiari, a
Tunisian activist and a former member of the 4th International) and is taking distance with
the dogmatic and colorblind notion of class in the French context certainly not doing
away with the relevance of class as such, as the Party's political project is a coalition and
hegemonic bloc with white popular classes. Analyzing the history of the P.I.R is very
important to show how this organization put the race question in the French marxist
political field.
Jonathan

Neale

From Copenhagen to Paris - the climate justice movement and the contradictions of ruling
class climate strategies
"How does the climate justice movement respond to the Paris COP? We start with the ruling
class. To halt runaway climate change will require leaving the carbon in the ground,
extensive government regulation, and massive public works programmes. (Climate jobs
campaigns are an attempt to do this sooner rather than later.) The ruling class know this.
They also understand the science. And they own the world they don't want to wreck it.
But they are paralysed because massive public works and regulation would mean the end of
the neoliberal project. And since 2008 the pressures of increased international competition
rule out the extra expense for any competing national capital. In addition, those based on
high carbon corporations want no action on all.
The ruling class are divided, confused, and face pressure from organised scientists, NGOs
and a wider public. So greenwash is piled upon contradiction. And the outcome of Paris will
be terrible. The danger is repeating the demoralisation after Copenhagen. So the climate
movement needs a response big enough to say this is only the beginning of the fight. The
talk will report on the state of play on this by November."
John Nescher

The Spatial Dimension of Historical Materialism:On Chinese Experiences

"China is now experiencing a spatial fixing of its capital. The capital needs space in physical
,social or spiritual state. Although there are differences between the capitalist and socialist
countries, but the capital seems more similar, and it plays a great role than before in
socialist countries . It seemed that the economic crisis is lasting with spatial fixing over the
world and it is obvious that china is effected.

 We should have a spatial perspective in historical materialism. (1)The production

becomes spatial production in contemporary. Urbanization is import in present China.(2)The
class struggle may becomes street and landscape struggle. The fighting for stability in street
is more important in present China. The stability is based on the spatial
management.(3)Space and society is the key relation in developing socialism with Chinese
characteristic . With the help of the capital and without the hurting of capital, Chinese
should have a new location of its society.(4)The struggling for public space is important in
understanding new dimension of historical materialism. Spatial justice and the right to city
in China is the key element in building democracy . We should pay more attention on the
capital role in struggling for geography. (5)Going to urban society: An new step for Chinese
construction of its socialist building. There is new discourse to describe the present situation
of China.And there should be a new urban society model than the countryside one for
looking into future of China.
The new situation in China is important for the contemporary development of historical
materialism . Especially there are some spatial strategy in contemporary China, such as rural
areas encircling the cities, the rural household contract responsibility system, the
urbanization, the integration of urban and rural areas. Maybe the spatial perspective is the
key to understand Chinese development and it is important to develop historical
materialism."
Immanuel Ness
South African Mineworkers and Class Struggle Unionism
Paper chronicles and critically examines the formation of new worker organizations in South Africas
mining sector from 1998 to the present. In the mining sector, migrant and local workers are paid
low wages, live in poverty, and work in grueling and dangerous jobs. Workers are resisting through
joining autonomous general assemblies and engaging in sit-down strikes, often without the support
of the National Mine Union. Examination and analysis of democratic workers struggles, workplace
and community mobilization, class-struggle unionism, Marikana massacre, COSATU, NUMSA, Amcu,
and new union formations, and historic twenty week platinum strike in 2014.

Barbara

Neukirchinger

Critical Theory, Poststructuralism and the intersection of gender and disability

"In this paper I will discuss the interlocking of gender and disability within a framework that
draws together Critical Theory, Poststructuralism, and Intersectionality. While gender and
disability generate special forms of discrimination, feminist disability studies, that focuses
on commonalities regarding identity politics, experiences of oppression or a cultural body
history, is still at the beginning. My aim is to broaden this research with an examination of

structural socio-economic conditions by using the Critical Theory of Adorno and

Horkheimer.
I want to investigate, if these approaches can be combined for a comprehensive analysis of
inequality, because poststructural and intersectional influenced ideas are often seem to lack
a profound analysis of capitalist structures. Critical Theory is characterised by a distinctive
socio-critical and economic-based analysis of underlying structures, but is often evaluated as
overly generalising in portraying contemporary societies. Simultaneously poststructural
theories provide a finer picture of social differences and the consequential power relations.
Therefore, the research project strives to assess how the association of these approaches
can advance the understanding of the interlocking of gender and disability in neoliberal
society and the influence of structural factors, how theoretical oppositions can be overcome
to contribute to prevailing approaches in (feminist) disability studies."
Patrick Neveling

The flexibility of accumulation before "flexible accumulation": cornerstones for a post-

fictional historical anthropology of the twentieth century capitalist world-system
I argue that mainstream assessments of the rise of neoliberalism are highly problematic for
two reasons. First, neoliberalism did not appear as a watershed in the world-system after
the 1970s global crisis, as many macro-approaches would have it. Instead, if we can speak of
a neoliberal model at all, this emerged in the 1930s and became powerful via US policies
towards the Global South. Since the US-Truman administration's Point Four program of the
late 1940s policies were about maintaining, and not establishing, deregulated labour
relations and "off-hands" postcolonial policies towards multinational corporations. Notions
of a global emergence of neoliberalism are then, at best, Western-centric orientalisms.
Second, the global spread of export processing zones (EPZs) and special economic zones
(SEZs) is often propagated as one of the defining features of a global shift in the 1970s. This
is often associated with a rise of Newly Industrialised Countries (NIC) in East and Southeast
Asia. A concise enquiry of the spread of such zones on a global scale and in particular
national settings reveals two very different periodisations, however. The world's first EPZ
was set up in Puerto Rico in 1947. Similar policies spread rapidly in the 1950s. If we consider
the impact of these policies on the ground, it is evident that the shift from Fordism to
neoliberalism that is so central to macro-models in anthropology, never actually happened.
What is called neoliberal was instead a slight revision of existing colonial policies in many
nations of the Global South.
Mirko Nikolic
"All That Is Air Melts Into City". Sketches of a flat ontological political economy

How do we bring nonhuman entities into the social, or how do we forge collectives of
humans and nonhumans [Latour, 2000]? This is, in my view, one of the key political
questions for the Anthropocene and beyond. More than giving voice to nonhumans,
through my doctoral research I explore aesthetic modes of making tangible labour of
nonhumans that is invisible in humans economy and inventing possible ways of working
together with them. The aim of this endeavour is not an economic product, not even a
social relation (immaterial labour), instead it is conjunction, [to] enter into relation with
entities not composed of our matter, not speaking our language, and not reducible to the
communication of discreet, verbal, or digital signs. [Berardi, 2012] As such, this practice
tries to deterritorialize away from semio-capitalism into the realm of political ecology, to
imagine a politics of vital materialism [Bennett, 2010].
In my recent art/research project All That Is Air Melts Into City I have tackled the idea of
political/economic representation of carbon-dioxide (CO2), the crucial greenhouse gas yet
intangible to our senses. The project is a materialisation of the circulation of carbon-dioxide
through human and non-human ecologies.
Carbon-dioxide takes a panoply of shapes as it moves between air, animal bodies, plants,
rocks, combustion engines, and further. Recently it has become an economic figure too, the
main protagonist of the European Union Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS), electronic
financial market for trading in allowances to release tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere -
European Emission Allowances, or simply carbon stocks. This markets logic is complex
and its movements are hard to discern almost as it is difficult to see the molecules of CO2 in
the sky. Yet, this market is materially sited in the City of London, and the greenhouse effect
is real.
Through a performative walk across London, I have enacted a series of potential financial
exchanges of carbon stocks at a human pace. At the same time, I have tracked the
photosynthetic activity of the vegetation in the city, the effective volumes of CO2 in the air,
and paralleled this with live streamed financial data about the trading of the carbon stock.
These different types of information have been streamed near-live on an online platform
thus bringing together a multitude of actors that are not (yet) economically and politically
related. The electronic stock market, the photosynthetic labour of trees and movements of
the air are assembled and represented together, thus revealing the present disjunctions but
also possible conjunctions.
This is but one of the tentative steps in reimagining our political economy in the time of
climate change, and I would like to share it with the public of the Historical Materialism
conference and discuss possible ways of moving this artistic/theoretical research further.
More information about the project at> http://allthatisairmeltsintocity.cc/

August Nimtz

The Bolsheviks Come to Power: A New Interpretation

"Three years after the Bolshevik-led triumph in October 1917, Lenin wrote that his partys
participation in the four Russian State Dumas between 1906 and 1915 was
indispensable in that success. A detailed reading of that experience supports Lenins
claim as well as making it possible to connect for the first time the dots between Marx and
Engelss electoral/parliamentary strategy and what the Bolsheviks carried out in the October
Revolution. This is a distillation of the evidence presented in my recently published two-
volume book,*Lenins Electoral Strategy: The Ballot, the Streetsor Both. *"
Tony Norfield

Capitalist Power: Fictitious Capital, Corporations and Finance

The financial system both reflects capitalist economic power and is a means of reinforcing it.
This is shown not simply in the subordination of debtors (countries, companies or
individuals) in a 'credit crunch', but, more importantly, in the regular, day-to-day operations
of the financial system. Such power is wielded not only by banks and other financial
institutions, but also by the state and all kinds of capitalist company. Modern capitalism
takes a financial form, one that marshals society's resources for the benefit of the few. This
paper details the main forms in which this happens today, analysing the international flow
of funds, the foreign exchange, bond and equity markets and explaining the central role of
what Marx called 'fictitious capital' (financial securities). It will examine how the major
imperialist countries dominate global financial markets and are able to use these to
appropriate surplus value from the rest of the world economy.
Diana O'Dwyer & Eileen

Connolly

Internationalising Gramscis Concept of the Integral State in a Neoliberal Capitalist Era:

NGOs and Outsourcing the State

"This paper integrates Gramscis concept of the integral capitalist state as a dialectical unity
of political and civil society with his dual concept of passive revolution, in the context of
transnationalising neoliberal capitalism. Tracing the evolution of the integral capitalist state
via two interlinked passive revolutions neoliberal restructuring of established capitalist
states from the 1980s and the concurrent intensified globalisation of neoliberal capitalist
state forms flowing from the (re-)establishment of capitalism in formerly Stalinist states it
argues that contrary to social-democratic accounts of a retreat of the state, the
relationship of political and civil society in the integral state has instead been reconfigured.
One important way this has occurred is through the outsourcing, initially of service, and
later of policy and ideological functions from political society/government to government-
supported civil society organisations or NGOs.

This has helped capitalism to survive by further constraining the already severely limited
autonomy of civil society from capitalist interests, tightening the integration of civil and
political society, and reinforcing civil societys hegemonic role of continually (re-)legitimising
the capitalist state and the class relations it maintains. Politically, it offers the increased
flexibility and political deniability of subcontracted governance, at a time when public trust
in NGOs also far exceeds that in governments, political parties or corporations.
Economically, it reinforces a non-profit tier within the economic base, characterised by low
wages and conditions. This reduces costs for the state and the social demands on capital,
while enabling these relations of production to be justified ideologically vis--vis NGOs non-
profit or charitable purpose.
Drawing on original research into the international NGO campaigns to ban landmines and
cluster munitions, the paper shows how this closer integration of civil and political society
has worked to legitimise a Western-dominated international capitalist order and the
Western-dominated world military order that sustains it. Western-based NGOs working in
partnership with Western governments are key actors in this, both domestically and in the
South, where together with local partner NGOs, they insinuate Western-based
transnational capitalist interests within peripheral and semi-peripheral states. This
reinforces historical processes of uneven and combined development and helps create
international ideological support for an international capitalist order that remains Western-
dominated. Such transnational NGOisation represents a largely neglected dimension of
both the internationalisation of the state and comprador capitalism."
Blair Ogden

What is Divine Violence? Towards a Definitive Account

"Benjamins remarks about
divine violence are too condensed, opaque and elliptical to interpret in any definitive
manner.
Jay Bernstein, Violence: Thinking Without Banisters (20013)
Today there is still little consensus about what Walter Benjamin actually meant by divine
violence. Commentators disagree over three simple questions. Who is the agent of divine
violence? Is it necessarily lethal? Is it ethical? My paper will outline (and defend) a plausible
philosophical interpretation of what Benjamin meant by divine violence. The Critique of
Violence provides us with two quasi-definitions of the term. One thing we know with
certainty is what it is not: Benjamin clearly states that divine violence is the antithesis of
mythic violence. Another strategy employed by Benjamin is to define divine violence by
examining its consequences: one of its consequences is that it destroys the law; another one
of its consequences is that it expiates guilt from human beings etc. Rather than trying to
improve upon these quasi-definitions I will argue that we should be asking a much more
interesting philosophical question: namely: how is divine violence actually possible? In other

words what conditions the possibility of this phenomenon? My paper is based around three
interlocking claims.

Hypothesis (I): Benjamin believed that divine violence is possible because of the fact
that human beings possess the power to execute a particular type of judgement.

Hypothesis (II): Benjamin believed that aesthetic judgements about beauty and
political judgements about divine violence are (roughly) analogous.

Hypothesis (III): Benjamin believed that the agent of divine violence is (roughly)
analogous to the figure of the artistic genius in the Critique of Judgement.
According to my interpretation of the Critique of Violence there is a strong family
resemblance between judgements about beauty and divine violence insofar as both
judgements make use of the activities of the imagination. This conclusion provokes further
interest in the relationship between politics and aesthetics.
Hyung-suk

OH & Seung-wook

BAEK

Transformation of Korean capitalism in the 1990s: focused on the Hanbo bankruptcy case
Polemics on the causes of the 1997 Korean crisis diverged between neoliberalism and
developmental-statism. As for the former, strong influences of neoliberalism and weak state
were main causes for the crisis whereas as for the latter the strong state of crony capitalism
was a main cause for the crisis. Despite many differences, however, both claims share a
common issue: strong or weak state. On the contrary dynamics of capital is least addressed.
This paper will focus on the accumulation strategy of capital, especially emphasizing
difficulties of Korean Chaebol for profit-making way-out in the 1990s. I select Hanbo
bankruptcy case for my study. Hanbo was bankrupted in January 1997, and many critics
condemned for its irrational expansion. I want to challenge against that condemnation since
over-investments in 1990s could be regarded both as inevitable and partly rational for
Korean capital considering internal and external circumstances. With Hanbo case, I will show
that the 1997 Korean crisis revealed structural limits of dynamics of late 20th Korean
capitalism, rather than the irrationality of crony capitalism or deregulation. This study will
help to understand unique nature of neoliberalism in Korea.
Vesa Oittinen

Commodity Fetishism as A Transcendental Illusion: from Kant to Marx and back

In my paper I would view Marxs concept of commodity fetishism from a point of view which
is quite different from most previous approaches. I attempt to demonstrate, that the
doctrine of commodity fetishism as it is presented towards the end of first chapter of Marxs
Capital, has important consequences on how we should understand Marxs dialectical
method. Contrary to Hegel, the dialectics has in Marx as a mode of exposition a critical

function. Its aim is to reveal the upside down turned world of capitalist production
relations, a world which is created by the fetishisms of commodity economy. In this respect,
Marxs idea of dialectics parallels to Kants, who spoke of the dialectics as a critique of
illusions (Kritik des Scheins): the critical philosophy reveals the origin of illusions of
transcendental judgements (KrV B 234 sqq.). In an analogous manner, the theory of
commodity fetishism serves for Marx to unveil the illusion(s) of bourgeois political economy,
which accepts the surface appearances of economic life without questioning them. So there
is in this respect a clear resemblance between the dialectics in Kant and in Marx.
Chris OKane

The Symbol of Power, The Form of Thought: Money, Measure and Abstraction in Foucault
and Sohn-Rethel

This contribution to the critical theory stream looks to draw on Michel Foucaults comments
on money in the recently translated Lectures on the Will to Know in order to compare
Foucaults and Alfred Sohn-Rethels accounts of how measure and abstraction developed in
tandem with the emergence of the Ancient Greek Market. In particular, it will compare how
their respective interpretations differ in regard to Foucaults conception of the symbolic
power of money and Sohn-Rethels conception of real and conceptual abstraction.
Although it is usually argued that Foucault possessed a neo-Ricardian interpretation of
Marx, and that Sohn-Rethel provided a seminal value-theoretical interpretation of Marxs
critique of political economy, I will also endeavour to show how Foucaults account of the
historical-specificity of the Ancient Greek market can be used to improve Sohn-Rethels
trans-historicism and move towards bringing their accounts of power and thought into
alignment with each other.

Benjamin

Opratko

Gramscis Relevance reconsidered. Theorising Hegemony, analysing Racism

"In 1986, the late Stuart Hall published his seminal Gramscis relevance for the study of
race and ethnicity. Preoccupied with intervening in a specific conjuncture of (the crisis of)
Marxism, it formulated a powerful critique of orthodox Marxism in rather general terms,
yet remained rather vague in terms of concrete inquiries in the nature of racism(s). Almost
thirty years later, the question of Gramscis relevance remains with us: How could a
Gramscian theoretical framework that is, a framework of Marxist analysis that places the
question of hegemony at its centre contribute to a deeper understanding of the ways in
which contemporary racism(s) work?
This paper discusses the possibilities opened up by Gramsci, Hall and others, of analysing
racism as an integral aspect of capitalist hegemony. In a first part, elements of a Hegemony-

theory of racism are traced in Gramscis own work, including his considerations on the
Southern Question and his reflections on Anti-Semitism. Secondly, Stuart Halls specific
argument for Gramscis relevance for the study of race and racism is discussed and re-
considered, reconnecting his essay with earlier considerations on race, and especially with
the collectively authored analysis of racialization in Policing the crisis. Building upon these
arguments, I sketch contours of a theoretical framework integrating the analysis of racism
into a Gramscian problematique of hegemony allowing investigating the concrete ways in
which racism can be considered part of a historical bloc.
Finally, this theoretical framework is illustrated by preliminary findings from ongoing
original research on contemporary forms of anti-Muslim racism in Austria. Data collected in
interviews conducted with journalists and media personnel is analysed as a complex
ensemble of organic intellectuals investments in in a broad, hegemonic anti-Muslim
discourse, offering means of stabilizing the current historical bloc organized around implicit
and explicit logics of class, gender, sexuality and crisis."
Maia Pal

Human Rights or State Capitalism Beyond Borders? Extraterritorial Obligations and

Jurisdictional Accumulation
This paper identifies how certain processes of international law are intertwined with the
development of capitalism. It develops the concept of jurisdictional accumulation by
applying it to the emergence of Extraterritorial Obligations of States in the domains of
Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ETOs), grounded in the Maastricht Principles (2012). In
effect, advocates of ETOs argue that these legal concepts can help to address the gaps
between economic globalisation and global governance. They assert that states and non-
state actors such as corporations with sovereign authority, are responsible for their actions
territorially and extraterritorially, thereby making a claim about the primary role of
international law in shaping and regulating state sovereignty. Accordingly, extraterritorial
jurisdiction is not merely a secondary manifestation of territorial jurisdiction or an
instrument of state expansion, but an equivalent component of sovereignty and therefore
equally actionable in domestic and international courts. Are these human rights beyond
borders a challenge to the expansion of capitalist legal processes? Or do they help
capitalism survive? By focusing on the accumulation of jurisdictional power through
jurisdictional struggles and a historical sociology of jurisdiction, the paper uncovers the
agency behind certain extraterritorial practices. This provides theoretical scope to explore
the democratic potential of extraterritorial jurisdiction la Maastricht Principles.
Specifically, the paper wishes to help determine whether the accumulation of rights and
jurisdiction to ensure states obligations to protect, respect and fulfil those rights can be
distinguished from dominant states and corporations (ab)use of extraterritorial jurisdiction
as a strategy of capitalist legal expansion. In other words, can jurisdictional and capitalist
accumulation be distinguished in the contemporary legal order?

Clment

Paradis

From the hotel to the brothel: Prousts capitalist ballet

You dont expect readers to believe that theres actually a link between Proust and the
Marxist theory, do you? might ask the careful reader. Without any provocation, my answer
will be clear: lets read In Search of Lost Time again it hasnt revealed all its secrets. One of
them lies in the hotels depicted by the narrator: some of them are of course luxury hotels,
where aristocrats and bourgeois observe themselves and fantasize about the working class
serving them. But Proust also describes another kind of hotel: the brothel where the same
population meets, served once again by honest people exploited to the very core of their
psyche and sexuality or, as Lukcs explains, reified, because everything and everybody is
to be consumed in these hotels by the clients, the staff included. The logic of the hotels,
every one of them, is the logic of prostitution. As Jupien, the director of a hotel hiding a
homosexual brothel, explains: Here, contrary to the doctrine of the Carmelites, it is thanks
to vice that virtue is able to live. Mandeville and his Fable of the Bees arent far. Proust
thus reveals the logic of the economy of his world a liberal logic based on the disposability
of human beings. The author is here at the core of modernity: as French philosopher Michel
Clouscard explains, the prostitute is the key-commodity; it is the origin of the reciprocal
engendering of market and desire. Unexpectedly, Proust describes, at the end of his novel, a
complex economical system, that the Marxist theory can help us decipher and that shows
how capitalism survives through the reciprocal promotion of the power of money, sex,
youth and beauty, in a real market of desire.
Michael

Patrick McCabe

A Left Without a State: Confronting the Climate Crisis in the Context of Neoliberal State
Restructuring and Left Anti-Statism
This paper problematizes neoliberal state restructuring through the lens of climate change
in order to challenge the politics of anti-statism and decentralization that have become
dominant on the Left; most recently exemplified by the Occupy movement, but found in the
climate justice movement. The nation-state is the only institution with the coercive ability
and financial resources to confront and transcend the carbon-economy, while adapting to
the negative externalities produced by it. However, neoliberal state restructuring has
redirected the regulatory and interventionist mechanisms of the nation-state toward the
singular function of facilitating market processes of accumulation. An additional
consequence of neoliberal state restructuring has been a model of austerity that, in the
United States and the European Union, has resulted in a steady decline in national funding
for climate initiatives. As a result, the burden of developing and implementing solutions to
climate change is devolved to subordinate scales of government that lack the structural and
budgetary capacity to effectively operationalize climate change adaptation and mitigation
strategies. Therefore, if the Left is to effectively address climate change, it must develop a

political program that focuses on confronting, and ultimately controlling the state as a
means by which to redirect its functions away from neoliberal objectives and toward
emancipatory goals that, in the context of climate change, range from structural
transformations in the energy-economy to global climate change adaptation and mitigation
initiatives.
Jos

Paulo Guedes

Pinto

The political economy of the crowdsourcing: intellectual subjection of labor to capital

"It is known that lots of companies are using mass collaboration or crowdsourcing as an
alternative and/or a complement to outsource their production. The diference is that
crowdsourcing relies on ""free"" individual agents that come together and cooperate to
improve a given operation or solve a problem. This can be incentivized by a reward system,
though it is not required.
In this paper we will put in a critical perspective the act of crowdsource inovations by major
companies. We will present some case studies and discuss if the concept of
superexploitation, for example, is adequate to comprehend these new form of labor that
emerges in post-large-scale industry enterprises. One argument is that the previous concept
fails to grasp a new form of labor subjection to capital. Albeit this kind of labor is still under
a real subjection to capital, we can tell that it is not anymore material (as in large-scale
industries) but intellectual. The main question here is why there are a lot of workers that
supply these enterprises with their expertise almost for free? Class struggle still exists, of
course, but it takes new concepts to understand these ""new"" forms of exploitation."
William A. Pelz.

Failed Experiment or Useful Example? The International Working Mens Associations

attempts to promote the Emancipation of Labour, 1864-1876
"Failed Experiment or
Useful Example? The International Working Mens Associations attempts to promote the
Emancipation of Labour, 1864-1876
This paper, drawing heavily on the minutes of meetings and memories of leading
participants, will argue that there are significant lessons that can be learned from the
International Working Mens Association (IWMA). The organization was a historically brief
attempt at labour internationalism but there remain many things that may be learned from
this experience. The organizational model of the International will be examined to
determine both its positive and negative features. In addition, an attempt will be made to
evaluate:

-importance of the fight against slavery and racism by the IWMA,

-internationalism as one of the appealing contributions of the International,

-the articulation of a radical critique of nationalism,

-the difficulty of maintaining a diverse organization that combined rival political ideologies,
-problem of being an open organization in a time of repression.
Finally, a look must be cast beyond the actual real problems of the IWMA to the importance
of the International in winning some workers to the idea of internationalism and labor
activism.
Sanja Petkovska

Cultural studies in Serbia: an endless revision of an 'absent' referent

Cultural studies are known as one of the most recent developments of Marxism emerged
along with and in a response to post-modernism. If the imaginary line from the period of
socialist republic is to be drawn, the last previous echoes of Marxist theory have appeared in
critical theory known for criticizing the Tito's regime - the Praxis group or school of Marxist
humanist philosophy. On the other side, the contemporary state of critical theory is echoed
in local, unclear version of cultural studies. The primarily Marxist origin of British cultural
studies, but also of French post-modernism and Frankfurt critical theory so-called Western
Marxism), can easily be traced in the works of people associated with those movements of
thought. But if we take as an example the contemporary developments of cultural studies in
Serbia, whether we can trace their connection to Marxism and critical theory at all? Our
object of consideration is to be the architecture of post-socialist revisionism of socialist
heritage and of critical theory by mapping the discontinuity produced in thought by
importing cultural studies in an ironically ahistorical and amaterialistic fashion. Furthermore,
the argument to be presented would be stating that a given state of contemporary
developments/echoes of Marxist theory almost completely lack the critical reflection not
towards their own origin, but also towards the given post-socialist reality.
Bruna Piazentin

Martinelli

Gender and sexuality: particularities of the labor force and the accumulation in
telemarketing.
The following paper to be presented on the Eleventh annual Historical Materialism
Conference is a result of reflections that are realized in my masters research, at the
department of sociology of Unicamp, in Brazil. In this research I study the teleworkers of
Campinas So Paulo and their political experiences, in order to understand the
composition of the contemporary working class, as well the main tendencies and aspects of
the actual capitalism. The teleworkers compose a historical recently category, they are a
result of the changes in the capital accumulation pattern occurred circa 1980s, when the
technological increment on the work, the increase of the service sector and the
globalization of capital occurred. In Brazil, is from 1990s when the international division of

labor, and the neoliberalism and the waves of privatization settled in the country that the
telemarketing appears as a capital accumulation sector. The teleworkers are mostly young
women, which also has a significant number of homosexuals and transsexuals. The goal of
this paper is to develop a brief analysis and debate about the following questions: whats
the reason of a large number of women working in telemarketing? How the female working
force is explored in this sector in order to encourage their accumulation of capital? What is
the reason to find in telemarketing a large number of homosexuals and transgender from
less wealthy classes? How these new features reconfigure aspects of the working class in
the struggle between capital and labor, and their political experiences? Among other issues
that also will appear in the discussion that the paper is going to present about the current
functioning of capitalism and the working class.
Herbert

Pimlott

1979 or Thatcherism Revisited: Rethinking the Crisis of the Conjuncture through Cultural
Materialism
On the 35th anniversary of the publication of the late Stuart Hall's Thatcherism thesis in
Marxism Today, and of Margaret Thatchers first of three general election victories, this
paper offers a rethinking of the period of crisis of the late 1970s and early 1980s by
drawing upon Raymond Williamss cultural materialism (I use 1979 as the cypher for this
period of reaction, versus 1968 as the cypher for the radical 1960s). The paper argues
that part of the weakness of Halls Thatcherism thesis was its location within a particular
aesthetic-intellectual formation, which alongside Eric Hobsbawms Forward March of
Labour Halted? thesis, overlooked working-class, counter-hegemonic formations. A key part
of understanding 1979, involves analysing the process of re-formation of the working class
through an analysis of the structure of feeling, as expressed via forms of working-class
practical consciousness in an (pre)emergent culture. The subsequent failure of radical
counter-hegemony cannot just be ascribed to Thatcherism's 'authoritarian populism' per se,
but needs to take into account other aspects of the processes of ideological domination via
mass media, government and political parties, which can be understood in part via
Williamss constitutional authoritarianism, and in part through identifying the failure of a
radical working class emergent culture to become fully emergent.
Simon Pirani

Fossil fuel consumption: how are you counting?

"Global fossil fuel consumption in 2000-2009 was running at more than four times the level
of 1950-1959. Since fossil fuel consumption, and production, are key causes of global
warming, it is generally accepted that reduction of both would be a good thing. And yet
policies aimed at reducing consumption, at both national and international level, have failed
a striking fact of modern history. Since the 1980s, these policies have neither reversed, nor

even slowed down, the aggregate fossil fuel consumption growth rate. Research on what
drives the increase from the consumption side, and the context of and reasons for these
policy failures, is obviously relevant to discussion on climate change.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the first place means reducing fossil fuel
consumption. The way that emissions, and consumption, are counted is highly political.
Much academic work in disciplines such as industrial ecology and structural ecology uses
models based on the IPAT equation (impact = population x affluence x technology) and
variants thereof. The paper will argue that such approaches often downplay or ignore the
role of economic and power relations that shape industries, infrastructures and
technologies that account for most emissions. Vast differences not only in consumption
levels by different people, but also between different types of consumption (for
manufacture by the company that employs you? for personal use?) receive little attention.
Neo-colonial economic relations between the developed countries and others are also often
downplayed, although consumption-based accounting of emissions (i.e. attributing
emissions to the country where stuff is consumed, instead of where it is made) has begun to
counter that.
The paper will review methods of counting emissions, and fossil fuel consumption; consider
some of the notable trends in consumption over the past fifty years; and propose research
methods that could help to analyse consumption in the context of capitalist social relations.
It is part of a project on the global history of fossil fuel consumption on which the author
has begun work in early 2014.
Ana

Podvri

Putting Compradors on the Test: Toward a Critical Analytical Framework for Considering the
Peripherisation of Central-Eastern Europe
As Slovenia, for a long time considered as success story of post-socialist transition, got hit
by the current social-economic crisis, and government proposed a new privatization
program the local left has reframed their debate around the so-called comprador
bourgeoisie, adopting the dependency theory and World System analysis discourse.
Actually, since mid 2000 an important part of left discourse on development of Eastern and
Central Europe has adopted those theoretical paradigms to address the issue of economic
and political dependency on foreign capital. However, regarding recent political and
economic transformations on the global scale we might ask if those paradigms are still
pertinent to consider contemporary processes of peripherisation within EU? Premised on
the commercial understanding of capitalism could they propose an analysis of those
processes from the standpoint and for the working class? Drawn mainly upon recent
insights from Marxist theory of development and Marxist theory of the capitalist state a
critical engagement with above-mentioned approaches is politically necessary and
theoretical productive only an analytical framework that grasp the social mechanisms and

the underlying social logics of the processes of peripherisation within Europe could enable
us to articulate political strategy in favor of the international solidarity.
Julia Podziewska

Lost Property: Political Economy and Inheritance

"The on-going, global economic crisis has turned attention to the Companies Acts of 1844-
56. All sides in the contest over this legislation, the foundation of present-day corporate
governance and company law, drew on novelistic narrative devices. Few literary scholars
have observed this: firstly, because the ascendant material culture school privileges the
tangible object over analysis; secondly, because property transfer in the mid-Victorian novel
overwhelmingly concerns inheritance rather than finance capital.
Focusing on Wilkie Collins, I argue that this new capital leaves its imprint in the form of
complex plots, in narrative flow, on the syntagmatic axis of the novel. It is the ease and pace
with which property in the novels passes through numerous unfamiliar hands that connects
it with company shares and other alienable forms.
Plot has been overlooked. Earlier emancipatory criticism saw capitalism within depictions of
the industrial and urban; recent work informed by identity/recognition politics occludes
class relations and property in the mid-Victorian novel.
By identifying a new object of enquiry the inheritance plotI discern various
conceptualisations of property transmission during the mid-Victorian period and hence
establish more precisely the relationship between the novel and capital."
Gianluca

Pozzoni

Between Philosophy and Social Science: Althusser and the Della Volpean Marxism
As his correspondence demonstrates, in the early 1960s Louis Althusser was particularly
interested in Italian Marxism, especially in the current led by Galvano Della Volpe. The
present paper argues that the Althusserian-Della Volpean link is far from a biographical
accident. On the contrary, it is firmly rooted in a robust but original reading of Marx's work.
In contrast to both the dialectical-materialist orthodoxy of traditional and Soviet Marxism
and the humanist inclinations of Western Marxism, Althusser's and the Della Volpeans'
insistence on the radical difference between Marx and Hegel attests their attempt to detach
Marxism from its allegedly Idealist or historicist roots. According to both interpretations,
Marx's "rupture" with Hegel's philosophy lays the foundations for his turn to a scientific
attitude towards the study of society. In Althusserian and Della Volpean Marxism, "Capital"
is very much seen as a work of social science, to prove which both schools resort to
comparisons between Marx's method and classic standards of philosophy of science (French
epistemology and post-Galilean scientific method, respectively). The paper then concludes

by arguing that framing Marxism in modern epistemological terms provided the basis for a
fruitful research programme in the social sciences.
Katja Praznik

Artistic autonomy between mystification and emancipation: theorizing cultural labor

legislation in postsocialist context
"Drawing on a distinction between culture as ideological production and culture as
economic production, this paper will analyze the cultural-policy regulation of cultural labor
legislation (laws for free-lance cultural work) and contradictions of the claims for artistic
autonomy that became apparent due to the introduction of new form of cultural work from
the 1980s to 2000s in the context of post-socialist Slovenia. In this context that exemplifies
the transition from socialism to the neoliberal era, the issues of artistic autonomy and the
regulation of cultural labor will be analyzed by confronting two theoretical perspectives,
spontaneous ideology (Althusser) and fetishism of social relations (Marx, Heinrich).
Considering the effects of the new regulation as well as the prevailing commodification of
cultural work from these two perspectives, the paper will explicate the process of
mystification of economic foundations of cultural production by arguing that cultural
producers understand the relative autonomy of art on the level of ideological production as
autonomy of their production process. Hence, assertions of the artistic autonomy function
as a kind of spontaneous ideology that mystifies the economic relations in the sphere of
culture. By focusing on this mystification the paper will furthermore foreground the
ideological discursive forms (such as self-employed cultural producer, cultural entrepreneur,
freelancer) usually attached to assertions of the artistic autonomy in order to question its
alleged emancipatory potential during the deconstruction of the welfare state.
Hugo Radice
Class Theory and Class Politics Today
The 2013 BBC survey of the present-day British class structure paints a picture of a society
fragmented into seven classes defined by income, occupation and culture. At the same time, for
several decades progressive discourse has counterposed working class politics and social
movements as revolutionary agents. This essay asks whether there remains a working class as
analysed in Marxs critique of political economy, and whether as such it has any potential role in
building a popular alternative to capitalism.
After briefly reviewing the traditional Marxist view, I examine three major debates on class in the
1960s to 1980s. First, the rise of the new middle classes led mainstream sociologists to challenge
Marxs two-class model, and the New Left sought to respond to these claims either by positing a
third class, or by reasserting the validity of the old model. Secondly, even if the two-class model
remained valid at some level, in the context of postwar prosperity and consumerism the reality of
working-class differentiation directly challenged the lefts faith in the working class as revolutionary
agent. Thirdly, non-class movements challenged forms of oppression based on gender, ethnicity

and sexuality, and thereby also the traditional view that privileged a class politics rooted in capitalist
production.
Here I argue for an alternative understanding of production and labour, rooted in Marxs distinction
between abstract labour (in the realm of value) and concrete labour (in the realm of use-value).
While the former is historically restricted to capitalism, and imprisoned in both its production
relations and its ideology, the latter refers to the immanent relation between humanity and nature,
which privileges the overall process of social reproduction and transcends that historical restriction.
If the historical role of the working class remains the abolition of all classes, it will be founded upon
the unity of purpose that underpins concrete labour to meet social needs. The challenge is to
develop that unity of purpose into a popular alternative to the rule of money.

Nat

Raha

Queer Marxism and the task of contemporary queer social critique

"The successes of mainstream LGBT organisations lobbying governments for civil rights has
created a historical moment of enfranchisement and disenfranchisement for LGBTQ
(lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans/transgender, queer) subjects and life in the West. LGBT civil
empowerment is juxtaposed with austerity measures and public reforms that have a strong
impact across lines of race/immigration status, class, ability and gender.
The concepts of homonormativity (Duggan 2003) and homonationalism (Puar 2007), and
recent Marxist interventions into queer theory (e.g. Floyd 2009, Hennessy 2000, Muoz
2009) have begun to connect the social legitimatisation of queer subjects to issues of class
and economic power; however, this paper will argue that this work has yet to sufficiently
theorise the normalising function of contemporary forms of capitalist reproduction and
accumulation.
Critiquing queer readings of Marxs labour theory of value (heavily influenced by Spivak
1988), it will consider how the commodity form enables the liberation of queer lives and
queer labour through the capitalist drive for profit. It will theorise how neoliberalism thrives
off difference through the commodification and reproduction of difference via identity,
necessarily transforming the qualitative character of queer everyday life a necessity for
capitals survival."
Vasna Ramasar

Inherited futures: Race and class in water struggles in South Africa

This paper examines the role of processes of accumulation by state apparatus engaged in
water service delivery in South Africa and the citizen struggles against this process. The
marketization and privatization of water service delivery opened up new territory globally
for accumulation through the framing of water as a economic good. Democratic South
Africa has been no less affected by a process that has resulted in disempowered
communities and led to water shortages, particularly in poor and black communities.

Community protests and social movements have become a normalized part of everyday life
in former township and informal settlements. These practices of democratic voice and
resistance have met violent responses from the state. In the time of Marikana, we see
echoes of an apartheid past where race and class are combined so that the poors of South
Africa remain peripheral to the development of a nation. Participation has been shaped in a
democratic South Africa in line with notions of good governance. The resultant closure of
spaces of resistance and social movements converges with historically disadvantaged race
and class identities. Whether these movements can be scaled up to a collective response
which breaks the narrow confines of participation and re-establishes water as a human right
as more important than water as an economic good, remains to be seen.
Nora Rathzel & David

Uzzell

Trade Unions, Climate Change and Global Unequal Power Relations

"Especially since 2006 trade unions in the global north and the global south as well as
international trade union federations and confederations have been developing strategies
against climate change. There are many obstacles in the way of trade union strategies for
climate change mitigation and adaptation. One of the most decisive is the policy conflict
between unions in the global north and the global south. While there are north-north and
south-south differences, the conflicts between trade unions in the global north and the
global south have their origins both in the unequal living conditions of workers and the
unequal power relations between unions in the global south and the global north. Based on
two research projects investigating trade unions environmental strategies in Brazil, South
Africa, India, Sweden, and the UK, we discuss the different ways in which unions of the
global north and south assess the causes and consequences of climate change and the
relationship between labour and nature. While in both hemispheres the protection of jobs
and the protection of nature need to go hand in hand, it is mainly in unions of the global
south that Capital is seen as exploiting both the earth and the worker. This creates conflicts
between northern and southern unions concerning the development of climate change
strategies. Submission"
Paula Rauhala

New Marx Reading in the East

"How the West German New Marx Reading (Neue Marx-Lektre) was received in socialist
countries?
West German philosopher Hans-Georg Backhaus first presented his monetary interpretation
of Marxs value theory in juxtaposition with Soviet philosopher Evald Ilyenkovs
understanding of Marxs theory of value.

In the second part of his series of essays Materialien zur Rekonstruktion Marxschen
Werttheorie in 1975 Backhaus quotes Ilyenkov stating that: [t]heoretical definitions of
value as such can only be obtained by considering a certain objective economic reality
capable of existing before, outside, and independently of all those phenomena that later
developed on its basis [...] this reality is direct exchange of one commodity for another
commodity.
Backhaus states that Ilyenkov, due to his premonetary and historicist understanding, can't
make a difference between Marxian and Ricardian theory of value. But Ricardo and Marx
significantly differ on their understanding of the nature of value-objectivity. Ricardian labour
theory of value leaves the mystifications brought about by the value-form intact. In
Backhauss reading it is important that Marx's critique of political economy is not just an
economic theory but rather a critique concerning the perverted form of socialisation of
labour through its products.
Later Backhaus has recommended Ilyenkovs Dialectics of the Abstract and the Concrete in
Marxs Capital to his readers, naming Ilyenkov as a theoretician who understood the
importance of Hegels philosophy in Marxs work.
Also Ilyenkov showed interest in Backhaus's work. He translated into Russian Backhaus's
essay Zur Dialektik der Wertform. Elsewhere Ilyenkov judges Backhaus interpretation on
value as Fichtean.
Peter Ruben, a philosopher from GDR, critiqued Backhauss interpretation on value theory
as Hegelian.
Ruben himself, just like Backhaus and Ilyenkov, paid a considerable attention at Hegels
Science of Logic in his reading of Marx. Together with the economist Hans Wager Ruben
wrote an article on socialist form of value, encountering fierce criticisms in GDR.
Besides Backhaus, Ruben discusses also other West German theoreticians and topics of the
New Marx Reading, or the Capital-logic (Kapitallogik), as he names it. Ruben develops his
ideas in a dialogue with the works of Alfred Schmidt, Helmut Reichelt and Hans-Jrgen
Schanz, Grundrisse and the first German edition of the Capital.
Aditya Ray & Jayprakash

Sharma

Analyzing Primitive Accumulation at the Margins: Incomplete Commodification and the

Wastelands of Capital in Chattisgarh, India
"We suggest in this paper that the (neo) Marxian geographical/anthropological frameworks
that frequently apply Marxs analysis of primitive accumulation to reckon with neoliberal
developments related to land and resource usurpation in urban and rural contexts in the
Global South, could be enriched in dialogue with other heterodox theoretical expositions, in

order to grasp better the dynamics of neoliberal expansion and the resulting counter-
movements in various underdeveloped regions of the Global South.
Heterodox schools such as classical substantivst as well as postcolonial streams exhibit
divergent understandings of capital accumulation and capitalist development, which often
sit uncomfortably with the Marxist frame of analysis providing sometimes complementary,
sometimes competing justifications for uneven/underdevelopment in the Global periphery.
We believe however, that specific intellectual contributions such as Polanyis (1944)
fundamental notion of the of fictitious commodities (relating to land-labour-and-money)
along with Sanyals (2007) seminal idea of wasteland of capital a condition specific to,
and characteristic of, post-colonial capitalism, read not in isolation but in consonance, are
useful as well as critical concepts for sharpening our understanding of specific processes of
neoliberal capitalist accumulation as well as the ensuing tumult at the very margins of global
capitalism.
By ensconcing the narrative about the struggle stemming from the land grab by
multinational mining corporations in resource-rich but abjectly backward tribal regions of
Chhattisgarh (India) in the above dynamic neo Marixan-heterodox framework, the paper will
attempt to tackle the dilemma of how, even with the ostensible presence of severe class
antagonism and resistance to structural relations of power at such sites of dispossession,
the structural hold of the state-corporate capital seems to negotiate and persist over
considerable lengths of time."
Gianfranco

Rebucini & Gianfranco

Rebucini

Thinking the Far-right's Hegemonic Project as a Sexual Project: a Critique of Norm-Centered

Sexual Politics
"In the last decades, criticisms of hetero/homonormativity have provided an original
framework of social analysis laying bare the current transformations of social relations of
gender and sexualities. In particular, this strand of critique has underlined the crucial link
between, on the one hand, an emerging sexual social stratification and, on the other hand,
an inclusion of LGB subjectivities into national projects across different European social
formations. This 'sexual passive revolution' has been read through both marxist and post-
structuralist lens. However, we aim to show in this paper that a pervasive reliance to a
Foucaldian methodology in the analysis of 'norms' has prevented more political analyses to
emerge. In particular, we would argue here that a focus on 'norms' puts too much emphasis
on 'lifestyle politics' rather than broader transformative practices pertaining to the social
stratification of sexualities.
In order to claim for an alternative approach, more reliant on gramscian concepts of
'hegemony', 'historical bloc' and 'passive revolution', we will focus on the current strategies
of the far-right in Europe to rebuild a social/political constituency. There is now much

evidence that these attempts have more and more relied on a blurring of the traditional line
between 'progressive' and 'reactionary' demands, in particular in the domain of sexualities.
However, an inquiry into LGB politics that merely takes into account the normalization of
subjectivities, identities and practices obscures the more conjunctural dynamics at stake in
current far-right victimization of national-white queer bodies. We would argue that these
attempts reflect a project of undermining antagonisms based on sexuality. This is part of a
more general strategy of building a historical bloc through a dual process: obscuring social
relations (of sexualities, gender and class) on the one hand, atomizing potential
communities of resistance on the other. This boils down to a horizon of strong sexual
hierarchies (where heterosexuality remains the main way of organizing production and
reproduction) in a social fabric politicized through the rejection of the non-white 'Other'.
This implies that an exclusive focus on norms entraps left political strategy in a
power/resistance game, preventing it to confront emerging sexual/hegemonic projects. We
argue instead that left strategies aiming at transforming the sexual organization of
production and reproduction, in an expansive dynamic of social alliances, have generally
more political purchase and are more conducive to undermining what is nowadays meant
by 'homonationalism'."
Tommaso Redolfi

Riva

Critique and Presentation: Bailey and Ricardo in Marx's Dialectic of the Form of Value

"Marxs critique of David Ricardo represents a topic that has often been debated. The same
cannot be said of his criticism of Samuel Bailey, which has for a long time remained in the
shade. My aim in this paper is not to reconstruct the role of the works of Samuel Bailey and
Davis Ricardo in the development of Marxs critique of political economy from a historical
point of view. My aim is rather a theoretical one, that is, to show that Ricardo and Bailey
represent two fundamental moments of Marxs presentation. Moment is here used in a
non-generic sense: what I wish to highlight is that as they are presented in Marxs critique of
political economy, Ricardos and Baileys theories of value represent two opposite and
contradictory sides of the category of value.
After having presented Marxs critique of Ricardo and Bailey I will try to reflect on the
deficiencies of classical and vulgar political economy from a methodological point of view.
Finally I intend to trace back the methodological lacks of political economy to the object of
political economy itself: I will try to present Ricardo and Baileys theories of value as
historically determined ways of existence of consciences, socially valid form of thought."
Jos

Reis

Ambivalence and gloom on the edge of the Atlantic: the post-2008 global crisis in Portugal
The post-2008 global financial crisis unleashed a storm not only in the material order but
also in the symbolic order. It has shaken the hegemony of neoclassical economics

epistemologically, of neoliberalism politically, while on the cultural realm its impact, more
varied across countries and harder to summarise in one term, is nonetheless unmistakable.
In the case of Portugal, it is interesting how, despite a wide diversity of discourses in the
mass media, bestseller books, through to more academic accounts, the hegemonic cultural
appropriation of the crisis that seems to emerge is framed around a particular national
essentialism of moral overtones. This kind of negative nationalism mythologises the
people as a uniform mass who, rather than grand virtues, is instead uniquely beset by
grand defects that ultimately are to blame for the crisis and legitimate all subsequent
suffering. This nebulous but very operative common sense re-invokes images from
Portugals colonial past, and its particular coloniser/colonised ambivalence, replaced in the
post-1980s period of European integration for an imagination of the Centre (we are a
developed country), but not quite suppressed. At the same time, and at least for the time
being, it pervades projections of the future in the cultural realm, from media discourse to
essay to art, with a dystopian stance. This communication draws on an on-going research on
how ideas of economic crisis are created and appropriated in economics, politics and
culture.
Matthieu

Renault & Bronnikova

Olga

Bolshevism in Translation: Inter-national Communism in the Wake of the October Revolution

A radical upheaval in the heart of the Russian Empire with tremendous effects on the
Western capitalist world as a whole, the Soviet Revolution gave rise and/or voice to
manifold (national) translations of Bolshevism at the margins (both internal and external) of
Russia. Contrary to what one might presume, those various versions of national
communism (Muslim, East Asian, Jewish, Ukrainian, etc.) were not alienated from each
other: at some points, they interacted, intertwined, exchanged their views and shared their
experiences. Given the deep heterogeneity of the margins (okrainy) these national
communisms originated from (in geographical, cultural and political terms), their dialogue
far from merely relying on common remnants of nationalism inside the healthy body of
internationalism involved a complex process of mutual (re)translations of Bolchevism; in
other words, it implied the construction of an inter-national communism, which remains to
be examined. To begin with, this paper focuses on Mirsaid Sultan Galievs Muslim national
communism and explores three interrelated issues: 1) Sultan-Galievs activities at the
Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV) during the early 1920s especially
his relations with Asian communists (Chinese, Indian, Indonesian, Vietnamese); 2) The
critical attitude of non-Russian communists (such as Mykola Skrypnik from Ukraine)
towards Sultan-Galievs first arrest in May 1923; 3) The ideological connections between
Muslim communism and the older Jewish Labour Bund.
Paul Reynolds

The Lure of Agency and subjectivity: Reflecting on Hall and Laclau and the problem of agency
and practice in Marxist theory

With the passing of Stuart Hall and Ernesto Laclau there has been a wave of interest in
putting their work in perspective. In this paper I want to explore critically a common if
differentiated problem that Hall and Laclau represent within the context of the post-Marxist
engagements with Marxism: The lure of agency and subjectivity. Both thinker in different
ways expanded the possibilities of agency and subjectivity within a structurally and socially
conceived analysis of the social relations of production within the materialist conception of
history. What both accounts did was to widen the conceptual space for agency within social
and cultural context and privilege the subjective engagement with social contexts and
conjunctures. In doing so, they allowed new possibilities for a more fluid, plastic, culturally
discursive and phenomenologically conceived development within Marxist theory which in
turn encouraged an inclusive and more reformist politics. Whilst this offered possibilities
that revivified Marxist theory, it failed to grasp a crucial problem - the lure of agency and
subjectivity discursively constituted failed to account for the problem of determinations and
hegemonic power, which were dismissed rather than engaged with. The proper terrain for
the meeting of agency and subjectivity - and for an accounting of its import beyond its
seductive lure, is in a concept of practice that recognizes precisely the materiality of human
subjectivity in context and conjuncture as constituting definite determinant structures. This
paper will describe the terms of this terrain and seek to articulate some of the problem it
raises for Marxists in both accounting for agency and subjectivity in their proper place and
recognizing the real problems of building of revolutionary movement and politics
Bruce Robinson

Marxs Categories of Labour, Value Production and Digital Work

"This presentation will outline some of Marxs categories of labour and use them as a basis
for categorising digital work. In particular, the pairings of living and dead labour, waged and
unwaged labour, productive and unproductive labour and labour subsumed by capital
versus free labour enable us to identify those forms of digital production that create value,
those that are unproductive in Marxs sense, those that remain outside the control of
capital and those that do not require human labour. This enables us, for example, to
challenge the analysis that users of Google and Facebook produce surplus value.
We will present the underlying arguments that not all labour produces value, that there is
an important distinction between activities that create value and those that reduce costs for
capital, and that some online activities are effectively automated. This entails a critique of
three schools of critical analysis the post-operaismo of Negri and others, autonomists
such as Harvie, and the Fuchs-Smythe analysis of online labour which share a rejection of
Marxs theory of productive and unproductive labour."

Jen

Roesch

Mechanisms of Dependency, Control and Appropriation: The State and Sexual Violence in
the US
"Sexual violence is often analyzed and discussed as being the product of a rape culture.
But such violence has been endemic to and intimately entwined with the history of
capitalism in the United States. Cultural constructions and popular understandings of sexual
and gender-based violence have shifted in different historical periods - in relation both to
developments within capitalism and in response to struggles. The state has played a central
role in organizing the response to such violence as well as these popular understandings. It
has consistently done so in ways that continue to reinforce and reproduce womens
dependency and second-class citizenship. Moreover, state responses have frequently
strengthened other repressive and oppressive aspects of American capitalism most
centrally racism.
This paper will examine this role as well as the contradictory relationship of many of the
movements against sexual violence to it. Paradoxically, many of the reforms advocated and
won by the feminist movement have helped to strengthen institutions and social relations
that increase the marginalization and dependency of women particularly working class
women and women of color. I will situate the persistence, and current intensification, of
violence within this history and relationship."
Graciela

Romero

The peasants' struggle for food sovereignty

"The peasants' struggle for the realisation of the food sovereignty framework, as
championed by the peasants' movement La Via Campesina, has crucial implications not only
for the structural economic and social transformations that it proposes but also for the way
in which the peasantry is organised as agents of social transformation. In this paper, I
attempt to present the food sovereignty as a paradigm that deconstructs the capitalist
mode of production and access and use of natural resources and at the same time seeks the
fundamental reconfiguration of political power relationships in society. In addition it
highlights the role of the peasants' movement in linking up local and global struggles to
bring down the transnational accumulation of capital.
I will use the class-gender-race intersectionality perspective to argue that the way of
organising and mobilising the peasantry in the pursuit of food sovereignty, determines to a
great extent how fundamentally deep rooted capitalist and patriarchal values can be
transformed. The analysis will be based on the theoretical framework and praxis of La Via
Campesinas members and other peasant and civil society networks across the world. I will
also present the Cuban case, a state led approach to food sovereignty, in order to draw
comparisons and perspectives for the future."

Eduardo

Romero

Dianderas

Indigenous labor, ethnicity and capital accumulation in the margins of the State: the case of
timber industry networks in Peruvian Amazonia

"In this presentation I offer an economic, political and historical account on how extractive
capitalism has expanded and reproduced in the context of the Peruvian Amazon lowlands.
First, I outline the main challenges that extractive industries faced in the context of early
capitalist expansive cycles in Amazonia during the late 19th Century. Particularly, I focus on
the way that labor scarcity and the absence of a regional workforce were thought of by
emergent regional elites and entrepreneurs during the early State attempts to articulate a
regional space in Amazonia. I associate these reflections with the marginal character
historically attributed to Amazonian territories, which have been from thereon represented
as boundary spaces with anomalous economic and political characteristics.
Secondly, I offer a description of how this context informed the development of a body of
non wage-based labor appropriation strategies that dynamically combined seduction and
violence in order to expand available workforce among indigenous populations of
Amazonia. I argue that during this timeframe a well-established body of informal labor
appropriation strategies came to be and proved a certain exploitative efficacy in
articulating indigenous workforce to international commodity chains. The emergence of
these labor appropriation strategies had the double effect of expanding the material flows
of extractive capitalism over extensive and remote areas of the tropical rainforest, while at
the same time changing the way that forests, market agents and commodities related to the
production of new indigenous subjectivities and economic habits.
Thirdly, I turn to present time in order examine how these labor appropriation strategies
have evolved throughout time and how they allow for particular forms of capital
accumulation processes in contemporary Peruvian Amazonia. Drawing on some recent
ethnographic and quantitative data, I offer a description of how racialized exchanges,
marginal processes of statemaking and commercial international pressures intersect in
specific local settings of the Peruvian rainforest in order to make possible the production of
value and the accumulation of extractive capital at a regional scale. Finally, I discuss how
these analytics can produce interesting elements for considering how localized capitalist
projects, the production of non wage-based labor subjectivities, and tropical rainforests
come to be in the margins of contemporary South American States.
John Rose

Lenin Luxemburg War & Revolution: Lenin's criticism of Luxemburg's anti-war Junius
pamphlet

"Luxemburgs first world war Junius pamphlet, written in prison, was arguably the greatest
anti war statement of the last century. Its haunting theme, Socialism or Barbarism,
prophetically cast its shadow over the last century and continues to do so now.
Junius was also uncompromising in its hostility to Kautskys pro-war German Socialist Party,
the SPD, still claiming to be a Marxist party, with a majority in the German parliament.
Yet Lenin, whilst recognising it was written by an outstanding comrade in the revolutionary
socialist tradition, (he didnt know RL was the author), was uneasy about Junius. (Collected
Works
Volume
22,
pages
305-319,
http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/junius-pamphlet.htm).
Critically, he challenges the failure to break organisationally with Kautsky.
This captured a fundamental Marxist principle uniquely developed by Lenin. Politics
cannot be separated mechanically from organisation. Junius risked failure by not giving
distinct organisational expression to the politics of its powerful anti war sentiment.
Kautsky had claimed the party had to respond to the intensely patriotic mood that had
swept through the workers movement. Lenin had already dismissed this as treachery, in
'The Collapse of the Second International'."
Catherine Rottenberg

Neoliberal Feminist Manifestos and the Entrenchment of an Imperialist Logic

A new trend is on the rise: increasingly, high-powered women in the US are publicly
espousing feminism. One has only to think of Anne Marie Slaughter's "Why Women Still
Can't Have It All" that appeared in the Atlantic in July 2012 and became the most widely
read article in the magazine's history. Then, in March 2013, Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In hit the
shelves and instantly became a New York Times' best-seller. In this paper I suggest that both
Sandberg's and Slaughter's "feminist manifestos" should be understood as symptomatic of a
larger cultural phenomenon in which liberal feminism is becoming the site for its own
displacement. Concentrating on their shifting discursive registers, I propose that these texts
can give us insight into the particular ways in which the husk of liberalism is being mobilized
to spawn a neoliberal feminism as well as a new feminist subject. While this emerging form
of feminism can be understood as yet another domain neoliberalism has colonized by
producing its own variant, I suggest that it simultaneously serves a particular cultural
purpose: it hollows out the potential of mainstream liberal feminism to underscore the
constitutive contradictions of liberal democracy, and, in this way, further entrenches
neoliberal rationality and an imperialist logic.
Shahnaz

Rouse

Precarity and/or the new normal? in Pakistan: Neoliberalization, gendered labor regimes
and informalization
"Since the eighties, there has been increasingly attention paid to the informal sector both in
the advanced capitalist countries as well as in many parts of the global south. De Sotos now
well known work, The Other Path, published in 1989, brought this to phenomena into the
mainstream, as a major component of peripheral economies. Written at a moment when
the Fujimoro regime in Peru was committed to privatization in Peru, and to retrenchment of
the state sector, De Soto and the Institute for Liberty and Democracy, made virtue out of
necessity, and sought to push for laws that would bring the informal sector under the ambit
of the state. The motivation was both political and economic. De Sotos formulation has
since dominated conventional political analyses in the U.S. whereby informality and
criminality are conflated with each other. This perspective has allowed for ever greater
degrees of policing and surveillance of marginalized populations, and increased
incarceration of the poor, and communities of color.
Saskia Sassens work on globalization, coming almost ten years after De Sotos, also
emphasizes the increasing incidence of informalization, but in a vastly different register: she
argues that this sectors expansion is not only an issue confronting peripheral economies,
but a rapidly growing element within advanced economies. She situates this development
squarely within the ambit of late capitalism, and argues that the ascendance of finance
capital in todays marketized global economy are its driving force. In many ways, her
theorization of the contemporary turn to informalization echoes classic Marxist
understandings of the workings of capital and the structural tendency within capitalism to
render labor increasingly redundant, and pushing such labor into flexible and casual labor
regimes.
While Sassens work provides a useful and necessary corrective to De Sotos earlier
treatment of informalization, it is pitched at a level of generalization that demands greater
attentiveness to local conditions under which such informalization takes place within
specific histories of spaces within the global south itself. This is where a close reading of the
Pakistani context is insightful: based on studies conducted by scholar-activists within
Pakistan, I hope to demonstrate the relationship between the state, international regimes
(both multilateral and economic), and local forces. Through a carefully periodized and space
specific analysis, I hope to explicate the centrality of gender to contemporary
informalization (as many of the sources I draw upon suggest), but also to problematize
certain assumptions between work and womens emancipation, between productive and
unproductive labor, production and social reproduction, and conclude with strategies to
address this current political-economic turn. While specific to Pakistan, my expectation is
that this paper will provoke a necessary and much needed discussion on effective strategies
designed to further labor struggles, as well as subject our own modes of categorization to a
more critical scrutiny."

Camilla

Royle

The production of nature and the new materialist turn

In Uneven Development, Neil Smith put forward the notion of the production of nature. The
work is an engaging critique of dualist accounts of nature that see it as either an untouched
wilderness to be preserved at the expense of human development or an externality to be
factored in (or not) to capitalist markets. Smith, following Marx, started from the position
that humanity and nature are a unity and attempted to understand the material practices
that led them to be thought of as separate realms. But, further than this, Smith argued that
humans produce all of the ""nature"" that we see around usthat there is no real nature
beyond human societies. However, this unapologetically anthropocentric stance raised the
hackles of many green thinkers. Even William Cronons essay, The Trouble with
Wilderness, written in the same vein as Smiths work, concludes that there are positives
associated with wilderness landscapes, arguing that we should recognize and honor
nonhuman nature as a world we did not create. More recently, the rise of the new
materialism has tried to account for the material properties and capacities of non-human
organisms and objects. Does this renewed engagement with the actions of things as well as
those of humans present an insurmountable challenge to the production of nature thesis?
Can nature be both produced and have its own agency? What are the prospects for
environmental politics of the change in focus towards the non-human?----
Bue

Rbner

Hansen

Organising need and desire

"Since Deleuze and Guattari's damning critique of Sartre's anthropology of scarcity in the
Anti-Oedipus, a long tradition of desire-based politics were inaugurated, generally
dismissing the importance of needs in the age of post-fordist hyperproductivity. Today, after
the golden post-war years, and the debt fuelled speculative 2000s (and always in the
necropolitical post-colonial world), the limitations of attempts to push a growing and
gluttonously need-satisfying capitalism beyond itself are apparent. Today there is a sense
that large populations are entering a zero-sum game in which scarcity, lack and need gain
primacy over abundance, excess and desire.
Marx's Capital provides a powerful framework for understanding the capitalist production of
needs and commodification of objects of desires, but it does little to help us think the
implications of need and desire as subjective operators for class composition and
organisation, in relation to resistant and revolutionary practices. Perhaps for this reason
Marxists have thought organisation starting from class consciousness of objective relations,
and seen need and desire as something to be overcome.
This paper will proceed through a rereading of Marx's remarks on base and superstructure,
in order to strategically insert desire and need at a central nodal point in Marxist theory.

Whereas Marx speaks about the economic and structural aspects of the base, I propose that
from the point of view of living labour it is existential and organisational. To start at the
base thus means to start from the many ways in which proletarians aim to satisfy their
needs and pursue their desires, and understands capital's ability to organise labour as based
on its ability to monopolise and regulate the means and the relations of desire and need. I
ask: what happens to the classical Marxist concept of class-consciousness, if we take
consciousness to be secondary: the self-consciousness of the processes by which needs and
desires compose in common resistant strategies, and the speculative awareness of the
revolutionary potentialities of such processes?
As the Black Panthers and feminist Marxists such as Silvia Federici and Mariarosa Dalla Costa
have shown, need and desire is a key field of struggle, one that is much broader than the
capital-labour struggle over exploitation. This paper aims to propose a theory of resistant
and revolutionary practices, which does not start from consciousness but from the
composition and organisation of needs and desires which are, at a given time and place,
structurally unsatisfied or blocked by capital."
Eric-John

Russell

The Real Subsumption of Mimesis

The following abstract is intended for consideration in the Critical Theory stream at the
conference. While it might be said, correctly or not, that Theodor Adornos relationship with
Marxs critique of political economy is punctured by the unease of an asphyxiating cloud of
omnipotent rationality, both critics share in a scrutiny for the universally structuring
mechanism of the exchange relation. The aim of my presentation will be to clear a path for
this shared perspective and attempt to arbitrate two thinkers often mired in theoretically
tumultuous friction in their respective critiques of modern capitalist society. Within both
Dialectic of Enlightenment and Aesthetic Theory, Adorno formulates a distinction between
the concept of mimesis and its rationalization. It will be the purpose of the present text to
explore the extent to which this rationalization of mimesis can be reconciled with Marxs
theory of commodity fetishism. That is, how might the history of the mimetic faculty,
proceeding in accordance with the development of rationality and the development of
sacrifice and exchange, correspond to the fetish character of commodities? As will be
demonstrated, both processes are grounded in the adaptation of a self to objective forces of
domination consecrated through the principle of identity and equivalence. I will first sketch
the fundamental characteristics of mimetic comportment before proceeding to its
rationalization, or as Adorno refers to it, its repression. From there, a brief discussion on
commodity fetishism will facilitate an attempt to reconcile these seemingly disparate
criticisms of modern society.
Mario Saenz

The Revolutionary Subject: Marx, Mench, Payeras

"The relevance and vitality of Marxs thought rest on its opening towards alterity and
alteritys revolutionary possibilities. Marxs work on corporeality, estrangement, and living
labor are points of departure for a conception of a transformative and revolutionary subject
under conditions of crisis throughout Empireconditions that close off more and more
paths and tend to leave us with two possibilities: Revolution or fascism.
In this presentation I examine three significant concepts of the revolutionary subject: First,
the subject of living labor placing emphasis on Marx. Second, the subject that struggles for
the reivindication of the human rights of marginalized communities; I elaborate here on
some of the ideas of Rigoberta Mench. Third, the class-based revolutionary subject; I point
here to on the analysis made by Mario Payeras, in the midst of civil war, of the relation
between ethnicity and class in the Guatemalan Revolution.
The first subject arises concretely from the conditions of capitalist production and it explains
other forms of oppression. One is subjectaccording to the economic relations opened
up by bourgeois societywhen one is source of value and surplus value for capital.
Therefore, what is nothing to capital is, on the one hand, a historical and social
construction in capitalism to maintain its hegemony and domination. Other categories of
oppressionfor example, the biological concept of race or the myth of the maternal spirit
forced into the heart of the woman of the bourgeois family as the West industrialized (the
cult of motherhood that legitimated the corralling of bourgeois women in the home, a
phenomenon evidently not experienced as such by poor or enslaved women)find their
function within the capitalist class structure. On the other hand, what is nothing to capital is
a concrete nothingness that exists as possibility embodied in critical, communitarian, and
empancipatory interests.
The second and third permutations of the subject, to wit, life in community on the plane of
resistance and struggle, and the revolutionary war to refound the nation-state, represent
for each other a creative contradiction or co-existing juxtaposition (not a unifying synthesis
of opposing differences) of the autonomy of communities, and participatory and protagonic
democracy, with the nation-state of the oppressed and exploited who fight and will have to
fight against empire and the rebellion of the rich in, for example, Venezuela now and El
Salvador in the near future.
In the last two sections of this work I will show how the concept of living labor is useful for
the articulation of a fruitful relationship between communitarianism and class struggle. It
points the way towards a fluid articulation of the subject (the first section of this work), but
also (in the last two sections) the autonomist state."
Sara Salem

The 2011 Egyptian Uprising: Passive revolution and continued neoliberalism

"The 2011 Egyptian uprising constituted a momentous event in modern Egyptian history.
The uprising can be theorized as a response to the neoliberal project that had come to
dominate Egypt through the policies of the ruling class. However, three years on it appears
that the while the configuration of social forces within the ruling class may have shifted,
neoliberalism continues to dominate the Egyptian political economy.
The first part of this paper attempts a historical genealogy of the Egyptian ruling class since
1952. Through using Gramscian and neo-Gramscian concepts this paper shows that since
2011 specific actors within the Egyptian ruling classconceptualized as fractions of
capitalhave attempted to reconfigure the ruling class without changing dominant forms of
capitalist accumulation, as well as to show how the ruling class created the conditions that
produced the uprising itself.
However it would be a mistake to ignore the resistance on the part of subaltern groups. The
ruling class is constantly in a complex relationship with the subaltern classes. Specific
communities within the category of the subaltern challenge and subvert hegemony. The
second part of this paper will thus trace the different fractions of labour that represent
these challenges to neoliberal capital. Through an analysis of both the fractions of capital
and labour, the paper attempts to show why neoliberal capitalism continues to dominate
Egypt as well as why this domination is not hegemonic."
Sune Sandbeck

Uneven and Combined Development and the Sovereign Spaces of Offshore Finance

The revival of the historical materialist concept of uneven and combined development
(U&CD) within the field of International Relations has refocused attention on the
importance of examining the interaction between different tempos of development across
space and time. What has emerged from these discussions is a theoretical appreciation of
the contingent, multilinear and interactive trajectories of capitalist state formation across a
global spatial terrain riven by social, economic, and geographical unevenness. The
proliferation of offshore financial centres (OFCs) in the past few decades is a subject that
has tended to fall outside the purview of these debates and the present paper suggests that
the framework of U&CD sheds considerable light on the contingent historical context out of
which OFCs emerged. However, the growing significance of offshore finance to the global
economy has altered the very meaning of unevenness by rapidly shifting the spatial
contours and possibilities of capitalist accumulation, requiring a continual rearticulation of
sovereign power. The particular manner in which offshore finance intensifies some of the
central contradictions of capitalism forces us to rethink the spatial scope of U&CD and I
examine how a revised conceptualization might enhance our understanding of the
relationship between state sovereignty and capitalist accumulation.
Nikil Saval

White Collar Work, Space, and Class

"Since the consolidation of large industries in the late 19th century and advances in the
techniques and function of bureaucracy in the private sector, the rise in the number of so-
called white collar workers has been a continual source of controversy for Marxist
analysis. For an orthodox or vulgar Marxism that held fast to a prediction of increasing class
polarization, the apparent class complexity of fin de siecle capitalism proved to be divisive in
its own way, leading no small part to the revisionist controversies and fractiousness of the
early 20th century.

The old argument over the class basis of the white collar worker has repeated itself
at critical moments over the history of Marxist thought, particularly at moments of
theoretical and organizational crisis, with partisans of some version of a proletarianization
thesis, often finding themselves arrayed against thinkers who find the middle class an
undeniable fact, with many of the latter often finding themselves making a quick exit from
Marxism altogether. Regardless of camp, the white collar worker has proved an enduring
problem for Marxist class analysis; the endurance of the individualist, meritocratic white
collar worker has often been cited as one of the central barriers to viable socialist politics,
certainly in the United States.

Rather than attempting to solve this problematic directlyone of the more
intractable problems in social theorymy paper will attempt to tackle the issue from a
different angle, by placing it in a spatial and geographic context. The history of white collar
work discloses the repeated attempts by capital to enhance the technical division of labor
within firms through an ever more refined spatial separation, increasing the sense of class
complexity and division within the white collar strata. What effect these forms of separation
might have had on a sense of class consciousness, or class awareness (to use Giddens term)
will be the guiding question of the paper.

Tracing the development of the office interior from the mid-19th century
countinghouses of the UK and the US, I hope to show how the adoption of bureaucracy and
the application of scientific management had the effect of proletarianizing sections of the
workforceparticularly the typing or steno pool, largely composed of womenwhile
dramatizing the white collar workplace as a systematically apportioned reflection of a
legitimated hierarchy: the serried, orthogonal central desks occupying the factory-like
settings of the typing pool versus the articulated regime of status progressing along the
private offices of the corridor; and finally the separation of the executive suite from the
lower floors. I will examine these alongside management texts that make explicit the
importance of the well-designed office for maintaining an individualist ethos.

Similarly the separation of spaces of manual and nonmanual labor has often been
pushed through to separate the traditional homes of labor unrest from its less agitated
deskbound denizens. Here I will discuss the history of Chicago planning; the emergence of

the New York regional plan; and the separation of the suburban campus setting, which gave
rise to the discourse of the knowledge worker.

Finally I will discuss contemporary conditions of mass disaggregation, at the same
time that pervasive casualization has brought talk of a new proletariat, or precariat,
among the declassed white collar worker, as a source of a renewal of social protest. I will
examine these claims alongside the spatial effects of disaggregation within white collar
workforces, with many of the factory-like settings displaced to global south countries,
where they in turn occupy higher levels of status. I will conclude with some reflections on
the current relationship between of space and the middle class."
Tina

Schivatcheva

Accidental hegemon? Exporting the core chimera - Modell Deutschland in the Eastern
European periphery
Reunification has turned Germany into a central actor, and then the central actor in
determining European affairs. Meanwhile in the Eastern European periphery, Germany has
become the indisputable economic hegemon. The discussion uses neo-Gramscian analysis,
cultural political economy and Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) perspectives to analyse the
current trade and socio-economic relations of Germany, Ukraine and Bulgaria
Characteristic of the socio-political and socio-economic transformation of Eastern Europe is
that by the early 2000s the whole region had adopted the standards and institutional
underpinnings of economic freedom and openness usual in Western market economies.
Bulgaria and Ukraine have been characterized as Liberal Market Economies (LMEs), which
differ in their achieved levels of liberalisation, privatisation, and market-oriented institution
building. Meanwhile Germany, the paradigmatic Coordinated Market Economy (CME) and
the birthplace of the tripartist Modell Deutschland has progressively strengthened its
economic presence in Eastern Europe. German economy (GDP 3.5 trillion) towers above the
economies of Bulgaria and Ukraine. For more than 10 years both Bulgaria and Ukraine have
held negative trade balances with the Bundesrepublik, amounting to the joint total sum of
approximately 56 billion dollars cumulative profits (UNCOMTRADE). Both Ukraine and
Bulgaria have been consumers of German industrial goods and exporters of low value-added
products. Yet in spite of the decadal-long trade asymmetries in favour of Germany, there
have been only a token of complaints about the paucity of German FDI.
Germany's current role goes beyond economically 'influencing' the region. A traditional
realist/neorealist definition prescribes hegemony as 'the holding by one state of a
preponderance of power in the international systems, so that it can single-handedly
dominate the rules and arrangements by which international political and economic
relations are conducted.' However, modern Germany projects its power not via military
force or direct control, but by indirect control of the rules and agendas (hegemony). A

discussion on the nature of hegemony should also take into consideration Gramsci's
analyses, in which he emphasizes the importance of the voluntaristic aspect of hegemony,
distinguishing between 'domination' (coercion, power) and 'hegemony' (ideas, persuasion,
consensus). More recently, Ikenberry and Kupchan explore the relationship between power
and socialization as complementary components of hegemony. They elaborate that
'socialization' serves as an 'effective instrument of hegemonic power during critical
historical periods in which international change coincides with domestic crises in secondary
states.' Thus, although a preponderance of power in material (economic) instruments may
facilitate the initial socialization, in the long run it also requires non-material instruments,
such as ideas, norms, and values.
The analysis argues that the post-socialist transition of Bulgaria and Ukraine has not resulted
in competitive and innovative market economies, but in a loss of economic, social and
human capital. Chronic political and economic instability has increased the social
acceptability of the CME model, considered to represent Germany, and consequently
German prestige in Eastern Europe. Thus, Germany has been endowed with the exemplary
able tutor and Ukraine and Bulgaria - the pupils. Modell Deutschland made in Bulgaria
and Ukraine is associated with the desirable qualities of stability and incrementalism,
innovations and good management practices. This idealized representation has failed to
distinguish the complexities of the socio-economic development within Germany. Thus,
while being eroded within Germany Modell Deustchland is still attractive in Eastern
Europe. Capturing the public imagination of the Eastern European periphery, the chimera of
the Rhenish model has been the most successful German export."
Louis-Georges Schwartz

From Use Time To Use Value And Back?

Instead of asking what comes after the commodity form, my paper asks whether one can
imagine a society without property and what conditions would be necessary for such a
society. A society without property would mean a society without exchange as we know it,
and wherein production and reproduction would be identical. Such a society might realize
the dream of living without an economy. In The Highest Poverty, Giorgio Agamben describes
early Franciscan monastics as a quasi-autonomous social segment fitting this description.
The Franciscan vows involve renouncing both private and collective property. As the
Catholic Church regulated and subjugated the monastics, they had to confront the problem
of the Franciscan vow: how was it possible for Monks to eat if they did not own their food?
Does not digestion constitute the very essence of appropriation? At a given moment in the
debates the Church arrives at the conclusion that use without possession is conceivable if
use can be understood as a mode of time. This notion of use is central to Tiqquns notion of
a communal form of life that organizes itself as a struggle against capital. Tiqquns fighting
commune is usually understood as idealism by historical materialists, but my paper
attempts, via the methods of Political Marxism to place that conclusion in the context of the

material conditions leading to the production of monks as populations unnecessary to the

reproduction of the rest of feudal society, and to ask under what conditions the enjoyment
of activitys products could emerge as a temporal mode rather than a use value within or
after the continuous crisis of capitalism.
Richard

Seymour

The Austerity State "It is too often glibly assumed that austerity is a project for
downsizing the state.
This ideologeme is linked to a series of claims about the state in the neoliberal era, including
above all the claim that the state has been withdrawing from the economy. That
ideologeme is misplaced. This paper will argue that, while spending cuts and public sector
firings are the means through which the objectives of austerity are achieved, and while
there are rational reasons for capitalist states to reduce the burden of expenditures, the
long-term effects of austerity involve redeploying state apparatuses rather than reducing
their size. Using the examples of past austerity projects, and in the light of Poulantzian state
theory, this paper will argue that:
The state under austerity is neither reducing its scope nor withdrawing from the economy,
but is rather changing the character and mode of its extensive involvement in productive
relations.
The states cost-cutting commitments are real, but are subordinate to its crisis-management
commitments. This in practice tends to mean that opportunities for cost-cutting are limited
by the constant need for the state to assimilate and process the crisis tendencies in the
economy. Austerity is a response to capitalist crisis, and as such is part of a project which
demands more state intervention rather than less.
State institutions act within a context of class and political struggles, and must register the
strengths of opposing sides in these struggles. This does not mean that the state simply
tallies the balance of forces on either side at any given moment. It has its own resistant
materiality, itself the result of accumulated outcomes of previous class and political
struggles. It possesses a certain selectivity in favour of particular strategies as a result of
this, and this determines the forms that crisis management can take.
The specific form of crisis management, known as austerity, must be understood in terms of
the particular coalition of classes and class fractions that dominates the state apparatuses -
the power bloc. One effect of austerity is precisely to reorganise this power bloc to the
benefit of ascendant or already incumbent class fractions.
The relationship between a state and the society which it organises is permanently
characterised by dysfunction and disequilibrium. This means that no simple functionalist
reading of austerity is possible, as it is by no means clear that everything the state does can

be understood as functional to accumulation or legitimation. It also means that each

resolution of crisis that it achieves is partial and provisional, and that each solution is likely
to contain pathologies of its own. This paper will conclude by discussing the ongoing
elements of crisis, both generic and conjunctural, in the austerity state."
Stefano

Sgambati

Leveraging equity, securitising debts: the significance of modern banking in the making of
financialisation

"The current debate on financialisation is changing our understanding of class and class
struggle (Bryan, Rafferty and Martin 2009), as social property relations are being
progressively re-conceptualized in terms of debt relations (Ingham 2004, 2008). This said, it
is not really clear who in the age of financialisation is indebted to whom and how this affects
the construction of power relations. Financialisation in effect signals the stabilisation of a
capitalist regime characterised by the systematic commodification of debt relations, a
growth out of measure of profit-yielding financial instruments, endemic speculation,
financial bubbles (Knafo 2012; Hudson 2012): in such a regime nobody is a genuine creditor
because in principle every proprietor and especially the financier - is indebted to
everybody else via a capillary infrastructure of liquid financial relations encompassing states
and markets altogether.
To get a better sense of how class struggle is articulated in such a context of institutional
over-indebtedness, the paper aims to outline a brief phenomenology of the negotiation of
value that is at the basis of modern banking. The latter is conventionally understood as a
centralized form of cash intermediation, portfolio management and credit-debt
bookkeeping. Moving from a monetary understanding, the paper by contrast examines
modern banking as the institutionalisation of debt intermediation and the construction of
modern money as liquidity. That is to say, far from mediating savings, modern banking is
from principle involved with the creation of money 'out of nothing' in fact, with the
articulation of a monetary system of borrowing and lending capable of producing net worth,
and based upon a combination of asset and liability management involving respectively
leverage and securitisation.
The paper thus examines the rise of English banking in the second half of the seventeenth
century. More specifically it focuses on: (a) the financial revolution initiated by goldsmith
bankers, as based on bank leverage (performed via bill discounting); (b) the monetary
revolution carried by the Bank of England during the eighteenth century, as connected to
the securitisation of the English national debt and the emergence of a liquid secondary
market for public securities (Amato and Fantacci 2012). Hence, without denying the
specificities of the current situation, the paper argues that to grasp the significance of
contemporary financialisation we must nonetheless reconsider the very historical
foundations of capitalism, and in particular the role of modern banking in the production of

value, because it is only from there that we can glance at the shining skyline of its tottering
towers and discover what lies today in their shadow.
Nizan Shaked

Capitalist Institutions/Leftist Art

Emblematic of the modern age, museums are at the political crossroads of wealth and the
public. Modeled after its European predecessor, the American museum perfected the
formers reformist thrust by using a hybrid private-public non-profit administrative
structure, where institutional governance has regularly been steered by boards comprised
of the upper echelon. Artists in the United States have, since the late 1960s, recognized
museums as a stage where a political drama is suspended in the cultural and financial
tensions between themselves and their work, professional personnel (directors or curators),
and the museum board with its oversight capacities. A peculiar line of communication
opened between artists and the wealthy, and this paper will look at key examples of works
that spoke directly to or about patronage. Universitiesalso spaces where barons and
boosters purport to share a culture with intellectuals, where conservative administration
meets progressive faculty and students (perhaps even revolutionary on occasion)differ
from museums in that the dialogue with wealth in the museum is triangulated by a third
entity: the public as audience. This paper will discuss works staged with the public in mind
by Guerrilla Art Action Group, Daniel J. Martinez, and Andrea Fraser. I will consider them
within the contexts of the brief yet significant forming of the Art Workers Coalition in the
late 1960s as a reformist position of resistance, the efficacy of which was debated by critics
and artists such as Les Levine and Mel Ramsden (of Art & Language), who sought a more
revolutionary redefinition of art. The idea that art could intervene into the means of
production was subsequently seen as nave at best, after all, the entire field is always
already super-structural. But since museums can offer insight into the life cycle of case
cultural transactions, we can also observe its political and economic implications vis--vis
the public. I will ground this perspective in a work by Hans Haacke, MoMA Poll (1970),
staged to engage the pubic in a question about Nelson Rockefeller (then Governor of New
York State) in a museum founded and governed by members of the Rockefeller family, and
the dialogue it elicited between the museum board (specifically David Rockefeller of Chase
Manhattan Bank) and its administration. Disrupting the liberal faade the museum would
rather foreground, Haackes work showed how politics and money are related, unmasking
the resemblance of NY to an oligarchy in hopes to point out a speculative road-map to its
demise. Being pragmatic, I also track the process by which museums have contained such
resistance, and how artists then responded in return, culminating with Andrea Frasers
contribution to the Whitney Biennial in 2012 titled Le 1% Cest Moi. Rather than
revolutionizing art itself, or hitching it to serve the revolution, these artists aimed their
interventions to question what ideology does the institutional structure serve and why it is
that the public tolerates it.

Divya Sharma

Metabolic Rift and Resistance: Political Ecology in colonial and post-colonial Punjab, India
"This paper will focus on conceptualisations that build on the Marxian concept of metabolic
rift (cf. Foster, 1999; Moore, 2011; McMichael and Schneider, 2010), to examine how an
ecological lens helps rethink the Marxist conception of political agency. I argue that the
framework of metabolic rift provides a way of understanding how alienation effected
through the separation of labour from the production of knowledge, or the division of
mental and menial labour, shapes the articulation of resistance, by tracing the changing
form of agrarian struggles and the landscape of rural resistance in the Indian state of Punjab
through the colonial and post-colonial period. Technological interventions have been
employed as a way of reorganizing agrarian production and rural life in Punjab by the
colonial and the post-colonial state, exemplified by the establishment of the canal system by
the British in the late nineteenth century, and the Green Revolution in the 1960s. Today,
the agrarian crisis in Punjab is being articulated by farmers in a way that signals that
ecological viability is contingent on restructuring unequal social relations of production. In
this context, I suggest that an analytic focus on how the changes in the production process
and the practices of work are experienced, in conjunction with the social relations, in which
they are embedded, is significant for understanding the forms in which resistance is
articulated. It also provides a theoretical framework for understanding both the rift in and
the reconstitution of socio-ecological relations historically and experientially.
Stuart Shields

The time for reform is always now: The European Bank for Reconstruction & Development
and the renewal of neoliberalisation in Central Eastern Europe after the financial "crisis.
The paper interrogates the role of the EBRD in the refinement of neoliberal strategies in
post-communist transition. By drawing upon a Gramscian critical political economy
approach, the paper argues that the EBRD has promoted the deepening commodification of
post-communist social relations through the diffusion of ideas centred round three
successive waves of neoliberalisation in Central Eastern Europe (CEE). The EBRD has taken
advantage of a series of crises to redefine the relationship between national state and
regional and international institutions, to accelerate the closure of divergent paths to
development: the first based on market construction from the early 1990s, a second based
on reconfiguring institutional arrangements in CEE associated with European Union (EU)
accession, and third, the neoliberal promotion of competitiveness after EU membership.
The paper contends that the EBRDs strategies for neoliberalisation have shifted again in
response to the current crisis, and thus a fourth wave of neoliberalisation is emerging
following the North Atlantic financial crisis. This latest wave of neoliberalisation evident in
recent EBRD material prompts CEE to discover sources of growth less sensitive to changes in
the external environment: households and individuals.

Jonathan

Short

Benjamin and De-Vitalized Life: Notes on Politics

In this presentation I situate Benjamins conception of historical memory, as
elucidated through the theory of translation, relative to the dire state of contemporary
politics under neo-liberalism. This discussion of Benjamin seeks to connect his thought to a
reading developed by Frank Ruda (2009) of the young Marxs Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts of 1844 as a way of thinking politics internal to and the overcoming of the
historical production of a generic and universal human essence in necessarily alienated
form. Not only does my reading of Benjamin in this context show quite clearly the difference
between Benjamin and Heidegger on the status of historical time, but it also intervenes in
the present political moment by rejecting contemporary vitalist accounts of philosophical
anthropology. If contemporary vitalism in its various guises asserts a generic human
essence, it does so in an infra-political manner (Bosteels 2011), that is, as a substitute for,
and implicit regulation of, political action itself. In Benjamins thought, like that of the early
Marx, we find a philosophical anthropology predicated on humanity as generic historical
being for whom memory of enslavement and dispossessionin short, essential
estrangement, turns awareness of devitalized (alienated) lives toward revolutionary politics.
Rick

Simon

Russia, Ukraine, and the new Imperialism

This paper will explore the current (at the time of writing) crisis in Ukraine from the
perspective of the new imperialism associated, in particular, with David Harvey. It will
argue that Russias motivations in relation to Ukraine must be analysed from the
perspective of two dialectically inter-woven logics: territorialism and capital accumulation.
In respect of the former, the collapse of the Soviet Union replaced an integrated economic
space, in which Russian cultural, linguistic and military domination had been entrenched,
with a patchwork quilt of states, most of which had not previously enjoyed independent
statehood and in which there exist significant ethnic Russian minorities. The prospect of US
aid to support Russias transformation in the 1990s has been replaced by the spectre of a
US-led NATO at the borders of the Russian Federation and a new containment of a
weakened Russia by a hegemonic US. In respect of capital accumulation, Russia did not
undergo a transformation to a capitalist economy in the manner foreseen by many Western
experts but instead underwent a passive revolution in which elements of the Soviet system
have been reproduced and intertwined with new capitalist features generated by Russias
integration into the global economy. In the absence of a strong capitalist class developing
productive capacity, such integration has been through the medium of Russias natural
resource base. The combination of constant US/EU pressure on Russias periphery combined
with a concern over control of Russias key assets in a deteriorating economic situation in

which domestic opposition is growing have prompted Russias actions, first in Georgia, and
now in Ukraine.
John Smith
Resource extraction, production outsourcing and the new divisions of labour in the global
economy
This paper locates resource-extraction within the broader context of proliferating global
value chains, in which lead firms (MNCs headquartered in imperialist countries) outsource
production to low-wage countries, thereby siphoning surplus value extracted from super-
exploited workers which reappears as value-added arising from their own branding and
retailing activities. It examines why the increasingly favoured arms length relationships
seen in production, i.e. the processing of raw materials into finished goods, are not seen in
the extractive industries, where giant mining firms strive to maintain ownership and control
over natural resources and their extraction. It argues that resource-extraction and
production outsourcing are two essentially complementary forms of imperialist exploitation,
a division of labour between different f(r)actions of imperialist capital whose profits
increasingly depend upon the suppression of working people and the subversion of national
sovereignty in so-called emerging nations.

Murray

Smith

Toward a Marxist Phoenix: The Case for a 21st-Century Scientific Socialism

The ability of global capitalism to weather so well the financial crisis and great recession of
2007-09, and the palpable inability of socialists to extend their influence significantly in the
face of so severe a systemic crisis, has been viewed as an enigma by many on the left. An
adequate explanation of this 'enigma' calls for an exploration of three inter-related issues:
the long-standing and deep-going damage done by Stalinism to the Marxist-socialist project;
the persistent hegemony of 'utopian-reformist' conceptions on the contemporary radical
left; and the acute crisis of leadership that continues to afflict the international working
class. This paper explores these issues by summarizing and extending some of the principal
arguments presented in 'Marxist Phoenix' (2014) by Murray E.G. Smith, concerning the
theoretical and practical prerequisites for the revival of 'scientific socialism' as the
indispensable foundation of an insurgent 21st-century socialist movement.
Stuart Smithers

Mimesis and Magic: Breaking the Spell of Self-Forgetfulness and Reification in Adorno and
Benjamin

"In his 1938 letter to Benjamin, Adorno laments the omission of theory in certain aspects of
the Arcades study, suggesting: If one wished to put it very drastically, one could say that
your study is located at the crossroads of magic and positivism. That spot is bewitched. Only
theory could break the spell
Adornos warning reminds us not only of the centrality of the commodity form in Marxist
thought, but also the critique of capital as a medium and matrix for the overlapping,
blending, intersecting, mystifying and often bewitching forms of commodity, fetishism,
reification, and objectification. While both authors discuss magic and mimesis with the
hope of liberating the modern subject from arrested development (especially in the form of
reified consciousness), Adorno and Benjamins maneuvers demonstrate very different
techniques of spell-breaking with regard to self-reification.
The primary concerns of this paper are twofold: First, to locate and elaborate the problem
and significance of the self-reification of consciousness as central not only to Frankfurt
School thinkers, but to Marxist thought more generally. Self-reification presents itself as a
form of ego-enclosure that is unconsciously dependent on psychological structure and
tendencies as well as social structures. This concept of self-reification encourages us to
question the ways in which the commodity form accelerates and disguises the reality of
self-forgetting, which allows capital to solidify its victories in the reified self.
The second concern of the paper is to begin a study of the concepts of magic and mimesis as
tropes employed by Benjamin and Adorno in discussions of self-forgetfulness related to
commodity, fetish, and reification. The paper argues that discussions, images, and theories
of magic represent a special intersection for the critique of the ideas of identity, naming,
thinking, and reification in Adorno and Benjamin, a bewitched spot in which capitals
mystifying and alluring processes of commodity structure and self-reification are revealed
and therefore made potentially more vulnerable to spell-breaking."
Panagiotis

Sotiris

Encounter, inexistence of the origin and virtual forms of communism: Althussers new
materialist practice of philosophy in the 1970s

The recent publication of Althussers 1972 course on Rousseau and of his important
manuscript, from the second half of the 1970s, on the Initiation to Philosophy for non-
philosophers, along with other texts already published from the same period, such as
Machiavelli and Us, the Transformation of Philosophy lecture and the texts on the crisis
of Marxism, offers us the possibility to retrace Althussers confrontation with the question
of a new and highly original materialist practice of philosophy as a parallel process with this
attempt towards a left critique of the many shortcomings of the communist movement in a
period of strategic crisis. These texts help us realize that the materialism of the encounter
should not associated only with the posthumously published texts from the 1980s, but, in

contrast, should be viewed as an integral part of Althussers theoretical and political

endeavor after this beginning of his self-criticism in the second half of the 1960s.
Consequently, the materialism of the encounter, the radical refusal of any teleology and the
quest for a practice of philosophy that will liberate the social and political practices of the
subaltern classes, the virtual forms of communism emerging the margins and interstices of
capitalism, are all integral aspects of Althussers attempt to rethink the politics of social
emancipation and communism. The presentation will begin with a reading of Althussers
1972 course on Rousseau, published in 2013, which in contrast to previous Althussers
courses on Rousseau places much more emphasis on encounters and accidents and then
will move towards an assessment of the importance of Initiation la philosophie pour les
non-philosophes, Althussers most extensive encounter with the question of a new
materialist practice of philosophy, published on January 2014. We will then try to link this to
Althussers confrontation with the crisis of the communist movement in the second half of
the 1970s and his increasing emphasis on popular initiatives, movements, and collective
experimentations from below, as a way to rethink the actuality of communism. Therefore,
the new practice of philosophy of philosophy emerges not as a simple deconstruction of
idealism, but as a more positive attempt towards a philosophy for communism.
George

Souvlis

Towards a Materialist epistemology of Intellectual History: Deconstructing the Skinnerian

Canon.
Skinner's particular contribution to the field of Intellectual history is to articulate a theory of
interpretation which concentrated on recovering the 'speech acts' embedded in the
'illocutionary' statements of specific individuals in writing works of political theory. Having
this aim his work attempts, according to his methodological declarations, the treatment of
past linguistic acts strictly as historical phenomena, as things happening in a context which
defines the kind of events they were. In this paper I will attempt to demonstrate the
limitations of Skinner's approach and counter-propose some alternatives to them using
methodological elaborations produced by Marxists like Ellen Meiskins Wood, Neal Wood
and Antonio Gramsci. My criticism focuses mainly on two methodological aspects of his
work. The first is his quite restrictive proposal for the study of political thought as a
multiplicity of linguistic acts performed by language users in historical contexts. The second
one is in his one-dimensional focus on the level of synchronicity and the related search on
the writer's intention, an emphasis that leads to the neglect of possible disconnection
between past. I suggest that the remedy for his first methodological fallacy is an
epistemological focus which sets as its priority the demonstration of the interconnections
between the theoretician's ideas and the structures of society, namely the correlation
between the internal political forces of society, its economic organization, and the cultural
and class divisions which pervade it. Regarding the second aspect of his approach, I counter-

propose a historical understanding which conceives the past and present as an organic
totality adopting the presupposition that every history is necessarily contemporary history.
Vicky Sparrow

Resisting the commodity form in language: the poetics of Anna Mendelssohn.

"The poet under capital has been given a heavy task. Since Walter Benjamins
conceptualisation of Baudelaire as the poetic subject compelled to give voice to the
commodity, and T. W. Adornos declamation of poetrys death in the wake of European
fascism, the poetic producer contends with the forms compromised position.
When it is written through the colonised minds and subject(ivitie)s of late global capitalism,
poetry can do nothing but share its linguistic material with capital. Furthermore, poetic
language might unavoidably through techniques which raise the value of its composite
language exploit a kind of inflated linguistic economy. Does this methodological sympathy
with capitalist logic make poetry predisposed to complicity with capitalist modes of
domination? Anyone reading mainstream poetry now might feel constrained to answer yes.
This paper focuses on one writer: Anna Mendelssohn, the poet and activist made (in)famous
through her 1972 conviction for conspiracy to cause explosions, along with other members
of the British anti-capitalist activist group, the Angry Brigade. Mendelssohns poetic output
finds innumerable ways of resisting the economico-linguistic structures of meaning and
domination she perceived, and attacked, in concrete social relations under capitalism. The
paper considers how poetry can endure its commodification; and how the commodity form
endures in language."
Ross Speer

Machiavellian Marxists: Comparing aspects of Gramscis and Althussers interpretations of

Machiavelli
"This paper compares the interpretations of Machiavelli put forward by Gramsci and
Althusser. I argue that the two interpretations discussed are more complimentary than has
been recognised. Gramsci and Althusser approach Machiavelli with similar concerns and
draw from him similar conclusions. By adopting a comparative approach to the texts it
becomes possible to uncover the lines of continuity that exist between them.
Machiavelli is of such significant influence on the respective oeuvres of Gramsci and
Althusser that looking at them, and in particular the relationship between them, through
this lens provides a useful avenue through which we may find an underlying unity between
their respective Marxisms. Both thinkers are making use of Machiavelli to construct a non-
deterministic Marxism, whereby political practice is the most important factor in deciding
the course of history. Politics is the space of beginnings, where new aims are constituted as
practical projects; the success of which is never guaranteed in advance. Althusser goes on to

make explicit the philosophical conception underlying this aleatory materialism and it is
argued here that Gramsci acts as an important predecessor to the development of this
idea."
Annie Spencer

Toward a Geographical Historical Materialist Theory of Addiction in the Capitalist Mode of

Production
"In the United States a growing prescription opiod and heroin epidemic among the working
and workless poor is erupting at the same time that dwindling state budgets and brimming
state prisons contribute to widening discursive concession among U.S. politicians that the
forty-year old War on Drugs has been a failure. The contradictions of the moment suggest
a coming reconfiguration of state policy toward the treatment of drug-addicted people, and
thus an important moment for studying the states role in managing surplus populations and
surplus capital.
While the Big Pharma Industrial Complex directs research and development on addiction
toward the production of new drugs for the management of the presumed-terminal
condition of being addicted (thereby guaranteeing what recovery canta revenue stream),
in addition to new drugs to become addicted to, publicly-funded studies, many leveraging
the advances afforded by recent MRI and other brain-mapping technology reveal a different
understanding of the nature of addiction, one in which chronic, early childhood stress and
trauma emerge as the strongest predictors for a susceptibility to addiction (CDC 2013, Mat
2010). Scholars bridging the divide between the emerging evidence and existing social policy
offer the empirical data to back up what a gut instinct already tells many of usthe primary
factors contributing to addiction are social, environmental, political-economic, and thus, I
contend, inherently spatial.
The new medical and social science research offer insights that problematize the dominant
views of addiction and addicts that animate existing state policies. The emerging consensus
refutes the bio-determinist genetic argument as well as the related medical consensus of
addiction as a disease, and shine a stark light of truth on the criminal justice systems
dismissal of even the 'disease' model, in favor of a liberal-punitive ideological construct of
the addict as a racialized subject derelict, parasitic, possessing poor moral character and
thus an inherent criminality.
In putting an examination of changing state policy, discourse, and infrastructure in response
to the opiod and heroin addiction epidemic in conversation with Marxist social theory, the
Black Radical Tradition, and Third World Feminism(s), I work toward some intellectual and
methodological clarity on the following (working) hypothesis: Addictions arise as an
attempt to self-medicate the embodied (physical, emotional, socio-spiritual) pain that
accompanies the necessary violence required for social reproduction under the capitalist

mode of production, which is inherently racial and gendered (see Spencer 2014). I posit
that the fatal couplings of difference and power that the system requires (Hall 1992, in
Gilmore 2008; see also Smith 1984), always entail social and geographical dislocation
(Spencer 2014, Alexander 2012) a process that is always unfolding, transmuting, as capital
reconfigures to subvert barriers and maximize accumulation and one in which the state
plays a central, but not singular, role.

Jonathan

Stafford

Circulation, Repetition and Globalised Patterns of Accumulation: the temporal logic of steam
power in nineteenth century imperialist shipping.
In Volume III of Capital, Marx reproduces a lengthy quotation from the Manchester
Guardian concerning a practice of fabricating fictitious capital whereby the shipping
documents of commodities travelling from India by sailing ship around the Cape of Good
Hope to England were sent rapidly by steamships via Egypt. Preceding the goods by several
months, the documents could be redeemed by the company through pawning the bankers
drafts with a London bank well in advance of actually having to pay for the merchandise.
What is significant for Marx in this passage is that the utilisation of steamships marked the
simultaneous existence of two distinct structures of temporality in the context of the
capitalist means of production. Steamship time as the temporality of industrial capital is
rendered in opposition to that of sail the circulatory logic of merchant capital. This
historical departure marks the inception of a new circulatory regime, governed by its own
temporal structure, which runs in parallel with the existing system, discontinuously
simultaneous but nonsynchronous. This paper sets out to challenge the received logic of
temporal acceleration characteristic of the narrative of capitalist spatial domination with a
study of new temporal modalities of accumulation on a global scale which exhibit circulatory
patterns distinguished rather by their predictability and repetition.
Luke Stobart
The politics and 'anti-politics' of Podemos
Contrary to economistic categorisations made of the 15-M (Indignados) movement in the Spanish
State, this movement was primarily a rebellion against really existing politics and an example of the
new anti-politics identified by Humphrys and Tietze. Due to the historic dimensions of the 15-M, its
consciousness-raising, and the reconfiguration of social struggle it inspired, the 15-M has fed a
progressively-inclined organic crisis of the state. More recently, anti-politics has confirmed its
transformative potential through the electoral advance of Podemos a radical organisation mainly
consisting of participants from the new social movements. In a context of political disaffection and
institutional blockage, Podemos systematic antagonism towards the political caste enabled it to
win 8% of the vote in its first elections, and to dominate subsequent debate in the mainstream. This
militancy and Podemos new way of doing politics (mass assemblies, open primaries and rejection

of closed-door negotiations) are unsettling and destabilising the traditional Left, and strengthening
calls for a change in the institutional framework after the abdication of King Juan Carlos. Even when
taking local factors into account, the surprise impact of Podemos suggests that radical anti-politics
provides a strong basis for progressive projects within the contemporary international context.

Robert Stolz

From Imperial Agriculture to Income Doubling: The Postwar Japanese Agrarian Crisis
Using Uno Kozo and Tosaka Juns understanding of a free-floating feudalitya feudal
essence as opposed to a feudal systemthis paper will look at Occupation Japans (1945-
52) agricultural policies as a way to explore how the loss of Japans empire forced a
rethinking of not only landholding and taxation policies, but also a significant recycling of
imperial ideologies that had a profound influence on the structure and politics of the
postwar Japanese state. As a way to get at how contemporaries viewed the nature of the
global crisis of 1931-45 and what they considered necessary for a Japan without an empire, I
will use the records and materials submitted to SCAP for the 1950 rehabilitation hearing of
the purged head of Yukijirushi (Snow Brand Dairy), Kurosawa Toriz (1885-1982). Snow
Brand, or its wartime incarnation, Hokkaido kn ksha, is well placed for this discussion:
Originally a producers cooperative conceived as a solution to the vulnerability of farmers to
market and political forces in the Ashio Copper Mine Pollution Incident, it later became a
key part of imperial agricultural policy when Kurosawa was appointed to the Imperial Rule
Assistance Association (IRAA). Though this resulted in an initial breakup and purge by SCAP,
both Kurosawa and Snow Brand had reformed on the eve of the Ikeda cabinets famous
high-growth and income doubling plans of 1960.
Ted

Stolze

Paul of Tarsus, Thinker of the Conjuncture

"In my talk I defend the following thesis: the apostle Paul should be understood as a
theorist not of the universal but of the conjuncture. Here I part company with such
continental philosophers as Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, and Slavoj Zizek, who in their
own ways have upheld a universalist account of Paul. By contrast, I follow Pauline scholar
Neil Elliott, who has criticized such contemporary recapitulations of a longstanding
Protestant motif about a supposed radical break between Jesus particularizing movement
and Pauls universalizing mission (a motif most recently taken up in books by James Tabor
and Reza Aslan). It is important, I contend (following New Testament scholars David
Wenham and Bruce Longenecker) to understand Paul as thinking and acting in profound
continuity with the teachings and traditions associated with the historically remembered
Jesus, in particular, regarding the latters identification with, and concern for, the poor.
Moreover, I maintain that it is crucial to approach Paul not through an undue emphasis on
his Letter to the Romans (as Agamben, Badiou, and Zizek have done), but through his earlier

letters to various ekklsiae (assemblies) of Jesus followers in Thessalonica, Philippi,

Galatia, and Corinth. In each of these letters Paul was concerned to address, and to resolve,
specific internal community disputes; he played the role of a troubleshooter. I equally
propose that in these letters Paul was interested in providing concrete analyses of concrete
situations within the context of the clashing theologico-political priorities of first-century
Jewish and Roman-imperial cultures and traditions.
Finally, in philosophical dialogue with Louis Althussers conception of aleatory
materialism, I approach Pauls cosmology as rooted in what Pauline scholar Troels
Engberg-Pederson has called a bodily conception of pneuma (spirit). I also maintain that
Paul was especially concerned, as Althusser would put it, with the primacy of practice over
theory, namely, with drawing lines of demarcation between, reconsolidating, and then
taking positions on, tendencies within nascent Christian doctrine. In sum, I would like to
identify and elaborate on defining key features of what Althussers friend Stanislas Breton
has called the radical philosophy of Paul."
Veronika

Stoyanova

The construction of the idea of civil society and its role in the neoliberal transformation in
Bulgaria

This paper is an attempt to contribute to research on the postcommunist transitions from
socialism to capitalism, and particularly on the role of discourse and ideology in these. It
focuses specifically on the case of the discursive construction and construal of the idea of
civil society within the neoliberal agenda of the transformation in Bulgaria. Throughout the
course of the Bulgarian transition, the concept of civil society was predominantly borrowed
as an abstract but ready-made yardstick by which to judge whether the country was
successfully transitioning to a liberal democratic system, and the term came to dominate
political discourses. For the purposes of this paper, I take four reports published by NGOs in
the period between 1998 and 2007, whereby the state of civil society is evaluated and
policy recommendations made. I adopt the methodology of critical discourse analysis
(Fairclough 1995) in reading these reports, focusing on their language as 1) text, 2) as
discursive practice, involving the production and interpretation of text, and as 3) social
practice. I also draw on theories of social imaginaries (Taylor 2004) and of utopias and
ideologies (Mannheim 1936/1976; Bloch 1954/1986) to acquire the analytical lens to
investigate questions of structure, agency and culture in the discursive justification of the
specific (neoliberal) form of civil society which was promoted in the Bulgarian
postcommunist transformation.
Alen Suceska

Dead Weight of Times Long Past: The Temporality of "Common Sense"

Antonio Gramsci's common sense is a concept signifying a fractured world-view composed

of various non-contemporaneous and often contradictory layers from various historical
periods, whereby each represents certain beliefs, values, practices and/or folklore
knowledge. This fracturedness is being continuously reproduced by the hegemonic
apparatuses of the capitalist class within the integral state (political society + civil society)
and used so as to maintain a non-critical and reactionary way of thinking and way of life of
the masses. But common sense can also become good sense, i.e. a critical, self-
conscious and revolutionary world-view. In order to think with Gramsci within todays
capitalist conjuncture, there are several questions worth posing: what are the mechanisms
endorsed by the ruling class hegemonic apparatuses to reproduce and trigger the
reactionary layers of common sense?; in contrast, what are the mechanisms used to
repress its progressive layers, effectively preventing it from becoming good sense?; what
is the role of revolutionaries (organic intellectuals) in speaking to common sense and
how do they find their way through its non-contemporaneous layers?; how can the
progressive good sense be liberated of the dead weight of times long past by a critical
political practice?
Kenneth

Surin

Dependency Theory's reanimation in the era of financial capital

In this paper I examine the claim, advanced in many quarters and in several versions, that
the most recent forms of capitalist development have effectively discredited theories of
uneven or dependent development, and this because these theories hinge crucially on
conceptions that are no longer plausible theoretically and which have been sidelined by
recent historical events. Thus, the ending of the post-war 'Golden Age' ensued in a radical
restructuring of world capitalism that saw the emergence of new regimes of international
competition. These regimes, it is claimed, have allowed the East Asian countries to emerge
as full-fledged industrial powers (contra dependency theory); and, moreover, the
emergence of financialization has up-ended the old notion that development has to be
predicated on industrialization (again contra dependency theory). Against these views, Ill
argue that dependency or uneven development theory can be expanded to take into
account comprador industrialization and financialization.
Dan

Swain

The Actuality of Revolution as Guide to Action

"In this paper I offer an interpretation of Lukcs concept of the actuality of revolution as a
practical guide to action which is both consistent with and informed by Marxs commitment
to proletarian self-emancipation. This concept has been subjected to varied interpretations.
On the one hand, it appears to refer to the fact that revolution is historically possible, and
recognised to be so. On the other, it suggests a certain revolutionary approach or method,

in which the problems of everyday life are recognised as problems of the revolution. My
interpretation stresses the latter of these options, arguing that it is best understood as a
guide to revolutionary practice, which stresses at every stage practical questions of working
class empowerment and self-emancipation.
To this extent I agree with arguments from Paul LeBlanc and Jodi Dean that Lukcs ideas
are of continuing relevance for anyone committed to radical political change, and neednt
be understood as licensing an elitist approach. However, partially against Dean and LeBlanc,
I argue that there is an elitist strain in Lukcs which must be properly disentangled, and that
this rests on his tendency to conflate Marxist theory with revolutionary class consciousness.
Although avoiding this conflation unravels some of Lukcs neat dialectical solutions, it does
not completely devalue his approach to revolutionary practice.
Krystian

Szadkowski

Political and economic consequences of the first capitalist transformation of the Polish
higher education system (1990-2008)

"Until 1989 the socialist higher education system in Poland was elite-formation oriented,
with the average participation rate of 15% of the youth population aged between 19-24 and
around 400 000 students. The first capitalist transformation of the sector, started in 1990,
brought enormous change. Rapid expansion of the enrolments, partially achieved through
creation of the large private sector and internal privatization of the public universities,
reached its peak in 2005 with nearly 2 million students enrolled and participation rate over
50%. The specificity of this universalization of access at the post-socialist peripheries
remains obscure. Polish higher education system, despite size and openness, became an
accelerator of class division and a factory of precarious workers. The article reads this
process, on the one side, through the lenses of the Marxist analysis of a higher education
systems' dynamics (using concepts of formal subsumption and ideal form of formal
subsumption), on the other, with the focus on the functionality of the system itself for the
expanding capitalist labour market (absorption of the potentially unemployed, reduction of
the costs of labour power, precarization, substitution of the welfare provision under the
neoliberal onslaught). The final part shows how this shift from elite to universal access,
specific for the systems of some post-socialist countries in the region, not only supported
the expansion of capitalism but also formed one of the most important conditions of its
survival.
Sebastiano

Taccola

Marx and the Ancients. The Italian debate during the Seventies.

"The debate on the social and economic life in the ancient world has often interested Marx
scholars. Since the 1950s, many economic anthropologists, under the influence of the

category of embedded economy proposed by Karl Polanyi, have pointed out that the
historical materialism categories are not sufficient to understand ancient societies.
Though Marx didnt leave us a systematic exposition of the ancient modes of production,
nevertheless, he was really interested to this kind of problem. It is sufficient to read the
parts dedicated to the pre-capitalistic modes of production that can be found, not only in
the Grundrisse and in the Enthnological Notebooks, but also some in the Capital.
In my presentation I will focus on the Italian debate on Marx and the Ancients during the
Seventies.
The contributions given by Marxian-oriented Italian philologists, archaeologists and
philosophers, far beyond the twentieth century fundamental contrast between primitivism
and modernism, represented a deep critique of the economic anthropology and gave new
life to historical materialism.
Following this path, it is possible to develop, on the one hand, a radical critique of the
embedded economy model, and, on the other hand, to overcome the hypostasis and the
naturalizations of mainstream historiography. According to me, this could be the key for us
to build up a rich comparison between the pre-capitalistic and the capitalistic modes of
production, and to actualize Marxs critique of the political economy method, as exposed by
him in the Introduction to Grundrisse.
Daniel Tanuro

Climate change: the worker's movement and the necessary reduction of the material
production

The 2C Carbon budget implies for developed capitalist countries to reduce their
GHG emissions each year by at least 11%, from now to 2050. Such a reduction is a huge
challenge, especially if it goes hand in hand with a phasing out of the nuclear energy (which
is absolutely necessary, for obvious reasons). The building of a new energy system, based on
renewables, will need great amounts of fossil fuels causing additional emissions of CO2,
compared to the BUA scenario. These emissions will have to be compensated by drastic cuts
in the primary energy consumption. The unescapable conclusion is that the success of the
energy transition depends on a serious reduction in the material production and
transportation. As a consequence, it is not enough to ask for more green jobs. Neither a
carbon tax will be an instrument to cope with the urgency of the situation. To conciliate the
quick reduction in the material production with the worker's demands for jobs and against
austerity will be possible only within the framework of a very radical and global
anticapitalist policy, including a.o.: the planification of the transition, at least at the
European level, the nationalisation of energy and finance, the closure of harmful or
unnecessary industries, the worker's control on the quality of their production, new jobs in
new public services in the fields of dwelling insulation, the location of the food production,

land management and care of the environment, and a drastic reduction in the working time
- without wage loss- as a qualitative compensation for certain quantitative changes in the
way of life. There's no shortcut, no place for a class collaboration policy. The point of non
return has been passed in the melting of the ice cap of Western Antarctica. Radical left
should unify its forces in order to sound the tocsin and elaborate an ecosocialist plan in
order to limit the catastrophy.
Zehra Tasdemir

Yasin

Capital, Nation-State and Ecology: Production of Mosulas as an oil-field, 1914-1958

This paper explores the historically and geographically specific relationship between
capitalist development and nation-state formation with respect to the socio-ecological
content of this relationship based on the instance of the incorporation of the Ottoman
province of Mosul into the modern world economy in the first half of the twentieth century.
Based on the archival research conducted at the British Petroleum Company Archives, it
explores particular spatial modalities through which Mosul was reproduced as a concrete
space of both nation-state, i.e. Iraq, and commodity frontier. It firstly argues that the
demarcation of the geo-political boundaries of mobility and sovereignty was not only a geo-
political process, but also a process of demarcating and defining economic space of nation-
state within the world division of labor and nature. Secondly, rather than presuming oil as a
raw material or free gifts of nature in the process of commodity production, it specifies
the abstraction and exploitation of Mosul oil as a matter of a specific socio-ecological
relation that creates value through alienation of nature and human-nature relation. It
argues that the production of Mosul in the image of the cycle of oil production created the
concrete economic space of nation-state in which nature is dominated to the relation of
exchange.
Eigo

Tateishi

Smoking Metropolises: Capitalist urbanization and fossil fuels

"Urban areas are the most significant contributors to todays global warming. International
Energy Agency estimates that approximately 70 % of CO2 emissions stem from urban
activities. At the same time, as David Harvey argues, urbanization is a primary way of
absorbing over-accumulated capital, which is imperative for the survival of capitalism. Can
we find any theoretical connection between fossil fuel consumption within the city and
capitalist urbanization? I shall try to show that todays global capitalism and the mass
consumption of fossil fuels are indeed closely linked. This shall be done by showing not only
that capitalist production is fossil-fuel-dependent (FFD) but also that spatio-temporal fixes
for crises of over accumulation, as identified by David Harvey formulated, is FFD as well. The
sequence might be sketched in the following way:
{[CP + FF = AC] [OAC] [STF(U) + FF]}

{[CP + FF = AC] [OAC] [STF(U) + FF]}

{[CP + FF = AC] [OAC] [STF(U) + FF]}
continues until the ecological (or systemic) breakdown.
Abbreviations:
CP

: Capitalistic Production

FF

: Fossil Fuels

AC

: Accumulation

OAC

: Over Accumulation

STF(U) : Spatio-Temporal Fix (Urbanization)

I would like to discuss these theoretical arguments with special reference to Marx, Lefebvre,
and Harvey while referring to my future fieldwork outcomes about Iskandar Malaysia urban
development project in Johor Bahru, Malaysia, during this summer.
Michael

Thompson

Reified Intersubjectivity: A Critique of Contemporary Critical Theory

The power of the commodity form to shape consciousness is at the heart of the
theory of reification. Despite this, contemporary critical theory persists in defining itself
against reification through the pragmatist theory of knowledge and social action. For
thinkers such as Habermas, Honneth and others of the third generation of critical theory,
this means that a theory of society can be articulated external to the powers of reification
stemming from the specific socialization processes that occur under capitalism. In this
paper, I will extend the theory of reification beyond the commodity form and into a more
general theory of deformed consciousness that emerges from capitalist forms of
socialization due to commodification but also the specific forms of value acquisition that
occurs from capitalist economic life and argue that this has deep effects on consciousness
that render intersubjectivity an unsuitable framework from which to formulate a critical
theory. Specifically, I will argue that capitalist culture comes to effect the value-orientations
of subjects which then warp cognitive and epistemic capacities, rendering theories of
discourse ethics and recognition essentially unable to formulate critical consciousness. I
then sketch a critique of Habermas and Honneth and their theories of modernity and
consciousness.
Alan Thornett

The biodiversity crisis: the sixth great extinction

extinction

"The biodiversity crisis: the sixth great

Alan Thornett is a writer and campaigner on ecological issues. He is active in the Campaign
Against Climate Change and its trade union committee. He is a member of the editorial
boards of Socialist Resistance and of International Viewpoint. His book Militant Years is an
account of his time as a trade union leader in the car industry.
This paper will look at what is arguably the biggest single impact on the biosphere of the
planet by climate change and the ecological crisis: crisis the crisis of biodiversity.
That is best described as the sixth great species extinction to hit the planet in its 450 million
year history.
That we are therefore living through a new geological epoch: the epoch of the
Anthropoceneas argued by ecologist Eugene Stoermer and Nobel Prize-winning
atmospheric chemist Paul Cruzen.
That whilst previous mass extinctions were the result of naturally occurring phenomena this
one is a result of the unconscious activities of the most, successful, and rapacious species
the planet has producedmodern human beings.
The paper will note that:

Between 40 and 50 percent of species on the planet could be extinct by the mid-
century

In the tropics around 5,000 species are being lost each year.

The extinction rate among amphibians is a mind-boggling 45,000 times higher than
the background rate that existed for millions of years.

A quarter of all mammal species are at risk (the background rate for mammals is one
in 700 years).

The acidification of the oceans means that coral reefs are dying off as are organisms
that rely on calcification for their shell structure.
The paper will discuss the necessary steps to be taken to mitigate this situation and to seek
to reverse it and it will argue that extinction rates of this kind puts at risk all species on the
planet including, eventually, our own."
Tania Toffanin

Feminism in Italy after the Seventies: from the struggle for the wages for housework to the
ideology of equal opportunities

"In Italy during the Seventies there were many feminist movements claiming for the refusal
of the androcentrism but also the idea of equality, considered as an empty box useful for
neglecting womens condition. But after the legalisation of divorce and abortion and the

formal recognition of the women question the feminist movements collapsed. The season
of terrorism played a crucial role in Italy to order the political discourse: after that season
the social conflict was considered as mere violence, also for the normalisation done by
the Italian Communist Party that needed to be legitimated as a democratic party. In the
Eighties while the Italian communist party and left unionism changed their aims as a
consequence of the political exchange that allowed them to keep their structure with the
assurance to decline any revolutionary perspectives, other more radical left movements
disappeared. These processes of both institutionalization and weakening concerned also
feminism. Both the concept of equality and difference have mystified that also for
women the standard, the unit of measure has become men and their behaviour in public
and private sphere. This standard also changes on the basis of economic and social
contingencies but it continues to dominate. And what about the gender dimension? It has
been formally but elusively solved by the ideology of equal opportunities while the
intersection between gender and class has been totally silenced.
So why do we take for granted or imagine that feminism would be fully impermeable to
capitalism? I think that Marxism has been given more blame than it had in relation to the
concealment of the women question. Considering what happened in Italy, as working
class movements hidden the gender, the feminist movements dismissed the class and both
feminism and Marxism have lost a crucial battle. As already highlighted in 1971 by
Mariarosa Dalla Costa, the struggle of women had to fight patriarchy and act as a catalyst
for other subjectivities dominated by the patriarchal system. While feminist movements
have got lost in the creation of modern gynaecea, reduced within the logic of equal
opportunities, the working class has dismissed its identity. The result has been again the
disavowal of the inseparable bond between productive and reproductive work in a circular
process that allows the State to deny any engagement in reducing the care burdens and the
reproduction of the patriarchal system as well."
Stavros

TOMBAZOS

The Economic Crisis in Cyprus

Cypruss model of accumulation was not only structurally unbalanced but also very sensitive
to exogenous developments, especially after the accession of Cyprus in the EU and the
adoption of the euro. The economic crisis in Cyprus is closely related to the deep and
prolonged recession in Greece. In the general context of the European economic slowdown,
the Cypriot hypertrophic banking system, expanded internationally in recent years,
couldnt absorb the double shock of the increase of its non-performing loans in Greece and
the haircut of Greek sovereign debt. The memorandum imposed on Cyprus led to a vicious
circle, where the recession of the real economy fuels the banking crisis and vice versa.
Beside the decrease in wages, the austerity policies didnt result to an increase in Cypruss
price-competitiveness, but to the rise of the labour forces exploitation. Under these
circumstances, an exit from the structural crisis is not in sight.


Samo Tomsic

Primitive Accumulation between Scientific and Capitalist Modernity

"The presentation will focus on Marxs discussion of primitive accumulation and
thereby thematize the role of modern scientific knowledge in the genesis of capitalism. It is
true that primitive accumulation already in itself gives rise to a series of questions and
controversies. While some have criticized its fictional nature, others have insisted on its
historical accuracy. One can nevertheless overlook that Marxs notion comprises a curious
intertwining of fact and fiction (or rather: historic montage), which necessitates the
conclusion that this dichotomy might not be appropriate to address the issue at stake, and
that the critical truth Marx aims at is of entirely different order, neither factual nor fictitious.
Primitive accumulation is also not a singular event in the past but an on-going process, as
other critical thinkers have convincingly argued (e.g. S. Federici and J. Read). This already
indicates the specific topological and temporal problem at work in the constitution and self-
preservation of capitalism. Incidentally, the encounter of the very same spatial-temporal
paradox marked Freuds discussion of (primal) repression.
The paper will return to two main aspects of Marxs discussion: 1) the relation between the
political-economic myth on the genesis of social inequality (and Marx`s historical-critical
account of political violence in early urbanization) and 2) the relation between the
transformation of moral debt into (quantified and abstract) public debt and the genesis of
labour-power. Marx here in fact analyses the constitution of modern subjectivity (what
Lazzarato calls the production of indebted man). This production is by far not
characteristic merely for contemporary financial capitalism but is already at work in the very
genesis of capitalist abstractions. However, the homology between Marxs account of
primitive accumulation and Freuds theory of (primal) repression unveils the true nature of
produced subjectivity and simultaneously demonstrates, why the actual terrain of struggle
against capitalism is co-extensive with the register of symbolic (language) as such.
The inclusion of modern scientific knowledge in the emerging capitalist mode of production
plays an important, if not crucial part in the social implementation of capitalist abstractions.
For this reason the paper will also address the relation between science and capitalism, by
linking Marxs attempt to think primitive accumulation with the lessons of psychoanalytic
theory of the unconscious. In this way the notion of critique will be envisaged in its fidelity
to the emancipatory potential of scientific modernity and extended to other conflictual
sciences (Althusser) such as psychoanalysis. In this respect, critique signifies nothing other
than a systematic attempt to detach science from universal commodification, or differently
put, to reintroduce class struggle in the apparent neutrality of scientific knowledge."
Sebastian

Truskolaski

Adorno's Inverse Theology

It has often been noted that Adornos works abound with references to golden calves,
image bans and broken vessels. The religious provenance of Adornos terminology, thus,
invites the question what if anything these references mean in the wider context of his
work? Such an inquiry requires considerable qualification for two reasons. Firstly, Adorno
does not engage at any point in a sustained scholarly inquiry into the nature of God that
might be called properly theological in an academic sense. (Certainly, Adorno had no formal
knowledge of, either, the Jewish or Christian traditions from which he draws.) Secondly,
Adorno explicitly accepts the verdicts of his intellectual progenitors Friedrich Nietzsche and
Karl Marx, arguing that positive religion has lost its () validity; that traditional theology
is not restorable. Accordingly, his many invocations of biblical motifs are, indeed,
somewhat surprising, begging the question how they are to be seen as anything more than
incidental metaphors. My wager is that the answer to this question lies in Adornos
enigmatic notion of an inverse theology, contained in a letter to Walter Benjamin, dated
17.12.1934. As I argue, the point is that inverse theology presupposes a particular kind of
reversal: on the one hand, it concerns a standard enlightenment narrative which teaches
that the traditional authority of a monotheistic world-view wanes with the advancement of
the natural sciences; on the other hand, it concerns the view that the ostensibly modern
phenomenon of capitalism is itself imbued with religious characteristics. Against the
backdrop of recent work on this question (Hamacher, Santner, Khatib) I ask whether it is
conceivable that Adorno, too, turns the displaced terms of theology against the capitalism
cult religion."
Sofia Tsadari

he 50 shades of red: perspectives of the left in conflict during the memorandum era in
Greece
"The introduction of Greece to the ""support"" mechanism in the spring of 2010 marks a
historic milestone. The memorandum era is a synonymous of flagrant oppression of the
working majority and the youth. At the same time it is a period of extremely massive and
important social struggles. Unprecedented worker's strikes and the square movement
constitute key moments, in the development of which left-wing organisations played a
leading role. So it is important to record what they were advocating, and it is for sure that
there were differences. In this viewpoint ""red had many shades"".
In this paper we will examine the different assessments and political responses of the left on
some issues that we consider fundamental. The background of different political answers
and slogans is the basic assessments concerning a) the standing of Greece and its economy
at international level and b) the character of this new period that follows the entry into the
memorandum era. Is Greece a dependent territory and what is the content of the term
dependency? Do we experience a state of occupation similar to the 1940s? (critical

approach to the theories of dependence / new occupation). What is the role and the
conditions of the Greek participation in EU? (critique of the neoliberal view underlining the
facts of uneven development and the exploitative character of the union, critical approach
to the possibility of a social European Union). And, ultimately, how is the answer to these
questions related to the political platforms of the left? (upgrading the national or class
nature of the struggle).
There is an extensive discussion concerning the fragmentation of the left wing. However,
the demand for unity stumbles over rocks in the darkness. Which are the rocks? On the
basis of different approaches, the simple invocation of unity is not sufficient when strategic
matters are existent.
Capitalism survives for one more reason, because of the strategic failure of the counter-
power that could overthrow it."
George Tsogas
The Commodity Form in Cognitive Biocapitalism - Alive and Excessive
Through the thought of Sohn-Rethel we can see how his daring suggestions on the
ontological unity of consciousness and commodity exchange can have a renewed relevance
for the era of cognitive biocapitalism. He can help us see under new light and explain how
commodities in cognitive biocapitalism appeal and appear to us. In this paper, we explain
how the feelings and emotions of the immaterial labour of thousands of people is
embedded in any commodity, even in such a simple thing as a t-shirt or a pair of cool
trainers. But, cognitive biocapitalism creates no simple commodities. Each and every one
becomes the depository of a vast array of cognition and states of consciousness; not only of
the mechanical knowledge, the data of the manufacturing and logistic systems, but also of
the sentiments, sensations and ways of life of workers along the value chain. All these are
amassed into a logo, a brand name, a symbol of the commodity, and through it are
channelled back to us. They are our own knowledge and thoughts that we project into the
commodity and it, in turn, sends them back to us. They match perfectly our own thoughts,
feelings, and expectations of life, because they are parts of us; they are us.
In that way, it makes perfect sense that in cognitive biocapitalism (as business practitioners
understand very well) commodities may only come to life (often through the blood and
tears of exploited workers) when and because of a particular outlet for their desire,
adoration and consumption has arose and calls for them to come into existence. We our
consciousness are that outlet. Anticipated consumption (that is our cognitive states,
formed as they are by capitalist commodity exchange) dictate what, how, where, when,
how much, by whom, etc. will be produced. Production matches the demands that
consumption puts upon it. Knowledge is not outside and unaffected by the production

process; it is shaped by it, enshrined into a commodity-form, which, in turn, is in harmony

with our own levels of consciousness.
The commodity form in cognitive biocapitalism is alive and kicking with the excessive energy
of life itself. It is life!
Jana Tsoneva & Georgi Medarov

Representative Democracy and its Discontents: the Rise of the Rhyzomatic Party Form

"November 2014 will mark the 25th anniversary of the transition to democracy in Bulgaria.
Far from an occasion for jubilation over the relatively unproblematic implementation of
liberal political and economic reforms, the past year's popular mobilizations and dismal
performance of electoral politics have alarmed liberal intellectuals. In an idealist fashion,
they are (mistakenly) looking for the causes of the crisis of representation the rise of
populism rather than in the glitches in capital accumulation, austerity and the incapacity
of the neoliberal ideological straitjacket on democracy to offer change of politics, rather
than of politicians. Since 1989 Bulgarians have not re-elected any incumbent government;
Bulgaria, therefore, is a country where electoral volatility makes it easy for new parties to
displace old ones, only to be cast away shortly after. In that respect, the 2013 mass protests
in Bulgaria were not a disillusionment with some imperfections of liberal democracy (e.g.
corruption), but directed against representative politics as such.
Our contribution discusses the logic of the crisis of representation plaguing parties across
the political spectrum. We scrutinize the effects of discursive strategies of political elites on
party ideology, nomenclature and organization, specifically the rise of what we call
rhyzomatic party form."
Lori

Turner

Walter Benjamin, Precarious Labour, and the Proletarianisation of the Independent

Producer

In this paper I would like to explore Benjamins writings from 1924-1934, beginning with
One Way Street and ending with The Present Social Situation of the French Writer and
Author as Producer. Over the course of these 10 years of hyper inflation, unemployment,
malnutrition, monopolisation, concentration of capital and ending with economic
depression and the victory of fascism, Benjamin confronts the problem of class and working
class consciousness with an analysis of his own changing class position. This paper is neither
biography nor history. I would like to address a dimension of Benjamins analysis which is
grounded in self-reflection informed by a historical materialism he consciously adopts in
1924. Contrary to much Benjamin scholarship which denies the political dimension of his
work, Benjamin is very clear that political and economic conditions affected the direction of
his thought. Material deprivation and precarious work opportunities (an awareness of his

position within the production process) led to theoretical reflection on the fate of the
independent producer regarding both his own work and that of a variety of authors whose
works he reviewed as a freelance writer.
Tom Twiss

Trotsky, Bureaucracy, and Capitalist Restoration

Between 1917 and his death in 1940 Trotsky advanced three diverse analyses of the
problem of Soviet bureaucracy, each of which provided a very different account of how
bureaucracy was promoting capitalist restoration in the USSR. This paper will trace the
development of Trotskys views on these questionsfrom his administrative focus the
issue of bureaucratic inefficiency during the civil war and the early years of NEP; to his
initially impressive but increasingly problematic characterization of the bureaucratized state
and party apparatuses as highly responsive to external, alien class pressures during the
years 1923-33; to his final theory, most fully articulated in The Revolution Betrayed, of the
bureaucracy as a highly autonomous social formation threatening to transform itself into a
new capitalist class. The paper will conclude with some observations regarding both the
significant weaknesses and the major strengths of Trotskys final theory and its predictions
regarding the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union.
Martin Upchurch

& Claudio Morrison

Nationalism, Neoliberalism and Revolt in Bosnia

In February 2014 a revolt broke out across Bosnia and Herzegovina. The rebellion included
demands for payment of delayed wages, for renationalisation of privatised industries, an
end to asset stripping by oligarchs, and for the reduction of salaries for local political elites.
Plenums, or peoples assemblies, began to reject the nationalist and ethnic division of the
country. The roots of nationalism and ethnic division are located in the 1980s when the
economy of Yugoslavia was in crisis and crippled with debt (Chossudovsky 1997).
Nationalism was presented by elites as a way out of the crisis. After the civil wars Bosnia
was left isolated, held together in ethnically based entities by the 1995 Dayton Accord.
Loans and grants from international financial institutions and USAID liberalised the economy
but created debt subservience and worker impoverishment (Upchurch 2009). However, a
class-based anti-nationalist mood has now developed. In this paper we present the story of
the protests but also examine the politics of nationalism and anti-nationalism in post
socialist states. We assess the dynamic interplay between nationalism and the economics of
market democracy with reference not only to Bosnia but also the states of the former Soviet
Union.
Ugo

Urbano & Casares

Rivetti

Critique and Modernity: Raymond Williams' Marxism

Here I intend to examine the work of Raymond Williams through a perspective still rather
underexplored by the specialized literature: namely, that of a project interested in the
comprehension of modern society and of the historical process that, beginning with the
Industrial Revolution, formed its bases, which, in the English case, were, notably,
industrialism and democracy. In order to accomplish such task, I intend to adress the
relations between the work of Williams and those traditions which were his greatest
influences: English literary criticism and Marxism. These theoretical strands concern me
both because this matter (critique of modernity) takes a central position in its theoretical
schemes, as well as because they rest in the foundation of Williams thought, as he himself
stated on different occasions. I intend to focus on the genesis of the thought of Williams in
its interrelationship with those two traditions, always assuming the fact that (and this is my
first hypothesis) the theory of culture of Williams can only be plainly understood if inserted
in this major project of critique of modernity: as Williams states in Culture and Society
(1958), the task is to think culture as a concept which expresses the general reactions to the
social changes that took place after the Industrial Revolution and which carried on
throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. According to this hypothesis, the same statement
could be made about the theories of culture of Marxism and of English literary criticism:
when dissociated from its social and historical dimensions, the notions of culture mobilized
by these two approaches loose meaning. My second hypothesis is that, when the work of
Raymond Williams is framed as a critique of modernity nourished by these two theoretical
influences, it is possible to identify a path in its development: in the 1950s, a closer relation
to the English literary criticism tradition and, as a result, a critique of modernity as industrial
society. On the other hand, in the 1960s and 1970s (and, according to my hypothesis,
notably in The Country and The City), a closer relation to Marxism and, as a result, a critique
of modernity in a Marxist approach: for here (again, especially in The Country and The City)
Williams apprehends the critique of industrial society and civilization of the English literary
tradition as what it really was, as a critique of capitalism.
Jonas Van

Vossole

Global Climate Governance: a legitimation crisis Capitalism, power and alienation - Marxist
and Polanyian Perspectives
This article frames the failure of COP19 in Warsaw, the problems of the RIO+20 summit, the
failure of the Copenhagen COP15 and the problems of the carbon markets within a broader
legitimacy crisis of Global Governance, consequence of the crisis of the global capitalist
socio-ecology. Two mechanisms give rise to the loss of legitimacy; unequal development
and mercantilization, or the reconfiguration of the power balance and the destruction of
social ties. As a consequence both winners and losers contest the legitimacy of the
institutions and mechanisms that govern global capitalism. In this article, we distinguish
Marx-type of contestation, referring to emerging classes/states and Polanyi-type of
contestation, referring to the victims of global mercantilization. In the case of Climate

governance, these are represented by the role of the BRICs in climate negotiations and by
the global environmental justice movement.
Murillo

van der Laan & Mariana Shinohara

Roncato

The June Days in Brazil and the challenges of the left

In june 2013, during the Confederations Cup, the wave of mass protests that, since 2008,
affected many countries reached Brazil. Initially, the demonstrations were motivated by the
rejection of the public transportation fare increases in Sao Paulo. After a violent state
repression, the marches have grown significantly, spreading through various Brazilian cities
and culminating with the direct involvement of millions of people. The agenda of the
protests also grew and varied, encompassing different demands from different sectors of
the Brazilian society. These events questioned an assumed socioeconomic optimism
ongoing in the country based on economic stability, unemployment reduction, welfare
programs, easier credit access, etc. , highlighting the limits of the so-called new
developmentalism policies. In this context, our aim in the article is to analyse the various
positions of the left-wing movement (intellectuals, parties, social movements, etc.)
concerning the causes, developments and challenges brought forward by the so-called June
Days. Some of the questions that emerge from this debate are: the current organizational
issues of the working class, new forms of struggle, the limits of the Partido dos
Trabalhadores' hegemony, the concurrent attempt of the traditional right to capitalize the
national instabilities, the resurgence of the far-right movement, etc.
Matt Vidal

Sociology and the seven theses of Marxism - Or, sociological marxism without apologies
This paper seeks to challenge the declining influence of classical marxism within sociology,
with a particular thought not exclusive focus on American sociology. While many basic
marxist analytical categories and insights have been assimilated into sociology, and marxist
concepts such as class, hegemony and the labor process continue to be used within
sociology in vaguely marxist ways, historical materialism, crisis theory and value theory have
been largely excoriated from the discipline, at least within the American academy. This
exorcism has been largely performed by two scholars who are among the best known
American marxist sociologists Michael Burawoy and Erik Olin Wright both of whom have
recently been presidents of the American Sociological Association. This paper reviews
Burawoy and Wrights explicit attempts to define marxist sociology as a combination of class
analysis, labor process analysis and state theory, while explicitly rejecting historical
materialism, value theory and crisis theory. As such, Burawoy and Wright have presented a
neomarxism that is a gross distortion of classical marxism, one which systematically neglects
the remarkable range of vibrant theory and research guided by the core theses of classical
marxism. In the process, they have robbed sociology of the tools it needs to explain core

problems in the contemporary global political economy. I will argue that despite the modern
political and academic ritual of trying to find the holy grail that invalidates marxism, it is in
fact a living, vibrant research program consisting of at least seven core theses on the social
construction of reality, historical materialism, and the contradictory and problematic
reproduction of capitalism each of which has inspired whole research traditions, making
marxism the critical social research program par excellence. These theses, which are
irreducibly-marxist, continue to present singularly penetrating and analytically fruitful
insights into the operation of capitalist societies. Without some version of the bulk of these
theses, critical analysis of capitalism would be impossible. As such, they provide the basis for
a unified sociological framework that could if it were not so apologetic offer a real
alternative to mainstream economics.
Satnam Virdee

A Marxism without guarantees: Stuart Hall and why race matters

"Stuart Hall was probably the most important socialist intellectual of post-war Britain. The
first editor of New Left Review, he continued to play an outstanding role in the broader
New Left for the rest of his life (Blackburn 2014: 75). Unlike so many in the western Marxist
tradition who tended to produce a form of theory largely divorced from political practice,
Hall was an organic intellectual embedded in the anti-racist black movement and
someone who appreciated that theory is a detour on the road to somewhere more
important. This paper undertakes an assessment of Stuart Halls writings on racism, class
and historical capitalism particularly that body of work he produced in the course of his
critical engagement with the intellectual thought of Marx, Althusser and Gramsci. It
suggests that for too long Marxist explanations of racism have remained narrowly grounded
within the organization of work and labour market inequalities, and thus open to the charge
of economic reductionism. I discuss how in Race, articulation and societies structured in
dominance (1980) and Gramscis relevance to the study of race and ethnicity (1986) Hall
offers Marxists a way out of this impasse by giving greater consideration to the political,
ideological and cultural dimensions structuring and manufacturing racialized social divisions.
In particular, he outlines the contours of an innovative theoretical framework for
understanding racism that is capable of dealing with both the economic and superstructural
features of such societies, while at the same time giving a historically-concrete and
sociologically-specific account of its distinctive racial aspects (1980: 336). In conclusion I
draw out a number of theoretical and political implications of Halls re-thinking of the
race/class nexus, including how race can no longer be seen as an epiphenomenon, a mere
phenomenological expression of the underlying reality of social class but rather something
that is relatively autonomous and needs to be given its own specificity. A related implication
of race not being reducible to the economic sphere is that Hall helps to shift our gaze
towards the study of how racism works at the political and cultural levels of society
suggesting that there are additional layers of explanation that require excavation if we are

to fully account for the reproduction of racism in contemporary society, and understand
why capitalism continues to survive into the 21st century.
Marina Vishmidt & Melanie Gilligan
Subjects of Crisis

This paper is part of a larger body of ongoing research and publishing investigating how
current shifts in the material relations of money, commodities, and social abstraction in
general shape contemporary forms of interority. There has been a surfeit of discussion of
the ways in which subjects are formed through their social roles within the relations of
production, but less has been said about the determinate shaping of people by abstraction.
This preliminary inquiry into the relationship between capitalist abstraction and subjectivity
has two parts. In the first, we will discuss some of the most significant theoretical accounts
of capitalist abstraction; in the second, we will depart from the history of Marxist thought
towards the future of capitalism, tracing a few of the abstract psychologies on which that
future depends, and setting out some reflections on how they - and it - might be overcome.
If the contemporary subject is a derelict shell housing data bodies, social commodities and
quantified selves, we need to develop another materialist understanding of the subject, one
which looks to the collective production of affects and rationalities in resistance which both
exhibit - and forecast the surpassing of - the symptoms of our present.'
Zhaohui Wang

The world-systems theory, the US-China economic relations, and the global economic crisis
Through the lens of the world-systems theory, I understand the global economic crisis as a
structural crisis within the world-economy and the China-US imbalanced economic relations
to a large extent contribute to this structural crisis. The United States, as the core country,
has the exorbitant privilege of issuing the dollar used as international reserve currency and a
tendency to live beyond its means. China, as the periphery country, has been committed to
export-led growth based on the maintenance of an undervalued exchange rate. China has
intervened in the foreign-exchange market to keep its currency down, which results in large
accumulation of dollar reserves. I will argue that the US and China actually form a symbiotic
relationship in the capitalist world-economy. The growth of Chinas export engine and the
growth of its dollar reserves and US debts are both closely linked to the consumption spree
in the US. However, I would also argue that the symbiotic relationship between the US and
China is not long-term sustainable but conducive to the structural crisis of the world-
economy. The Triffin Dilemma has pointed out the monetary system based on the currency
of one country cannot sustainably deliver both liquidity and confidence. Finally, I will discuss
Chinas response policies to the recent global economic crisis in both domestic and
international dimensions, including the fiscal stimulus package, the economic restructuring,
and the internationalization of the renminbi.

Rikard Warlenius
A renewable transition: Capitalist barriers and Socialist enticements
Despite what obviously makes sense, and despite the long-term interests of ANY social class
or force, very little is done to avoid catastrophic climate change. In order to overcome the
self-destructive mode of current capitalist development, we need to consider what aspects
of renewable energy are so threatening to capital accumulation that even climate chaos is
preferred, and how they can be transcended.

Siobhan Watters

Capital's Means of Subsistence

Food production was one of capital's first strongholds (i.e. through primitive accumulation)
and remains a principle mechanism by which capitalism survives. We often fail to realize
that the incarceration of food by the commodity form degrades the food object itself and
guarantees continued dependency on the wage. It is the bodys frailty, its need for the
means of subsistence, that forces the subject to move through capitals infrastructure of
self-valorization, repeatedly constituting capital through the extraction of her surplus labour
and participation in exchange. And yet, food commodities are produced not to satisfy
human need, but capitals, e.g. the ways in which food is manufactured are intended to
make products shelf-stable and resilient in transit, not nutritious and safe for the end
consumer. This paper will explore the contradiction between the concrete and abstract
natures of commodities as embodied by the food object as a way of illustrating the
progressive disavowal of human need by capital, in spite of human necessitys pre-
constitutive role in the formation of capitalist relations. This contradiction creates not only a
profound crisis for human life, but for capital itself, as it ceaselessly negates the ground of
its own survival.
Amy Wendling

A Brief History of Property: How Duties to Objects and Community were transformed into
Possessive Individualism

"As a concept, Property undergoes some crucial modifications during the modern and
contemporary periods. The talk looks at the history of the property concept in the West,
and traces the narrowing of this concept to the form of property holding we recognize as
possessive individualism. Possessive individualism, as its name indicates, is the form of
property holding most likely to produce the Tragedy of the Commons. To illustrate this, the
talk will discuss the troubles of the property concept, once narrowed into the form of
possessive individualism, when it is applied to resources like surface and groundwaters.

A related feature of possessive individualism is its disregard for the qualities of the things
held as property, in favor of abstract quantifications such as their exchange value or
functionality. So, as the property concept comes to range over more and more kinds of
things, it does so by abstracting from their precise qualities.
The talk will draw on Marxs histories of the property concept in various notebooks and
published works."
Chris Williams

Assessing Development Strategies in the Context of Neoliberalism and the Age of Ecological
Crisis: A Comparative Analysis of Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia
"Vietnam, Morocco and Bolivia, where I have spent the last few months examining the
nexus of energy, water and food in the context of climate change, are three rapidly
developing countries which are simultaneously among the most severely threatened by
global warming. While each is on a slightly different developmental pathway, through
capitalist economic development and growth, each is attempting to escape the legacy,
amongst other power dynamics, of unequal ecological exchange generated by a history of
European colonization and domination.
As such, in the new age of ecological crisis, they offer striking examples of how ruling elites
in each country, as well as the working people they govern, are further assimilating into a
United States-dominated, globalized and neoliberal capitalism. In a quite striking manner,
government reports are replete with references to climate change and the need to develop
in ecologically sustainable ways. Yet, in practice, government policy often contradicts their
own reports. The process is therefore highly contradictory and conflictual, as nation states
see their salvation through a prism of helter-skelter growth based on exports, industrialized
agriculture, and the exploitation of natural resources which can be seen as a form of green
neocolonialism.
Analysis of these countries on three separate continents, which in many ways exemplify
combined and uneven development, offer the opportunity to examine how internal
pressures combine with larger, external forces of imperial power and capitalist dynamics, to
produce developmentalist states in the context of expected severe climate disruption. How
much room for maneuver do these states have, and what would be required for any of them
to move in a recognizably different direction? One that increases climate resilience,
ecological sustainability and social equity? To what extent can one argue any of them are
doing so? As a comparative analysis, this paper will examine similarities and differences in
order to generalize from these examples and posit potential alternatives."
Jocelyn

Wills

Satellite Surveillance and Outer Space Capitalism, Jocelyn Wills, History, Brooklyn College,
City University of New York
"My paper will explore the ways in which capitalism in outer space incorporated satellite-
based surveillance technologies, firms, entrepreneurs, and workers in Canada into regional
industrial, academic and military alliances, particularly with the United States. I employ
research on the 45-year history of Canadas MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) as
a case study in this development. Founded in Vancouver, British Columbia during 1969,
MDA evolved from a four-person software consultancy into one of the worlds most
significant suppliers of reconnaissance, communications and earth observation satellites, as
well as a prime commercial and government contractor for surveillance and intelligence
information. MDA is also a major provider of the ground stations that receive, process,
archive, and exploit satellite data, the navigational systems that support aircraft (including
unmanned aerial vehicles, commonly known as drones), and robots working in space.
The path from a small, local firm to a global operation was not smooth, but throughout the
stages of MDAs development, engineers and scientists consistently maintained their faith in
technologys power to revolutionise the world for the better. That faith, along with MDAs
increasing integration into the USAs military-industrial-academic complex and participation
in the commercialisation and commodification of outer space, demonstrates that a critical
engagement with historical materialism continues to matter to our understanding of society
and outer space.
Sociologists Johan Sderberg and Adam Netzn suggest that despite the post-structural
turn, a rejection of the dialectic, and the project of deconstructing the dichotomy between
human agency and the larger structural forces of capitalism, we need to remember that
human subjects/classes and power structures have remained relatively stable precisely
because we are living in a society seduced by dreams about perpetual change and
newness. (Sderberg and Netzn, 2010, 97, 111) MDAs experience reinforces this need.
Karl Marx may have underestimated the adaptability of capitalism, the many stages,
technological innovations and class fractions it might produce. (Bourdieu, 1984, 283-317)
But Marx made astute historical observations, including:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make
it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly
encountered, given and transmitted from the past. (Marx, 1994, 1)
Historians care about such contexts as we map change (and continuity) over time. Looking
at the context behind the MDA experience does not mean, however, that new theoretical
approaches and the relationships, systems, networks, and products that people create and
engage do not matter. Rather, it is the synergy between an uncritical faith in new
technology and the post-structural, technology turn that has tended to obscure the larger
historical forces that drew MDA and others into outer space projects in the first place.

MDAs competitive posturing in outer space resulted in increased economic crises and the
further consolidation of the global elite while simultaneously contributing to increased
global uncertainty, including job insecurity.
Because they thought they were different from previous industrial workers, most engineers
at MDA simply adjusted to the next phase of capitalism rather than challenge it. In this they
were far from alone. People from all walks of life rationalise their decisions and choose
selective memories from the past to make sense of their current circumstances. Social
anthropologist Hylton White recently captured this reality. In an environment structured for
unending expansion, he reminds us that capitalism inevitably turns each new wave of
technological enthusiasm, gadget and profession from an exotic first to a ubiquitous
commodity. (White, 2013, 667-81) Satellite-based surveillance technologies and outer space
are no different.
The paper will provide an overview of satellite-based surveillance technologies, their
applications and users, and how they influence daily life. I then turn to the historical context
MDA inherited from previous generations. Finally, I focus on MDA, and what lessons we
might draw from the firms stages of development, the capitalists who guided the firm, and
how MDAs engineers adjusted to their role as workers over time."
Colin Wilson

Intersectionality in early capitalism: race and sexuality in Enlightenment France "Theme:

Intersections of Marxism, feminism, critical race and postcolonial theories
A profound ambivalence typifies eighteenth-century political theory. Enlightenment authors
endorse rationality and the rule of law, yet such values coexist with an increase in racial and
class violence such as slavery and the frequent use of capital punishment. As Losurdo has
recently highlighted, readers are constantly led to question how far asserted universalisms
are truly universal, and how far they reflect the interests of particular class, gender and
racial interests.
This paper seeks to build on this work to examine ideas around sexuality and race in the
work of authors including Montesquieu, Voltaire and Diderot. In seeking to reject Christian
sexual morality, such authors repeatedly reference other cultures both non-European and
ancient societies. Insofar as they are seeking to create a civilised morality rooted in
universal natural laws, then, their concepts of sexuality always exist in ambiguous dialogue
with a racial other. The literary forms of Enlightenment texts centring on sex and race such
as dialogues, novels and satires only increase the difficulty of assessing how far they are
conservative or subversive. Locating these authors in the context of early capitalist France,
the paper argues that these ambiguities are best understood as reflecting the social conflicts
of the Ancien Rgime."
Jim

Wolfreys

Austerity politics and the relationship between conservatism and fascism "Austerity politics
and the relationship between conservatism and fascism
The European elections of 2104 saw an unprecedented rise in votes for fascist and
authoritarian populist parties campaigning on an anti-immigration platform. This paper
focuses on the 4.7m votes achieved by the Front National (FN) in France and the 4.4m votes
for UKIP in the UK. Do these results reflect a capacity on the part of such parties to win
lasting electoral support? Are these scores primarily a symptom of the fragmentation of the
mainstream right, reflecting the disarray of a traditional conservative electorate, or is there
evidence to suggest that working class voters are being won from the left to authoritarian
politics via a racist agenda?
The paper examines the long-term implications of growing electoral support for
authoritarian populist and fascist parties. It assesses the role played by mainstream parties
in legitimizing racist attitudes towards immigrants, situating the claims made by Labour
politicians that the party must take a tougher line on mass migration from Europe in the
context of the failure of the UMP and the Parti Socialiste to stem the rise of the Front
National by pandering to racist attitudes towards migrants.
It examines the relationship between conservative and authoritarian populist parties and
fascism. To what extent do parties like UKIP, or initiatives like those developed by Philippe
de Villiers in France, act as temporary transmission belts between the mainstream right and
parties with an extra-parliamentary agenda? Are they, and developments like the anti-gay
marriage protests of 2013 in France, indications of a more durable structural shift in the
political landscape of the right? What evidence is there to suggest that electoral support can
be translated into organizational reserves for UKIP and the FN?
What are the differences in terms of strategy, organizational structure and ideology
between populist parties and the far-right? What strategies should the left develop to
combat their rise? The paper draws on historical studies of the relationship between
conservatism and fascism to conclude that the interplay between the two traditions is fluid,
providing an assessment of potential outcomes drawing on comparative contemporary and
historical analyses of the relationship between political traditions in transition and economic
crisis."
Jamie Woodcock

Possibilities for new workplace organisation: workers refusal and the challenges for trade
unions.
The trade union movement in the UK faces a number of difficult challenges: failing to
confront austerity, falling membership, and an inability to relate to precarious workers. The
possibilities for overcoming these are often conceived of in terms of trade union renewal or
the adoption of an organising model. While these are important perspectives for those

workers already in trade unions, they fail to consider the large number of workers who are
not members of trade unions. To address these questions it is necessary to begin with the
workplace, rather than the trade union. This paper seeks to explore how the questions of
resistance in the workplace can be linked to an organisational strategy through a number of
examples. It will consider the role of academic research in relation to workers struggle by
drawing on the debates on the use of workers inquiries, specifically in the Italian Workerist
tradition. Mario Trontis concept of the strategy of refusal will be used to refocus the
analysis on the activity of workers themselves and consider the possibilities of new
organisational forms. In conclusion, the paper will argue for an intervention into the debates
on trade unionism that combines critical theory with emerging examples.
Xavier Wrona

Turning Architectural Thought Processes Against Capital

"""Architecture"" and ""social engineering"" are absolute synonyms. If social engineering

designates this by which capitalism proliferates around the globe (D. Harvey, N. Klein), the
""thinking of globality"" as well as the ""ability to implement ideological reforms of the built
environment"" that social engineering requires, has historically had only one name:
Architecture (D. Hollier).
The totalitarian/totalizing thought process of architecture (systematic thinking, inter-
proportionality of parts, mastery of details...) has historically been used by Power to implant
capitalism (Colonialism/Imperialism), reinforce capitalism (Renaissance), rescue capitalism
(Haussmann). Architectural thinking, as both ""construction of mindsets"" and the ""reform
of the organization of the territory"" this entails, has demonstrated its mastery of the
economy of war: from machines designed by Vitruvius, to the redefinition of warfare on
architectural terms operated by Palladio, to Speer's ministry of War during WWII...
If architectural thinking can be applied to other objects than buildings, such as warfare, it
could be useful in countering the expansive logics of capital rather than fueling them. We
propose means to reorient part of architecture schools trainings away from the production
of buildings towards the production of post-neo-liberal modes of ordering of reality."
Izadora

Xavier do Monte

Consumer bodies: queer and class in Brazil's "rolezinhos" "The paper proposes the use of
Claire Hemmings' statement of neo-liberalism as precisely not queer to analyze the
phenomenon of Brazil's rolezinhos.
Rolezinhos are a brazilian mass movement that have been happening for a couple of years
and recently called the media's attention after a police confrotation during one of their
demonstrations. At the beginning of 2014, a group of young people from the peripheral
areas of So Paulo decided to go in a large group to a central shopping mall, resulting in the

group being stopped by the shopping mall security for no apparent reason, except the fact
of their race and social origin. Rolezinhos are scheduled through social networks and they
gather circa of twenty people at a time, most of them poor adolescents looking for a leisure
time.
The phenomenon of rolezinhos arrive in the moment where the politics of inclusion of the
Labour Party of the past twelve years are being criticized. Despite their success in pulling
millions of working class people from poverty, the focus on turning the workers into
consumers instead of citizens starts to show its limits. Rolezinhos clearly define one of those
limits, and allows to think about the limits of neo-liberal capitalist and developmental
discourse in emergent powers such as Brazil.
Liberal discourse advances the thesis that inclusion, difference and multiculturalism are
possible once all subject-consumer-citizens have accepted some basic rules of the game.
Rolezinhos show that the subject-consumer-citizen of neoliberal discourse is not so open
and multicultural it has a normativity, a body, and a race. The paper will try to
demonstrate how the racialized bodies of youths from the peripheries of So Paulo perform
a sort of class queer in relation to neo-liberal discourse, which doesn't recognize them,
and doesn't allow them the privileges of participating in spaces that were promised to be
opened by their position as consumers."
Galip Yalman

Different Forms of Reproduction of Labour as Victims of Privatization

"The Turkish economy during the 2000s even before the 2008 global financial crisis has been
manifesting the symptoms of jobless growth as the increases in labour productivity have
not been accompanied by an improvement in real wages or labour participation rates under
the Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule. Meanwhile, an ambitious acceleration of the
process of privatization by the AKP government, seems to have made the country, an
investors paradise from the perspective of international finance capital. The privatizations
of the large-scale profitable state economic enterprises (SEEs) were facilitated through
legislative changes that favoured foreign and domestic powerful capital groups. However,
the actual brunt of this neoliberal assault has been carried by the workers of the privatized
companies who tended either to lose their jobs in mass and were deprived of their social
rights or were forced to work in conditions that are increasingly perceived to be comparable
with the 19th century working conditions of todays industrialized countries. If the fate of
the workers of Tekel tobacco products and alcoholic beveridges monopoly - which was
dismantled in order to be privatized - provided a case for the former, the coal miners who
paid with their lives for being subjected to the abject conditions of precarity in the recent
mining disaster in Soma coal mine could be considered as a saddening example of the latter.

This paper aims to provide a critical review of the deliberate strategies of labour
containment by the AKP government which produced different modalities of the
reproduction of labour as victims of privatization as many workers who suffered the
consequences of these strategies have called themselves. Hence, it will attempt to develop
an analysis of the case of Tekel workers and Soma coal miners in a comparative framework
so as to explore the possibilities for developing counter-hegemonic strategies and/or the
reasons for lack of them."
Faruk Yalvac

Uneven and Combined Development and Islamic Socio-Historical Transformation in the

Middle Ages: The Case of the Transition from Umran Badawi to Umran Hadawi in Ibn
Khaldun's Thought
This paper analyses the transition from tribal societies to sedentary societies which Ibn
Khaldun, the 13th century Muslim historian analysis, explains in his Muqaddima. Khalduns
main concern is the reason for the rise and fall of dynasties in the 13th century. He analyses
this as a struggle between nomadic societies and sedentary societies. This is a cyclical
dialectical process enshrined by comparative economic developments between these two
tribal forms. The main motivating factor to form a new state is asabiyya or social cohesion
stregnthened by the ideological power of Prophecy. However, sedentary societies are eaisly
corrupted and suffer from the demoralizing effects of civilization, much like what Rousseau
and Marx will describe later. The process is one of uneven and combined development
where the uneven development initially attracts the bedouins to attack the sedentary
populations but adopt the advantages of combined development by imitating the strengths
of the preexisting civilizationb. While this process partially supports the argument of the
transhistorical nature of uneven and combined development, it also draws attention to the
differences/similarities between the premodern socio-historical transformations and the
form this assumes with the development of the capitalist mode of production.
Andreas Ytterstad and Helge Ryggvik
Strategies for climate jobs in fossil based economies - the case of Norway
More than 500 people were part of the Create Green Jobs Now! Put a Brake on Oil
Extraction! section on May Day in Oslo this year. It signaled an ever more recognized
alliance between some of the trade unions, environmentalists, and the Norwegian Church,
who two months earlier had co organized The Bridge to the Future A Climate Solution
from Below Conference. This conference was attended by 350 people in the House of
Literature in Oslo, and watched via streaming by more than 1000 people elsewhere in
Norway. During the day a completely new word climatejobs (#klimajobber14) traded as
second only to Ukraine in Norway on twitter. Next years conference is already set for
March 13th, and it will be bigger.

The authors of this paper have written two small books (Ryggvik, 2013; Ytterstad, 2013)
that have played a significant part towards erecting a campaign with the two-fold message
of May Day. But the popularity of the idea of 100 000 new climate jobs, and the verbal
support for cutting Norwegian oil in half, is not the same as actual change. The Norwegian
Parliament is just about to open the new Sverdrup Field in the North Sea which alone will
increase emissions by 25 per cent.
This paper is a first attempt to develop into one single article, a reduction and mobilizing
strategy for stopping the break-neck extraction of Norwegian oil, AND a viable planned
intervention to create 100 000 jobs in offshore, wind, transport and buildings. Drawing on
previous critiques both of the political economy of oil (Ryggvik 2010) and the hegemony of
Norwegian Climate change policy (Nilsen 2001, Ytterstad 2012), the first part of the paper
debunks key arguments of the oil-industrial complex in Norway (e.g Norwegian clean oil
and gas is better than coal, or that Norwegian emissions are locked into EU targets anyway).
The second part draws on the lessons of the nascent much broader climate movement itself
(Ytterstad forthcoming) as well as from the emerging literature of environmental labour
studies (Rthzel and Uzzell 2012) to argue for working class agency aided and corrected by
other popular forces, like climate justice movements, students involved in divestment
campaigns at Norwegian Universities or faith groups. The last part of the paper suggest an
action plan before the COP 20 meeting in Paris, which unlike previous rounds of Summit
demonstrations is squarely focused on national action (cf Hovden and Lindseth 2004).
Climate jobs in Norway as bridge towards a renewable Norway, is we believe the
message that will best strengthen a global campaign for climate jobs to keep carbon in the
ground.
Mehmet

Yusufoglu

The Cost of Energy-material Intensive Economy on Ecology and Labor in Turkey

"The accident in a coal mine in the town Soma in Turkey led to the death of 301 miners. The
energy cost or in Marxian terms the cost of the usage of constant capital became
extremely important since the beginning of the 2000s. For Turkey 1990s were years of
internationalization of money-capital and 2000s were years of internationalization of
productive capital. (F.Ercan)
During the last ten years the energy-material intensive structure of the economy has
increased. The leading export industries; car production, petro-chemical products, iron-
steel, glass, cement and materials; are main components of the exports. For example,
Turkey is the second big cement exporter of the world. The current account deficits due to
import dependence of exports and high and floating energy costs made the capital much
more aggressive in production of primary products and energy, hence equally aggressive
against natural cycles. Mining and energy production became the so called solution for the
current account deficit problem and a good excuse. Forced expropriations of farmers for

power plants, brutal mining laws against nature and labor, proliferation of coal burning
energy plants and nuclear power investments were guaranteed by many legal regulations
and laws.
Trying to compete with Russia ad China; capital used a two layer place oriented strategy.
Close markets in Europe and middle east for energy-material intensive products was their
first aim. Secondly the relative surplus value created depending on the advantage of the
place in the energy and mining production became a good opportunity mainly for the
capitalist which have closer ties with the developmentalist neoliberal government who
wants the create support its own scattered capital against the old finance capital groups
which are still dominant in Turkish economy. These new capitalists exploited their close
relations in getting licenses and permits for commodification of natural resources and
cycles. So there is a intra class struggle parameter in the event. The widely discussed
importance of construction sector and the urbanization rent was a complementary of this
energy-material intensive structure. Uneven urbanization became main sources of income
distribution problems.
Other than the energy cost, low cost of labor power ( increased subcontractor relations in
production processes, chemicalisation of food, delayed and covered damage of
environmental problems on workers, poor working and safety conditions, increased
effectiveness of social aid and social services for low wage earners and precarious workers)
is especially necessary for service sectors in the city and subcontractors of the main export
industries. The costs of products of subcontracting companies ( e.g. producers of car parts)
are important factors in external competition.
Hence the energy cost and labor cost reduction policies combined in Soma coal mines. The
301 miners who lost their lives were producing cheap energy for construction sector and
mainly export industries which try to ease the cost of floating energy prices and exchange
values which increases energy costs. Unequal ecological and economic exchange matters in
multi-scales."
Ivan

Zambrana-Flores

A short and unwinding road: State, indigenous, and environmental contradictions in

Plurinational Bolivia
Hidden under the haze of the latest Latin Americas left turn, and amidst the realities and
fantasies of a promised post-neoliberalism, old contentions are emerging anew in Bolivia.
Tensions over development paradigms and territorial rights have caused the relationship
between indigenous organizations and the self-declared pro-poor Movement Towards
Socialism (MAS) government of Evo Morales party to deteriorate; incongruously, against
the backdrop of a governments international campaign for the rights of Mother Earth. Most
observers point towards hegemonic pragmatism on the part of the MAS as the root of these

conflicts, especially as regards overlapping territorial claims, extractive frontiers and large
infrastructure projects. In this article, we analyze the TIPNIS conflict around a planned road
through a protected area as a case study to shed light on the deeper sources and dynamics
of conflict as identified from a political ecology perspective. More attention needs to be
devoted to the internal contradictions of environmental and indigenist discourses, instead
of solely focusing critiques on inconsistency in government policies.
Carlos Zamora

The paradox of modernization: the alleged territorial hegemony of the Brazilian state
against capital's structural crisis

Aiming at a theoretical and critical analysis of the Brazilians development our approach
aims to contribute to an analysis of current power relations and the prominent role that
Latin America, represented by Brazil, can play in setting another new world order. Redeem
the historical dimension of socioeconomic life, reduced by immediate interests that
consolidates power relations, is to assert that any contribution to the critique of
International Political Economy not expend effort to emphasize the paradox of modernity is
just a baseless justification for restoration of bubbles financial characteristics of a system
that was built on the pillars of inequality and monetary rationality. After power relations
underlie the idea that underdevelopment is the reverse of the development and the two
poles are the same historical field. Therefore, only with an International Political Economy,
which prioritizes the principle of interdependence , can engender the actual development
Andreja

Zivkovic

Towards a Critique of Euro-Marxism

"This paper will focus on one aspect of the crisis of left alternatives, namely the failure to
address the national question(s) at the heart of European integration. We will argue that
this aporia is symptomatic of the interpellation of the left as political subject by the
European ideology, resulting in an inversion in which the critique of the political economy
takes on the form of its opposite, the dominant market ideology, and becomes purely
apolitical criticism. We call this theory Euro-Marxism after the great Austro-Marxist school
of thought. It may be characterized by the belief in the progressive character of great
economic ensembles which are held to unite the collective worker and decouple the nation
from the state, culture from politics. To merely take the post-Yugoslav variant of this
ideology, the national question is erased, imperial domination ignored, and all that is left is
apolitical criticism. More generally, Euro-Marxism takes the institutions of the European
Union as the indispensable and privileged level of reform, a level that in fact does not exist
since neo-liberalism is hardwired into an institutional fortress beyond all spaces of
democratic representation. As a result, critical theory bifurcates in the direction both of
utopianism and of neo-Kantian adaptation to the European ideology. Instead we consider

the nation-state as a weak link, a space of the condensation, articulation and displacement
of the contradictions of capitalist accumulation within the European empire, and thus the
starting point for the conceptualization of political strategy proper; and dialectically, the
only points from which one can pose the questions of national self-determination and the
transformation of economic relations for Europe as a whole.
Luciana

Zorzoli

What does structural reforms meant to worker's organizations? The impact of neoliberalism
in the trade union model in Argentina.

"Despite a longstanding tradition in the marxist study of neoliberalism and the impact of
structural reforms on trade union structure, there are still a wealth of important aspects to
be studied in Latin America since neoliberalism has succeeded in promoting massive
changes in most of the relevant areas that frame trade union structure: industrial relations
including the labour market and workforce composition (unemployment, precarization,
outsourcing), labour/state relations, and the form of the state.
This paper aims them to bring light, along the roots of actual trade union structures in
Argentina. We will critically review academic production and challenge their understanding
of the trade unions model through a case where all this tensions have been revealed: the
murder of Mariano Ferreyra, a young grass root activist by members of ""Unin
Ferroviaria"" the Railways trade union. The judicial case (that lead its general secretary
among others to conviction in 2012) will show how this ""business unionism"" was formed
and will allow us to discuss structural changes in workers organizations stemming from
neoliberal reforms and the last dictatorship."