Oppositions

Bonuses for Some

OPPOSITIONS

Oppositions: An Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference

28th and 29th September 2012 

University of Salford 

This conference seeks to explore ideas of opposition through the full range of disciplines in the arts, media, and social sciences. In the context of the current crisis of capitalism, there are many examples of the forms ‘opposition’ can take: the Tea Party in the United States, the rise of fascist groups, campaigns run via new technologies and social media, religious fundamentalisms, and general strikes in Greece. Though it carries radical overtones, ‘opposition’ in itself is not tied to any particular dogma, left or right. 

We invite papers that explore the value and values of opposition as a position to be adopted by individuals or groups. We welcome proposals for papers from postgraduates that engage with any aspect of opposition. 

These could include, but are by no means limited to: the ‘culture industry’ and alternative youth cultures; opposition parties within parliamentary politics; grass-roots activism; the history and future of the labour movement; hegemony; Foucauldian ‘resistance’ and its limits; radical pedagogies and the role of the University; community and class; the aesthetic value of non-mainstream or outsider art; aesthetic oppositions such as contrapuntal music or bricolage; and the formation of creole or pidgin languages. 

Papers are welcome from fields such as politics, literature, philosophy, anthropology, religions and theology, geography, sociology, history, classics, translation studies, linguistics and social linguistics, visual and screen studies, new media and communication studies, and the performing arts. Interdisciplinary papers are very welcome. Keynote speakers TBC. 

Abstracts of 250 words are invited for presentations of 20 minutes. Proposals for performances, screenings etc. are also accepted. The conference intends to publish an edited volume of the best papers presented.

Send abstracts to oppositionsconference[at]gmail.com by 6 July 2012.

Oppositions: http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/node/46251

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‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Never Waste A Crisis

Crisis

NEVER WASTE A CRISIS

CALL FOR PAPER PROPOSALS

Never Waste a Crisis. Strategies of Representing and Managing Crisis after the Crash

1-2 November, 2012, Midland Hotel, Morecambe

Deadline for paper proposals: 17 June, 2012, to be sent to a.kutter@lancaster.ac.uk

Workshop organised by CPERC, Sociology Department, Lancaster University, within the frames of Bob Jessop’s ESRC professorial fellowship and the project “Great Transformations. A Cultural Political Economy of Crisis Management”  

The North Atlantic Financial Crisis that surfaced in 2007/08 and subsequent efforts at crisis management have produced unstable constellations. Whereas the financial sector has been rescued with large injections of capital but minor structural adjustments, the symptoms in many economies of ‘epic recession’ and fiscal crisis remain. Among political and economic elites, such finance-centred crisis management remains largely unchallenged. At the same time, the economic and social costs of the austerity packages and of a finance-dominated economy more generally have spurred contestation from various quarters. The workshop on ‘Strategies of Representing and Managing Crisis after the Crash’ seeks to explore the politics (broadly interpreted) of this constellation. Papers in the workshop will review different agents’ strategies of tackling the North Atlantic Financial Crisis through discursive construction, contestation, and policy-making. We encourage the submission of papers that highlight the discursive and semiotic of economic and political processes or that situate the analysis of crisis discourse in broader questions of political economy.

Speakers include so far: Colin Hay (tbc), David Howarth, Brigitte Young 

For more details and updates see: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/cperc/events/seminars.htm and 

http://www.lancs.ac.uk/cperc/research/great_transformations.htm 

**END**

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

Value, Money and Crisis: A Workshop on the Work of Hans-Georg Backhaus

Money

VALUE, MONEY AND CRISIS: A WORKSHOP ON THE WORK OF HANS-GEORG BACKHAUS

The Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London invites you to:

Value, Money and Crisis: A Workshop on the Work of Hans-Georg Backhaus

Presentations by Riccardo Bellofiore and Tommaso Redolfi Riva, responses by Chris Arthur and Werner Bonefeld

4 June 2012
Room 137, Richard Hoggart Building, Goldsmiths, University of London
4-6 pm
All welcome

Hans-Georg Backhaus is one of the most provocative thinkers of the Frankfurt School. Together with Helmut Reichelt, Alfred Schmidt, and Hans-Jürgen Krahl, he was at the origin of the Neue Marx-Lektüre. Building on Adorno’s critical sociology, Backhaus has been engaged in a problematization of the Marxian critique of political economy which takes seriously its roots in Hegel’s Logic. Questioning orthodox Marxism and Engels’s legacy, he has advanced a whole-scale reconstruction of Marxian theory, confronting the inconsistencies in Das Kapital, and rescuing Marxism as a critical theory of society. The most important of his essays were collected in Dialektik der Wertform: Untersuchungen zur marxschen Okonomiekritik (The Dialectic of the Value Form: Investigations into Marx’s Critique of Economics) by the German publisher Caira. Very few of them are available in English, but the seminal contributions (in particular his 4-part Materials for the Reconstruction of Marx’s Theory of Value) have now been published in Italian under the editorship of Bellofiore and Redolfi Riva. At the core of Backhaus’s reconstructive project is the uniqueness of Marx in building the only monetary theory of value available to us, together with a full recognition of the fetish character and the displaced/perverted nature of contradictory capitalist reality. Backhaus’s contributions put the question of the ‘constitution’ of capitalist social ‘objectivity’ once again on the agenda of Marxian theory and politics. They are essential today for anyone preoccupied with building an analysis of the crisis – one that would not only depart radically from mainstream economic theory, but go far deeper than Neo-Ricardianism and Keynesianism.

Riccardo Bellofiore has published books on Marx, Luxemburg, Minsky, Napoleoni, globalization, and the current economic crisis. With Giovanna Vertova he has a FB page, Economisti di classe. He teaches at the University of Bergamo, Italy.

Tommaso Redolfi Riva studied Philosophy and History of Political Economy in the Universities of Pisa and Florence. Together with Riccardo Bellofiore he is the editor of Hans Georg Backhaus, Dialettica della forma di valore, Roma, 2009.

Chris Arthur is the author of The New Dialectic and Marx’s Capital.

Werner Bonefeld teaches at theUniversity ofYork. He recently edited Subverting the Present, Imagining the Future: Insurrection, Movement, Commons.

 

Further information: http://www.gold.ac.uk/sociology/calendar/?id=5410

 

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Second COST-Network Conference 2012

Crisis Management

SECOND COST-Network CONFERENCE 2012

Many intellectuals, Jurgen Habermas among them, argue that the management of the financial crisis undermines democracy. The COST-Network ‘Systemic Risks, Financial Crises and Credit’ invites papers that critically examine this claim.

Do financialization and the management of the financial crisis circumscribe democratic institutions and processes? If yes, what are the mechanisms that restrict democracy?

 

Potential themes include:

-  The sources of power of financial actors

-  The role of knowledge networks in crisis management

-  Conflicting crisis narratives

-  Restructuring the State to accommodate financial capital

-  New hierarchies among nations

-  Diffusion of policy concepts and policy learning processes

-  Resistance and civil society

 

October 11, 2012 to October 13, 2012

Kassel University, Germany

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: 15th June 2012
Successful candidates will be notified by: 30th June 2012
Deadline for papers: 1st Oct 2012
Please send your abstracts to: COST2012@icdd.uni-kassel.de

See: http://www.uni-kassel.de/einrichtungen/icdd/events/cost-conference/cost-conference-2012/call-for-papers.html

For more information: http://www.worldfinancialcrisis.eu/

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Dead Man Working

Dead Man Working

DEAD MAN WORKING

NEW TITLE FROM ZerO Books

Dead Man Working

By Carl Cederstrom and Peter Fleming

================

Capitalism has become strange. Ironically, while the ‘age of work’ seems to have come to an end, working has assumed a total presence – a ‘worker’s society’ in the worst sense of the term – where everyone finds themselves obsessed with it. So what does the worker tell us today? ‘I feel drained, empty – dead’; This book tells the story of the dead man working. It follows this figure through the daily tedium of the office, to the humiliating mandatory team building exercise, to awkward encounters with the funky boss who pretends to hate capitalism and tells you to be authentic. In this society, the experience of work is not of dying…but neither of living. It is one of a living death. And yet, the dead man working is nevertheless compelled to wear the exterior signs of life, to throw a pretty smile, feign enthusiasm and make a half-baked joke. When the corporation has colonized life itself, even our dreams, the question of escape becomes ever more pressing, ever more desperate.

================

‘Cederstrom and Fleming, like a present day Virgil, bravely venture into an underworld full of shades whose entire lives have been put to work, who throw themselves heart and soul into the job, and who are constantly implored by management gurus to ‘be themselves,’ ‘feel free,’ and ‘have fun’ in the office. This fascinating and dark little book is an excellent and disturbing introduction to what increasingly large realms of the world of work have become’ – Michael Hardt, Co-author of Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth.

‘What has work done to us? Cederstrom and Fleming’s brilliant dark and witty book tells us the truth. Working in our sleep? Dressing up as infants? Deprivation tank addiction? Fitness centrers? Suicide? Email? If you didn’t already know what work has made you become then this book might have a devastating effect on your life. Read it!’ – Simon Critchley, Hans Jonas Professor, New School for Social Research.

‘Dead Man Working’ at Zero Books: http://www.zero-books.net/books/dead-man-working

**END**

 

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

 

‘Maximum levels of boredom

Disguised as maximum fun’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub,Bangor, northWales)  

 

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Glenn Rikowski’s MySpace Blog: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski/blog

First International Conference on the Labor Theory of Value and the Social Sciences

Labour

FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE LABOR THEORY OF VALUE AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Call for Papers

1st INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE ‘LABOR THEORY OF VALUE AND SOCIAL SCIENCES’

Thursday 18 – Friday 19 October 2012

Universidade de Brasilia, Brasilia, Brazil

We invite submissions that raise (or answer) questions on Marxian Labor Theory of Value and its role in Social Sciences.

Papers are invited on the following topics:

- Labor Theory of Value and Crisis;

- Labor Theory of Value: actuality, problems, limits and outcomes.

Submission deadline of proposals: July 31, 2012.

Applicants will be informed about acceptance by August 30, 2012.

 

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSIONS

Please email paper in English, Portuguese or Spanish, MS Word format, of no more than 3.000 words, to unb.gept@gmail.com. Speakers will be asked to make short 10-15 minute presentations addressing the main topics of their papers.

Papers should include the following elements: i) Paper’s title; ii) Author(s)’ name and affiliation; iii) Three key-words; iv) 150-word abstract; v) Contact information: mail address, country of residence, telephones and email.

Registration for accepted communications: US$ 50 to be paid at the registration desk.

For general questions and further information, please contact

Daniel Bin (Danielbin@unb.br)

http://unbgept.blogspot.com.br/

Please submit proposals via email to unb.gept@gmail.com

1st International Conference on the ‘Labor Theory of Value and Social Sciences’ is a two-day conference collectively organized by the Group for Study and Research on Labour (Grupo de Estudos e Pesquisa sobre o Trabalho – GEPT/UnB)

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Interface (Volume Four Issue One, May 2012): The Season of Revolution

Recession

INTERFACE (VOLUME FOUR ISSUE ONE, MAY 2012): THE SEASON OF REVOLUTION

Interface, Volume Four Issue One (May 2012): The season of revolution: the Arab Spring and European mobilizations … is now out (free and open access as always)

Issue editors: Magid Shihade, Cristina Flesher Fominaya, Laurence Cox
http://www.interfacejournal.net/current/

Volume Four, Issue One of Interface, a peer-reviewed e-journal produced and refereed by social movement practitioners and engaged movement researchers, is now out, on the special theme “The season of revolution: the Arab Spring” with a special section ‘A new wave of European mobilizations?’

Interface is open-access (free), global and multilingual. Our overall aim is to “learn from each other’s struggles”: to develop a dialogue between practitioners and researchers, but also between different social movements, intellectual traditions and national or regional contexts. Like all issues of Interface, this issue is free and open-access.
 
This issue of Interface includes 403 pages and 31 pieces in English, Catalan and Spanish, by authors writing from / about Australia, Canada, Catalunya, Dubai, Egypt, India, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Palestine, Poland, Senegal, South Africa, Spain, Swaziland, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE, the UK and the US among other countries.

Articles in this issue include:

-  Magid Shihade, Cristina Flesher Fominaya and Laurence Cox, The season of revolution: the Arab Spring and European mobilizations 

 

The Arab Spring:

-  Austin Mackell, Weaving revolution: harassment by the Egyptian regime (action note) and Weaving revolution: speaking with Kamal El-Fayoumi (interview)

-  Samir Amin, The Arab revolutions: a year after

-  Vijay Prashad, Dream history of the global South

-  Jeremy Salt, Containing the ‘Arab Spring’

-  Azadeh Shahshahani and Corinna Mullin, The legacy of US intervention and the Tunisian revolution: promises and challenges one year on

-  Andrea Teti and Gennaro Gervasio, After Mubarak, before transition: the challenges for Egypt’s democratic opposition (interview and event analysis)

-  Bassam Haddad, Syria, the Arab uprisings, and the political economy of authoritarian resilience           

-  Steven Salaita, Corporate American media coverage of Arab revolutions: the contradictory messages of modernity

-  Ahmed Kanna, A politics of non-recognition? Biopolitics of Arab Gulf worker protests in the year of uprisings

-  Aditya Nigam, The Arab upsurge and the ‘viral’ revolutions of our times

-  Cassie Findlay,Witness and trace: January 25 graffiti and public art as archive (practice note)

 

Special section: a new wave of European mobilizations?

-  Eduardo Romanos Fraile,‘Esta revolución es muy copyleft’. Entrevista a Stéphane M. Grueso a propósito del 15M

-  Marianne Maeckelbergh, Horizontal democracy now: from alterglobalization to occupation

-  Fabià Díaz-Cortés i Gemma Ubasart-González, 15M: Trajectòries mobilitzadores iespecificitats territorials. El cas català

-  Puneet Dhaliwal, Public squares and resistance: the politics of space in the Indignados movement

-  Donatella della Porta, Mobilizing against the crisis, mobilizing for ‘another democracy’: comparing two global waves of protest (event analysis)

-  Joan Subirats, Algunas ideas sobre política y políticas en el cambio de época: Retos asociados a la nueva sociedad y a los movimientos sociales emergentes (event analysis)

 

Other articles:

-  Marina Adler, Collective identity formation and collective action framing in a Mexican ‘movement of movements’

-  Nancy Baez and Andreas Hernandez, Participatory budgeting in the city: challenging NYC’s development paradigm from the grassroots (practice note)

-  Magdalena Prusinowska, Piotr Kowzan, Małgorzata Zielińska, Struggling to unite: the rise and fall of one university movement in Poland 

-  Jim Gladwin and Rose Hollins, The Water Pressure Group: lessons learned (action note)

This issue’s REVIEWS include the following titles:

-  Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, Why civil resistance works: the strategic logic of nonviolent action. Reviewed by Brian Martin

-  Firoze Manji and Sokari Ekine (eds), Africa awakening: the emerging revolutions. Reviewed by Karen Ferreira-Meyers

-  Amory Starr, Luis Fernandez and Christian Scholl, Shutting down the streets: political violence and social control in the global era. Reviewed by Deborah Eade

-  Rebecca Kolins Givan, Kenneth Roberts and Sarah Soule (eds). The diffusion of social movements: actors, mechanisms, and political effects. Reviewed by Cecelia Walsh-Russo

-  Florian Heβdörfer, Andrea Pabst and Peter Ullrich (eds), Prevent and tame: protest under (self) control. Reviewed by Lucinda Thompson

-  Observatorio Metropolitano, Crisis y revolución en Europa: people of Europe rise up!Reviewed by Michael Byrne

-  Mariel Mikaila Arthur Lemonik, Student activism and curricular change in higher education. Reviewed by Christine Neejer

-  Rebecca MacKinnon, Consent of the networked: the worldwide struggle for internet freedom. Reviewed by Piotr Konieczny

 

A call for papers for volume 5 issue 1 of Interface is now open, on the theme of “Struggles, strategies and analysis of anticolonial and postcolonial social movements” (submissions deadline November 1 2012). We can review and publish articles in Afrikaans, Arabic, Catalan, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Maltese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and Zulu. The website has the full CFP and details on how to submit articles for this issue at http://www.interfacejournal.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/Interface-4-1-CFP-vol-5-no-1.pdf

  
The next issue of Interface (November 2012) will be under the title ‘For the global emancipation of labour: new movements and struggles around work, workers and precarity’.     

Interface is always open to new collaborators. More details can be found on our website: http://interfacejournal.net  
 
Please forward this to anyone you think may be interested

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

A Contribution to the Critique of Human Rights

Human Rights

A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITIQUE OF HUMAN RIGHTS

The Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London invites you to

Massimiliano Tomba (University ofPadua) 

A Contribution to the Critique of Human Rights

21 May 2012

Richard Hoggart Building, Room 137

5-7pm

 

Human rights are in crisis. Their crisis does not depend on their violations in particular states of emergency which interrupt the ‘normal’ course of the liberal-democratic state. Rather, I consider this crisis as something that is deeply rooted in the nature of human rights. Taking into account the problem of human rights and their protection in a unique constellation that includes the concepts of ‘power’, ‘rights’ and ‘subjects of right’, I will consider them and their crisis not as a deviation from a supposed progressive development of democracy but as an expression of the aporia of political modernity.

From this perspective I consider the increasing of violations of human rights not as an exception but as the consequent expression of the aporia of political modernity. Crisis therefore is not something that happens in the course of modernity but is rather the course as such, ever since the birth of modern political concepts. Rethinking human rights today means considering them beyond the horizon of their crisis: not as the rights of ‘bare life’ but setting out from ‘just life’.

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Online University of the Left

We Are the Crisis

ONLINE UNIVERSITY OF THE LEFT

Why a Marxist School?

Karl Marx’s ideas are a common touchstone for many people working for change.  His historical materialism, his many contributions to political economy and class analysis, all continue to serve his core values–the self-emancipation of the working class and a vision of a classless society.  There are naturally many trends in Marxism that have developed over the years, and new ones are on the rise today.  All of them and others who want to see this project succeed are welcome here.

Who Are We?

Founder: Carl Davidson

Initial Core Group: Linda Alcoff, Mark Alper, Gar Alperovitz, Burton Lee Artz, Salvatore Babones, Rose Brewer, Renate Bridenthal, Roderick Bush, Dominique Caouette, Orlando Caracas, Dana Cloud, Michael Duff, Jon Gobeil, Larry Hanley, Jerry Harris, Richard Huggins, David Fryett, Mark Johnson, Timothy Johnson, Athina Karatzogianni, Gavin Kitching, Lauren Langman, Marnia Lazreg, Kathy McAfee, Peter Mclaren, Bharat Mehra, Hannah Miyamoto, Gregory Morales, Joshua Morris, Kathleen Newman, Jonathan Nitzan, Juan Pablo Ochoa, Tom O’Donnell, Teresa Pac, William Pelz, Sanjay Perera, Frank Phelan, Garry Potter, Melvin Rothenberg, Saskia Sassen, Ellen Schwartz, Justin Schwartz, David Schwartzman, David Schweickart, Navin Singh, Geoffrey Skoll, William Tabb, Harry Targ, Bharat Thakkar, Joseph Varga, Rob Watts, Richard Wolff.

“This is a radical education and left unity project. All on the left willing to work cooperatively for its success are invited to join and lend a hand” — CARL DAVIDSON

Online University of the Left: http://ouleft.org/

This is a tremendous development — Glenn Rikowski

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Wall Street-Inflated Student Debt Bubble Hits $1 Trillion: Debtors Rally for Relief

WALL STREET-INFLATED STUDENT DEBT BUBBLE HITS $1 TRILLION: DEBTORS RALLY FOR RELIEF

By Sarah Jaffe

 

The collective weight of American student debt is a drag not just on those paying the debt, but on our entire economy.

April 24, 2012   

You could call it a bubble, but it’s more like a ball and chain. Bubbles are, after all, light and airy.

The collective weight of American student debt is now over $1 trillion, and that weight is a drag not just on those paying the debt, but on our entire economy. It’s hard to calculate exactly, because the lenders are notoriously unwilling to hand over their data, and with students defaulting at ever-higher rates, interest rates and fees are always changing, adding constantly to the weight of the burden college graduates (and those who didn’t graduate but still have to pay off the loans they took out in more hopeful times) carry.

Around the country, activists are marking the date with actions; in New York, a rally and march will be the centerpiece of what the Occupy Student Debt Campaign has dubbed 1-T day; the day the amount of debt we’re carrying to pay for our education officially got too big to bear silently. The rallies aim to end the isolation that debtors often feel, to bring people together to understand that the problem they have is shared by millions of others—and that it calls for political solutions.

“I think that we in America have become so separated from one another, partially due to this debt,” Pam Brown, an organizer with the Occupy Student Debt Campaign, told AlterNet. “The debt makes us very individual; we can’t afford to help someone else, we can’t afford to spend our time in a way that’s not productive.”

How did we get here, with more student debt than credit card debt, with student loans rising twice as fast as mortgage debt at the height of the housing bubble? Recent graduates face terrifying unemployment numbers—ThinkProgress reported that over half of all college grads under the age of 25 are either jobless or underemployed and median wages for grads with bachelor’s degrees are down from 2000—and delinquencies on debt is steadily climbing.

Those are complicated issues, because student lending is a complicated industry, one that highlights the degree to which the government is entwined with Wall Street, and state and federal policy play off one another to push students to ever greater levels of borrowing. As students and debtors rally to shake the stigma off their debt burden and call attention to the involvement of big finance in their education, let’s take a look at the system that led us to a trillion dollars in debt.

The Politics of Debt

You know you have a problem when even Mr. 1 Percent himself, Mitt Romney, is declaring his support for a move to hold student loan interest rates low. “I support extending the temporary relief on interest rates for students as a result of — as a result of student loans, obviously — in part because of the extraordinarily poor conditions in the job market,” Romney said this week, probably in an attempt to blame President Obama for the lousy conditions young workers are facing. (Romney has also said he supports Paul Ryan’s budget, which allows student loan interest rates to go back up to 6.8 percent from the 3.4 percent current rate for new loans. Ryan’s budget also slashes Pell grants, the government’s method of giving rather than lending money to low-income students.)

On the campaign trail, Obama has pounded the issue by calling for Congress to temporarily extend the low interest rates. Members of Congress have introduced legislation to permanently keep the rate at which the government lends money at 3.4 percent. Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konzcal has noted that the government borrows at a far lower rate than that, which raises the question of why it is not investing more robustly in young people.

Konczal pointed out that the government makes a profit somewhere around 13 percent for each dollar of loans, and because the loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy and Social Security payments can even be garnished to make them up, default may even be more profitable for lenders than borrowers making payments on time. There’s almost no risk of losses, which are the reason for high interest in the first place. Keeping interest rates low won’t cost the government money, it will simply cut into its profit margin a little bit. While the big banks that crashed the economy continue to enjoy ultra-low interest rates, there’s no reason to let the rates get any higher.

Original Source, AlterNet: http://www.alternet.org/economy/155133/wall_street-inflated_student_debt_bubble_hits_%241_trillion%3B_debtors_rally_for_relief

Relayed by CCDS Links, April 27 2012

**END**

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Capitalism, Crisis and Alternatives

Capitalist Crisis

CAPITALISM, CRISIS AND ALTERNATIVES

Book Launch with Ozlem Onaran, Sean Thompson and Susan Pashkoff

Meet and hear some of the authors of the new title from Resistance Books:

Ozlem Onaran, Sean Thompson and Susan Pashkoff

WEDNESDAY 2 MAY, 7:30pm

Community Centre, 62 Marchmont Street, WC1N 1AB

(Kings Cross and Russell Square tubes)

 

Four years on from the start of the crisis, there is no recovery in sight. The Cameron-Clegg government may claim thatBritainis on the mend, but for the 99% of us the prospect for years to come is falling real incomes and insecurity. Meanwhile the Eurozone crisis rumbles on, with no strategy except deep austerity for countries like Italy and Spain, let alone Greece and Portugal.

This new book analyses the crisis in different regions and is a contribution to the debates about alternatives. In addition to a general analysis of the crisis including how it affects women, contributions coverBritain, the European Union, there are also contributions on the eco-socialist alternatives to capitalism.

 

CAPITALISM – CRISIS AND ALTERNATIVES 280 pages, £9 (inc p&p)

Available from Resistance Books, PO Box 62732, London, SW2 9GQ

 

Contents:

WHERE IS THE CRISIS GOING? Michel Husson

THE CRISIS IN BRITAIN, Andy Kilmister

AUSTERITY AND THE LIES THAT IMPOVERISH, Susan Pashkoff

A GREEN INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, Sean Thompson

MARXISM AND THE CRISIS, John Rees

A FISCAL CRISIS OR A CRISIS OF DISTRIBUTION? Ozlem Onaran

THE DEBT IN THE NORTH: SOME ALTERNATIVE PATHS, Eric Toussaint

WOMEN’S CRISES, Sandra Ezquerra

EASTERN EUROPEFACED WITH THE CRISIS OF THE SYSTEM, Catherine Samary

CHINA’S RISE AMIDST THE CRISIS, Jean Sanuk

LATIN AMERICA’S CRISIS, Claudio Katz

IN THE EYE OF THE STORM: THE DEBT CRISIS IN THE EUROPEAN UNION, Eric Toussaint

 

**END**

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Dystopia and Global Rebellion

Utopia

DYSTOPIA AND GLOBAL REBELLION

Dystopia and Global Rebellion

Global Studies Association of North America Annual Conference

4-6 May 2012

Universityof Victoria,Vancouver Island, Canada

(Co-sponsored by of the VP of Research, Dean of Social Sciences, and Centre for Global Studies)

Social crisis shakes Europe and the U.S., anti-immigration movements grow, nuclear meltdown radiates Japan, while spreading drought and floods are billboards for global warming.  It seems the future has arrived and it doesn’t look good.

Yet democratic movements spread like wildfire throughout the Middle East, youth movements come alive in the U.K., France, Chile and Spain, rebellion takes to the streets in Greece, and Occupy Wall Street wakes up the U.S. Dystopia and global rebellion indeed. This year’s conference theme focuses our attention on the problems and alternatives we face in our struggle for a just and better world.

Keynote Speakers and Panels:

“Economic Crisis and the Working Class: re-thinking class struggle” — Gary Teeple

“Anti-Globalization or Alter-Globalization? Mapping the Political Ideology of the Global Justice Movement” — Manfred B. Steger.

“Crisis of the Human Condition: Global Rebellion Hits the Wall” — Paul James.

“Building the Counter-Hegemonic Bloc to Neo-Liberal Dystopia” — William Carroll & Jerry Harris.

“Environmental Dystopia and the Green Alternative” — Martha McMahon, Kara Shaw & Waziyatawin.

“The Occupy Movement” — Carl Davidson, Lauren Langman, Jackie Smith, Jay Smith.

For more information on keynote speakers, schedule, registration and conference information go to: http://net4dem.org/mayglobal

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘Stagnant’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo  

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski