Marx and Philosophy Society Annual Conference 2012

Karl Marx

MARX AND PHILOSOPHY SOCIETY ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2012

Marx and Philosophy Society Annual Conference
Marx and Hegel

Saturday 2 June 2012, 9.15am – 6.00pm
Institute of Education, University of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1

Plenary speakers: 

Andrew Chitty (Sussex)
Recognition and Property in Hegel and the Early Marx

Emmanuel Renault (Lyon)
The Early Marx and Hegel: The Young-Hegelian Mediation

Frederick Neuhouser (Columbia)
Marx and Hegel on the Value of ‘Bourgeois’ Ideals

Graduate panels:

Herbert De Vriese (Antwerp) Breaking the Idealistic Spell: Marx’s Farewell to the Hegelian Ideal of Presuppositionless Thinking
Bue Rubner Hansen (Queen Mary) Hegel, Marx, and Singular Times
Jacob Blumenfeld (New School for Social Research) The Method and Object of Capital

Christopher Joonho Ro (Princeton) Capital as Collective Product: Mutual Interaction in Marx’s Idea of Alienation
David Marjoribanks (Kent) Universality and Particularity in Hegel and Marx
Jan Kandiyali (Sheffield) Kantian and Hegelian Strands in Marx’s Account of Communism 

£20 waged, £10 unwaged (provides annual membership of the Society)
To reserve a place in advance please email David Marjoribanks at dm275@kent.ac.uk
Directions: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/sitehelp/1072.html

Marx and Philosophy Society: http://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/society

**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)

 

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

‘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

Introduction to Antiphilosophy – Boris Groys

Communisation

INTRODUCTION TO ANTIPHILOSOPHY – BORIS GROYS

NEW TITLE FROM VERSO:

INTRODUCTION TO ANTIPHILOSOPHY

By BORIS GROYS

Philosophy is traditionally understood as the search for universal truths, and philosophers are supposed to transmit those truths beyond the limits of their own culture. But, today, we have become sceptical about the ability of an individual philosopher to engage in ‘universal thinking’, so philosophy seems to capitulate in the face of cultural relativism.

In INTRODUCTION TO ANTIPHILOSOPHY, BORIS GROYS argues that modern ‘antiphilosophy’ does not pursue the universality of thought as its goal but proposes in its place the universality of life, material forces, social practices, passions, and experiences – angst, vitality, ecstasy, the gift, revolution, laughter or ‘profane illumination’ – and he analyses this shift from thought to life and action in the work of thinkers from Kierkegaard to Derrida, from Nietzsche to Benjamin.

Ranging across the history of modern thought, INTRODUCTION TO ANTIPHILOSOPHY endeavours to liberate philosophy from the stereotypes that hinder its development.

———————————

Praise for THE COMMUNIST POSTSCRIPT:

‘Groys has claimed a defining role in the reception of the Russian avant-garde … The Communist Postscript presents Groys’s attempt to advocate the communist idea against its own historic assumptions.’ - RADICAL PHILOSOPHY

 ’A timely intervention in present debates about the legacy of communism [and] a provocative addition to Groys’ brilliantly paradoxical body of work.’ - ART REVIEW

Praise for ART POWER:

“The range of topics canvassed in Art Power is impressive. … All of these subjects have been comprehensively treated elsewhere, but rarely with Groys’ penetrating eye for the unexpected upshot of such developments.” – FRIEZE

“This magisterial overview situates contemporary art – its aesthetic strategies, institutions and drives -within the deeper context of the Modernist revolution, urbanism, new technologies, and the post communist era. Groys’ combines revelatory analysis with philosophical questions that go to the heart of cultural production today.” - IWONA BLAZWICK, Director, WHITECHAPEL GALLERY

‘Persuasive … provocative … By probing unacknowledged, repressed, or otherwise unexamined relationships that hover in the background of art-world conversation, Art Power recombines categories, reconfigures assumptions, and, in the end, reimagines what art writing can be.’ - BOOKFORUM

Praise for THE TOTAL ART OF STALINISM

‘This is not just a book but an event … The Total Art of Stalinism is an intellectual landmark’ – ART BULLETIN

‘One of the most astute commentators on the art scene today’ –  NEW LEFT REVIEW

———————————

BORIS GROYS is Professor of Aesthetics, Art History, and Media Theory at the Center for Art and Media Technology inKarlsruhe, and since 2005, the Global Distinguished Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Science, NYU. He has published numerous books including THE TOTAL ART OF STALINISM, ILYA KABAKOV: THE MAN WHO FLEW INTO SPACE FROM HIS APARTMENT, ART POWER, and THE COMMUNIST POSTSCRIPT.

———————————

ISBN: 9781844677566 / $26.95 / £16.99 / Hardback / 272 pages

———————————–

For more information about INTRODUCTION TO ANTIPHILOSOPHY, or to buy the book visit:

http://www.versobooks.com/books/1052-introduction-to-antiphilosophy

 

**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

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

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

Autonomedia – New Titles

Autonomia

AUTONOMEDIA – NEW TITLES

New Titles

 

Revolutions in Reverse: Essays on Politics, Violence, Art, and Imagination

David Graeber

Capitalism as we know it appears to be coming apart. But as financial institutions stagger and crumble, there is no obvious alternative. There is good reason to believe that, in a generation or so, capitalism will no longer exist: for the simple reason that it’s impossible to maintain an engine of perpetual growth forever on a finite planet. Yet faced with this prospect, the knee-jerk reaction is often to cling to what exists because they simply can’t imagine an alternative that wouldn’t be even more oppressive and destructive. The political imagination seems to have reached an impasse. Or has it?

In this collection of essays David Graeber explores a wide-ranging set of topics including political strategy, global trade, debt, imagination, violence, aesthetics, alienation, and creativity. Written in the wake of the anti-globalization movement and the rise of the war on terror, these essays survey the political landscape for signs of hope in unexpected places.

At a moment when the old assumption about politics and power have been irrefutably broken the only real choice is to begin again: to create a new language, a new common sense, about what people basically are and what it is reasonable for them to expect from the world, and from each other. In this volume Graeber draws from the realms of politics, art, and the imagination to start this conversation and to suggest that that the task might not be nearly so daunting as we’d be given to imagine.

More information

Buy the book here

++

Communization and its Discontents: Contestation, Critique, and Contemporary Struggles

Edited by Benjamin Noys

Can we find alternatives to the failed radical projects of the twentieth century? What are the possible forms of struggle today? How do we fight back against the misery of our crisis-ridden present? ‘Communization’ is the spectre of the immediate struggle to abolish capitalism and the state, which haunts Europe,Northern Californiaand wherever the real abstractions of value that shape our lives are contested. Evolving on the terrain of capitalism new practices of the ‘human strike’, autonomous communes, occupation and insurrection have attacked the alienations of our times. These signs of resistance are scattered and have yet to coalesce, and their future is deliberately precarious and insecure.

Bringing together voices from inside and outside of these currents Communization and Its Discontents treats communization as a problem to be explored rather than a solution. Taking in the new theorizations of communization proposed by Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, Théorie Communiste, post-autonomists, and others, it offers critical reflections on the possibilities and the limits of these contemporary forms, strategies, and tactics of struggle.

More information

Buy the book here

++

19 & 20: Notes for a New Social Protagonism

Colectivo Situaciones, with introductions by Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri

New book from Colectivo Situaciones… an 18th Brumaire for the 21st Century: militant research on the December 19th and 20th, 2001 uprisings inArgentina… In the heat of an economic and political crisis, people inArgentinatook to the streets on December 19th, 2001, shouting “¡Qué se vayan todos!” These words – “All of them out!” – hurled by thousands banging pots and pans, struck at every politician, economist, and journalist. These events opened a period of intense social unrest and political creativity that led to the collapse of government after government. Neighborhoods organized themselves into hundreds of popular assemblies across the country, the unemployed workers movement acquired a new visibility, workers took over factories and businesses. These events marked a sea change, a before and an after forArgentinathat resonated around the world.

Colectivo Situaciones wrote this book in the heat of that December’s aftermath. As radicals immersed within the long process of reflection and experimentation with forms of counterpower that Argentines practiced in shadow of neoliberal rule, Colectivo Situaciones knew that the novelty of the events of December 19th and 20th demanded new forms of thinking and research. This book attempts to read those struggles from within. Ten years have passed, yet the book remains as relevant and as fresh as the day it came out. Multitudes of citizens from different countries have learned their own ways to chant ¡Qué se vayan todos!, fromIcelandtoTunisia, fromSpaintoGreece, fromTahrir SquaretoZuccottiPark. Colectivo Situactiones’ practice of engaging with movements’ own thought processes resonates with everyone seeking to think current events and movements, and through that to build a new world in the shell of the old.

More information

Buy the book here

++

Undressing the Academy, or The Student Handjob

University of Strategic Optimism

The weary student handbook genre is in need of a belligerent mauling. This is our crack at the job. We don’t want to talk down to anyone, but neither do we want to chat them up, so this is an attempt at thinking out the university from our own perspective, that of students. Here we air our dirty snapshot of the academy, at least semi-naked, just as we come across it. This potted guide is our pot shot at undressing and dressing down this place, the university, and understanding our place within it: its problems and potential, its power-relations and its possibilities for politicization. This is our attempt to share some of the knowledge to be gleaned in the university, but a knowledge that is rarely measured on any certificate come graduation day.

Written collectively by the University for Strategic Optimism, in the queasy come-down afterglow of the recent wave of student activism in the UK (but looking forward to cracking-off another round), this guide attempts to contextualize our struggle and to bring it closer to home. Just what is the university that we are fighting for anyway? And what perhaps could it be?

More information

Buy the book here

 

**END**

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

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

An Evening on Communisation

Communisation SIC

AN EVENING ON COMMUNISATION

An Evening on Communisation: Presentations and Release of Sic Volume 1: International Journal for Communisation

Friday April 20th – 7pm

16 Beaver Street
4th Floor
New York, NY10004

We invite you to join us for an evening of presentations and discussion on the theme of communisation with the release of Sic: International Journal for Communisation (http://communisation.net). Topics include:

-         The periodization of the capital-labor relation

-         The restructuring and crisis of the 1970s

-         The loss of the worker identity

-         The characterizing tendencies of contemporary struggles

-         The relation of communist theory to practice

-         The Sic project itself

Train: 4, 5 to Bowling Green / R to Whitehall / 1, 2 to Wall Street / J to Broad Street

Wine and beer to be served

From the Editorial:

The present journal aims to be the locus for an unfolding of the problematic of communisation. It comes from the encounter of individuals involved in various projects in different countries: among these are the journals Endnotes, published in the UK and in the US, Blaumachen in Greece, Théorie Communiste inFrance, Riff-Raff inSweden, and certain more or less informal theoretical groups in the US (New York and San Francisco). Each of these projects continues its own existence. Also participating are various individuals in France, Germany, and elsewhere, who are involved in other activities and who locate themselves broadly within the theoretical approach taken here.

Communisation

In the course of the revolutionary struggle, the abolition of the division of labour, of the State, of exchange, of any kind of property; the extension of a situation in which everything is freely available as the unification of human activity, that is to say the abolition of classes, of both public and private spheres – these are all ‘measures’ for the abolition of capital, imposed by the very needs of the struggle against the capitalist class. The revolution is communisation; communism is not its project or result.

One does not abolish capital for communism but by communism, or more specifically, by its production. Indeed communist measures must be differentiated from communism; they are not embryos of communism, rather they are its production. Communisation is not a period of transition, but rather, it is revolution itself which is the communist production of communism. The struggle against capital is what differentiates communist measures and communism. The content of the revolutionary activity is always the mediation of the abolition of capital by the proletariat in its relation to capital: this activity is not one branch of an alternative in competition with the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production, but its internal contradiction and its overcoming.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a whole historical period entered into crisis and came to an end – i.e. the period in which the revolution was conceived in different ways, both theoretically and practically, as the affirmation of the proletariat, its elevation to the position of ruling class, the liberation of labour, and the institution of a period of transition. The concept of communisation appeared in the midst of this crisis.

During the crisis, the critique of all the mediations of the existence of the proletariat within the capitalist mode of production (mass party, union, parliamentarism), of organisational forms such as the party-form or the vanguard, of ideologies such as Leninism, of practices such as militantism along with all its variations – all this appeared irrelevant if revolution was no longer to be affirmation of the class – whether it be the workers’ autonomy or the generalisation of workers’ councils. It is the proletariat’s struggle as a class which has become the problem within itself, i.e. which is its own limit. That is the way the class struggle signals and produces the revolution as communisation in the form of its overcoming.

Since then, within the contradictory course of the capitalist mode of production, the affirmation of the proletariat and the liberation of labour have lost all meaning and content. There is no longer a worker’s identity facing capital and confirmed by it. This is the revolutionary dynamic of the present struggles which display the active denial of the proletarian condition against capital, even within ephemeral, limited bursts of self-management or self-organisation. The proletariat’s struggle against capital contains its contradiction with its own nature as class of capital.

The abolition of capital, i.e. the revolution and the production of communism, is immediately the abolition of all classes and therefore of the proletariat. This occurs through the communisation of society, which is abolished as a community separated from its elements. Proletarians abolish capital by the production of a community immediate to its elements; they transform their relations into immediate relations between individuals. These are relations between singular individuals that are no longer the embodiment of a social category, including the supposedly natural categories of the social sexes of woman and man. Revolutionary practice is the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity or self-transformation.

A Problematic

This minimal approach of communisation constitutes neither a definition, nor a platform, but exposes a problematic:

* The problematic of a theory – here the theory of revolution as communisation – does not limit itself to a list of themes or objects conceived by theory; neither is it the synthesis of all the elements which are thought. It is the content of theory, its way of thinking, with regards to all possible productions of this theory

* The analysis of the current crisis and of the class struggles intrinsic to it

* The historicity of revolution and communism

* The periodisation of the capitalist mode of production and the question of the restructuring of the mode of production after the crisis at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s

* The analysis of the gender relation within the problematic of the present class struggle and communisation

* The definition of communism as goal but also as movement abolishing the present state of things

* A theory of the abolition of capital as a theory of the production of communism

* The reworking of the theory of value-form (to the extent that the revolution is not the affirmation of the proletariat and the liberation of labour)

* The illegitimacy of wage-demands and others in the present class struggle

By definition no list of subjects coming under a problematic can be exhaustive.

**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)

 

‘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

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Historical Materialism Conference 2012 – Ninth Annual Conference

Karl Marx

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM CONFERENCE 2012 – NINTH ANNUAL CONFERENCE

The Ninth Annual HM Conference will take place in Central London from 8-11 November 2012

Weighs Like a Nightmare

Historical Materialism Ninth Annual Conference

Has Marx been reanimated once again? From mainstream media to academia, this question hangs in the air. The old ghosts of revolution appear to be shaking off their shackles and getting agitated. What is this spirit? Who are the militants haunting this ramshackle capitalism? Are these new spectres – stalking the streets of Syria, Tunisia and Egypt, Athens, Spain and Wall Street and beyond – or direct descendants of socialist and communist ones? How does the past haunt the present? How might the present haunt the future?

As new conflicts and struggles emerge, the old questions refuse to go away: What type of organisation is needed to sharpen the conflicts, if any? Who are the agents of history and change? Is the scope of political action national or international? What is the political value of alliances and fronts? Does history cunningly work a progressive path through and around the contingencies of struggle? Are the same mistakes to be made, the same failures repeated?

The ninth HM annual conference focuses on the returns and the persistence of political forms and theoretical problems, on the uses and abuses of the history of Marxism in this turbulent present and on the ways and forms in which an inheritance of various Marxist traditions can help us to organise and to act in contemporary struggles.

We invite proposals for presentations or panels (with two or three suggested participants) on topics such as: the echoes of the past in the present; learning or not learning from the past; the reanimation of revolution; history as farce, history as tragedy; historiography and Marxism; cycles; circulation; anti-memory as a political stance; new histories of capital and the labour movement; Marxism and ‘deep history’; theory as history; the role of archival sources in history and the place of theory; rhythms of historical development, combined, uneven or otherwise; concepts of pre-capitalism; the question of successive modes of production; historical or other materialisms; the return of radical politics in Eastern Europe and elsewhere; post-communism; the endless afterlives of ‘Classical’ Marxists and ‘Western’ Marxist theorists and others who refuse to go away; the reruns of crisis; the role of memory and the revisioning of history; forgotten figures suddenly blasted into contemporary relevance; perma-war; imperial ghosts and their legacies, racism’s haunting returns; old and new world orders; old and new cultures; avant-gardes and rearguards; the re-reading of classic texts; the question of Marxism’s relation to tradition; ideas of inheritance and ‘selective tradition’; recovery; recuperation; periodisation; continuities and discontinuities; narratives of new and old beginnings (of history, of culture, of the Left, of Marxism).

HM will also consider proposals on themes and topics of interest to critical Marxist theory not directly linked to the call for papers (we particularly welcome contributions on non-Western Marxism, history and politics, and on empirical inquiries employing Marxist methods and on Marxism and gender). While Historical Materialism is happy to receive proposals for panels, the editorial board reserves the right to change the composition of panels or to reject individual papers from panel proposals.

Please submit a title and abstract of between 200 and 300 words (or a fully worked through panel proposal) by registering at http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences BEFORE 26 April 2012

Deadline for registration of abstracts: 26 April 2012

http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/conferences/annual9/submit

Preference will be given to subscribers to the journal and participants are expected to be present during the whole of the event – no tailor-made timetabling for individuals will be possible, nor will cameo-appearances be tolerated.

**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

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

Communisation and Its Vicissitudes

Communisation

COMMUNISATION AND ITS VICISSITUDES

Endnotes and Blaumachen are holding a discussion on communisation with a presentation of the journal Sic (International Journal for Communisation).

Next Sunday (18/3) 6pm at Colorama (52-56 Lancaster Street, London SE1)

We will also talk about:
- Communisation and Politics
- Struggles in Greece

Please join us and distribute to all those you think will be interested.

Some information about Sic & Communisation

Sic aims to be the locus for an unfolding of the problematic of communisation. It comes from the encounter of individuals involved in various projects in different countries: among these are the journals Endnotes, published in the UK and the US, Blaumachen in Greece, Théorie Communiste in France, Riff-Raff in Sweden, and certain more or less informal theoretical groups in the US (New York and San Francisco). Each of these projects will continue to exist on their own. Also participating are various individuals in France, Germany, and elsewhere, who are involved in other activities and who locate themselves broadly within the theoretical approach taken here.

Communisation

In the course of the revolutionary struggle, the abolition of the division of labour, of the State, of exchange, of any kind of property; the extension of a situation in which everything is freely available as the unification of human activity, that is to say the abolition of classes, of both public and private spheres – these are all ‘measures’ for the abolition of capital, imposed by the very needs of the struggle against the capitalist class. The revolution is communisation; communism is not its project or result.

One does not abolish capital for communism but by communism, or more specifically, by its production. Indeed communist measures must be differentiated from communism; they are not embryos of communism, rather they are its production. Communisation is not a period of transition, but rather, revolution itself is the communist production of communism. The struggle against capital is what differentiates communist measures and communism. The content of revolutionary activity is always the mediation of the abolition of capital by the proletariat in its relation to capital. This activity does not constitute an alternative in competition with the reproduction of the capitalist mode of production, but rather the latter’s internal contradiction and its overcoming.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a whole historical period entered into crisis and came to an end – the period in which the revolution was conceived in different ways, both theoretically and practically, as the affirmation of the proletariat, its elevation to the position of ruling class, the liberation of labour, and the institution of a period of transition. The concept of communisation appeared in the midst of this crisis.

During the crisis, the critique of all the mediations of the existence of the proletariat within the capitalist mode of production (mass parties, unions, parliamentarism), of organisational forms such as the party-form or the vanguard, of ideologies such as Leninism, of practices such as militantism in all its variations – all this appeared irrelevant if revolution was no longer to be an affirmation of the class, whether it be workers’ autonomy or the generalisation of workers’ councils. It is the proletariat’s struggle as a class that has become the problem, i.e. has become its own limit. This is how the class struggle signals and produces the revolution as communisation in the form of its overcoming.

In the contradictory course of the capitalist mode of production since the 1970s the affirmation of the proletariat and the liberation of labour have lost all meaning and content. There is no longer a worker’s identity facing capital and confirmed by it. The revolutionary dynamic of contemporary struggles consists in the active denial – against capital – of the proletarian condition, even within ephemeral, limited bursts of self-management or self-organisation. The proletariat’s struggle against capital contains its contradiction with its own nature as a class of capital.

The abolition of capital, i.e. the revolution and the production of communism, is immediately the abolition of all classes and therefore of the proletariat. This occurs through the communisation of society, which is abolished as a community separated from its elements. Proletarians abolish capital by the production of a community immediate to its elements. In this way they transform their relations into immediate relations between individuals – between singular individuals that are no longer the embodiment of a social category, including the supposedly natural categories of the social sexes of woman and man. Revolutionary practice is the coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human activity, i.e. self-transformation.

A Problematic

This minimal approach of communisation constitutes neither a definition, nor a platform, but exposes a problematic.

The problematic of a theory, here the theory of revolution as communisation, does not limit itself to a list of themes or objects conceived by theory; neither is it the synthesis of all the elements which are thought. It is the content of theory, its way of thinking, with regards to all possible productions of this theory:

    • the analysis of the current crisis and of the class struggles intrinsic to it;
    • the historicity of revolution and communism;
    • the periodisation of the capitalist mode of production and the question of the restructuring of the mode of production after the crisis at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s;
    • the analysis of the gender relation within the problematic of the present class struggle and communisation;
    • the definition of communism as goal but also as movement abolishing the present state of things;
    • a theory of the abolition of capital as a theory of the production of communism;
    • the reworking of the theory of the value-form (to the extent that the revolution is not the affirmation of the proletariat and the liberation of labour).

By definition no list of subjects coming under a problematic can be exhaustive.

**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

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

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

Exploding the Myths of Capitalism: U.S. Marxist-Humanists

Raya Dunayevskaya

EXPLODING THE MYTHS OF CAPITALISM: U.S. MARXIST-HUMANISTS

You are invited to attend a series of open discussions on…

Exploding the Myths of Capitalism

First & Third Wednesdays, March & April

6:30-9.00 pm

@ChicagoPublic Library,  Harold Washington L ibrary Center, 400 South State St.Chicago IL, Room 3N-6

Progressive change in the United States is severely hampered owing both to the failure of the left to project an alternative to capitalism and to the myths projected by the right regarding the nature of capitalism. On the other hand, Karl Marx projected an alternative socioeconomic system that comes into view in his writings in significant part in and through exploding the myths about capitalism. This series of five classes will explore the myths of capitalism through discussions of selected writings of Marx, and others.

Readings are available online or from U.S.M.H.  Online readings are available from U.S.M.H in pdf format for e-readers etc.

Sponsored by the U.S. Marxist-Humanists

Email: arise@usmarxisthumanists.org

www.usmarxisthumanists.org

Phone: 773-561-3454

 

Schedule andReadings

March 7th:  Myth #1: Capitalism is the Economic System most in Accord with Human Nature         

Contradictory concepts of human nature abound in the culture of capitalism. Human nature is said to be fundamentally greedy and selfish, or, contrariwise, cast in an image of perfection, or both. These concepts are used to justify social and economic policies that promote and protect capitalism, but this can only work if their historical origin in capitalism itself is obscured. This class will explore the concepts of human nature extant in capitalist societies and counterpose them to concepts drawn from the Marxist-Humanist tradition. The myth that capitalism is reflective of human nature will be exploded in a discussion of the following readings:

Readings:

Erich Fromm, Marx’s Concept of Man, pp. 24-43, “The Nature of Man” www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch04.htm

Karl Marx, Grundrisse, “Introduction,” pp. 84-110 www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 13: Of the Natural Conditions of Mankind as concerning their Felicity and Misery www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/hobblev1.pdf  and Chapter 17:  Of the Causes, Generation, and Definition of Commonwealth www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/hobblev2.pdf

Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach  www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/theses.htm

 

Leading the discussion: Marilyn Nissim-Sabat, author, Neither Victim nor Survivor: Thinking Toward a New Humanity

 

March 21st:  Myth #2: Democracy is Compatible with Capitalism

The rhetoric of the candidates for the Republican nomination for president of theUS, as well as their opponents in the Democratic Party, makes it unequivocally clear that for them, and probably for the majority of Americans, capitalism is entirely conflated with ‘democracy.’ That is, the notion of the ‘free market,’ value production, and the drive to accumulate capital for its own sake have been superimposed on the meaning of democracy as a political system as if to say that only the economic system known as capitalism can facilitate democracy. This myth will be exploded in discussion of the following readings:

Readings:

Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto. www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

Karl Marx, “Address to the Communist League of March, 1850.”

www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/communist-league/1850-ad1.htm

Raya Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom, Chapter VI, The Paris Commune Deepens the content of Capital, pp. 92-102.

Raya Dunayevskaya, Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution: Marx’s Theory of Permanent Revolution.” 1843-83, pp. 158-163.

 

Leading the discussion: Anton Evelynov, student activist

 

April 4th: Myth #3: State Forms of ‘Socialism’ are Fundamentally Different from Capitalism

Proponents of capitalism, as well as many post-Marx Marxists, have attempted to identify “socialism” or “communism” with state control of the economy and a centralized state. However, theSoviet Unionas well as “Communist China” and the European welfare state represent not so much a departure from capitalism as a realization of it. This class will explore whether there is an alternative to either reducing a new society to state control of the economy, on one hand, or refraining from the need to seize state power as part of a revolutionary transformation, on the other. The myths regarding state forms of capitalism will be exploded in a discussion of the following readings:

Readings:

Raya Dunayevskaya, Marxism and Freedom, Chapter IV, “Worker, Intellectual, and the State,” pp. 69-77.

Raya Dunayevskaya, State Capitalism and Marx’s Humanism “Lenin vs Bukharin” pp. 10-18.  babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015071598158

“Build It Now”: An Interview with Michael A. Lebowitz radicalnotes.com/content/view/36/39/

John Holloway, Change the World without Seizing State Power, Chapter 2, “Beyond the State?” pp. 11-18.

libcom.org/library/chapter-2-beyond-state

 

Leading the discussion: Ali Reza, Iranian activist and member of Iranian Left Alliance Abroad.

 

April 18th: Myth #4: There is No Alternative to Capitalism

Proponents of capitalism as well as many critics of it have maintained that it is impossible to overcome such phenomena as commodity production, exchange value, alienated labor, and the existence of classes. This stance has within it all of the myths of capitalism, i.e., that capitalism reflects and honors ‘human nature’; that it is a form of democratic practice; and that it prevents the development of state control of the economy. It has also been claimed by many on the left that any effort to spell out the content of a new, post-capitalist society is at best useless and at worst harmful. The myth that there is no alternative to capitalism will be exploded in discussion of the following readings:

Readings:

Karl Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program . www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm

Raya Dunayevskaya, The Power of Negativity, “Presentation on the Dialectics of Organization and Philosophy,” pp. 3-14.

 

Leading the discussion: Peter Hudis, author of Marx’s Concept of the Alternative to Capitalism

 

Wednesday May 2nd

May Day Celebration and discussion

 

U.S. Marxist Humanists would like to invite all participants in this class to continue the discussion in honor of May Day in a convivial setting, with food and drink. Venue to be announced

**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)

 

‘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

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

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

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

For A People’s Britain, Not A Bankers’ Britain

Socialism and Hope

FOR A PEOPLE’S BRITAIN, NOT A BANKERS’ BRITAIN

A Morning Star Conference

Called by the paper’s Readers’ and Supporters’ Groups, the Morning Star conference aims to bring together a broad range of activists from the labour, democratic, anti-cuts and progressive movements to build a serious strategy to resist attacks on the living standards and rights of the working class majority in the UK.

 

Date: Saturday 31st March 2012
Time: 10:30am – 4:45pm
Venue: Bishopsgate Institute, 230 Bishopsgate, London, EC2M 4QH
Cost: Individuals £5; non waged/concessions £2; delegates £10.

 

Speakers from significant trade unions and campaign organisations, supportive MPs amongst others will take part in what promises to be a fascinating programme.

To attend please RSVP to conference.morningstar@gmail.com.

For more information have a look at the conference flyer or contact chief conference organiser Graham Stevenson graham_stevenson@yahoo.co.uk.

See: http://www.cwu.org/morning-star-conference-for-a-peoples-britain-not-a-bankers-britain.html

**END**

 

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

‘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

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

New Feminisms in Europe

Social Movement Studies

NEW FEMINISMS IN EUROPE

A special issue of Social Movement Studies edited by Kristin Aune (University of Derby) and Jonathan Dean (University of Leeds)

What is the state of feminist social movements in 21st century Europe?

CALL FOR PAPERS 

European second-wave feminism – loosely denoting the emergence of feminist activism in the 1960s and 1970s – has been extensively studied, but there is very little work on new and emerging feminist mobilisations.

Several decades on from second-wave feminism, European societies have changed in significant ways, many of them gendered, and many of which might be said to have arisen in response to feminist social movements. Recent years have seen the redrawing of national boundaries, the fall of communism and rise of capitalism inEastern Europe, the increasing influence of neoliberalism, the development of new information technologies, and the feminization and increasing precarity of the labour market. Although there is now a substantial literature on the gendered aspects of these transformations and the impact of feminism on state institutions, there is little research on how contemporary feminist activist movements respond to, and engage with, these profound transformations in the gender regimes of European societies.

Additionally, many academic and social commentators have said that feminist movements are no longer as vibrant and radical as they once were and that young people are disconnected from feminism and social movement activism more broadly. But it is evident that feminism continues to be a significant social and political force, albeit often in ways that depart from traditional models of movement activism and cut across generational boundaries.

Against this backdrop, the special issue asks: how have 21st century feminisms responded to the changing gendered realities of contemporaryEurope? Is European feminist activism in decline, or is it taking on a renewed visibility and significance? And in what ways do the demands and practices of European feminists converge and diverge in different contexts?

Questions to be explored include, but are not limited to, the following:

* What are the key demands and foci of contemporary feminist activisms, and how do they vary across contexts?

* What kinds of strategies, tactics and organisational structures characterise new feminist activisms inEurope?

* What is the cultural and political reach of “third wave” feminism? To what extent is a wave-based generational metaphor appropriate for making sense of the histories of feminism in different contexts? * What are the main (dis)connections between contemporary feminist activism, and earlier waves/generations?

* Is feminism still a women’s movement? What is the place of men and queer, intersex and transgendered people in these new feminist groups?

* How do diasporic communities and the politics of migration interact with the new feminisms?

* What role do new information technologies play within the new feminisms?

* What are the connections between feminist social movements and left-wing politics? What role does feminism play in student protest and activism against austerity measures acrossEurope?

* In what ways do new feminist movements reflect and contest their different national landscapes? In what ways have democratic transitions (including those from fascism and communism) impacted upon feminist movements? Or is the distinctiveness of nation for feminist movements increasingly eroded in a digitally-mediated world? How do European feminists engage with globalization? Is what ways is the local (e.g. the city, neighbourhood or place) still significant?

* How do social movements relate to the institutionalisation of feminism in national and international politics (e.g. through the EU)? What are the different ways in which feminist movements engage with political parties?

* How do new feminist movements address intersectionality in relation to ethnicity, class, sexuality, health, disability and other related areas?

* How are new feminisms engaging with the changing religious realities, including secularization and the rise of fundamentalisms, of countries inEurope?

 

The call is open and competitive. Each submission will be subject to the usual (blind) review process. Deadline for submission of articles (maximum 8,000 words including bibliography and notes) is Friday 13th July 2012. Articles should be formatted according to the Social Movement Studies style guide (http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/journal.asp?issn=1474-2837&linktype=44) and submitted to both K.Aune@derby.ac.uk and ipijde@leeds.ac.uk, to whom any queries should be directed.

It is anticipated that the special issue will be published in early 2014.

**END**

 

‘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)  

 

‘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

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

Historical Materialism Australasia Conference 2012 – Call for Papers

Austerity No!

HISTORICAL MATERIALISM AUSTRALASIA CONFERENCE 2012 – CALL FOR PAPERS

Historical Materialism Australasia2012—Call For Papers
Following the end of the Cold War, Francis Fukuyama’s “end of history” thesis epitomized the prevailing attitude, summed up more brutally by Margaret Thatcher’s injunction that “There is No Alternative.” Twenty years on from Fukuyama’s assertion, liberal triumphalism has been battered by war, recession and political radicalization on the left and the right. In this context even Fukuyama has conceded that history does indeed have a future.

Karl Marx famously remarked that we make our own history, adding that we do not do so “under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past”. Today, history is being re-made on the streets of the Middle East and North Africa, and now also across the Global North. These struggles will shape the world’s future. Yet they take place in conditions marked by protracted economic crisis, continuing wars and imperialist “interventions”, and the rule of the market over all of life. The reoccupation of the world’s streets, squares and commons is matched by the ever-increasing subordination of parliaments to the dictates of the market, witnessed most profoundly in the imposition of technocratic rule in Greece, Italy and elsewhere.

These events have seen Marx return to mainstream debate, but all too often in the form of having his insights cherry picked and reified in an attempt to rescue capitalism from itself. There is a need to go beyond such appropriation, to re-establish a living critique of political economy, to work towards the “determinate negation” of capitalism that Marx spoke of. Such a project requires raising questions about the meaning, the form and the very desirability of democracy in an era of growing technocratic rule. Similarly, as human rights provide a moral cover for wars it becomes necessary to interrogate the language of rights in contemporary political struggles. And, as revolution re-appears on the global stage, if in new forms hardly recognizable to revolutionaries of the past, it is clear that the categories of our political thought and practice must be subjected to renewed thought and debate.

Historical Materialism Australasia is a one-day conference to be held in Central Sydney on Saturday 21 July 2012.

To facilitate this, Historical Materialism welcomes individual paper submissions and panel proposals that seek to contribute to this debate.

Please email paper abstracts of no more than 250 words and panel proposals of no more than 100 words to historicalmaterialism2012@gmail.com by Friday, April 13th.

—Jessica Whyte, Rory Dufficy & Tad Tietze (organising group)

Further details: http://historicalmaterialism2012.wordpress.com/

**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

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

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

Anarchism and Autonomism – Call for Interventions

Autonomia

ANARCHISM AND AUTONOMISM – CALL FOR INTERVENTIONS

Call for Interventions: Anarchism & Autonomism, for the ASN 2.0 Conference ‘Making Connections’ at Loughborough University September 3rd – 5th, 2012
Coordinator: Stevphen Shukaitis (Autonomedia / University of Essex)

Over recent years anarchist and autonomist traditions of politics and analysis have proliferated in multiple and overlapping forms. While these currents are often conflated they emerge from distinct political trajectories, at times diverging over key questions.

This workshop is designed to tease out and compare the convergences, divergences, and productive tensions between these approaches. The goal is not to endlessly rehash debates between anarchism and marxism that seek to establish the superiority of one to the other, or to create a conceptual division of labor where anarchism handles ethics & tactics while marxism takes care of economics & strategy, but rather to create a space for transversal encounters ideas and practices.

Possible topics for consideration include, but are not limited to:
- The meaning and practice of autonomy today
- Communization & the commons
- Class composition & workers’ inquiry
- The refusal of work & the work of refusal
- Escape & the imperceptible politics of the undercommons
- The multitude & its dark side
- Affective labor & social reproduction
- Convergences / divergences between anarchism and autonomism
- Dialectics versus immanence
- Precarity & the autonomy of migration
- Schizoanalysis & class formation
- Anarchist and autonomist approaches to aesthetics

Send proposals of 200-500 words (along with bio and affiliation if applicable) to Stevphen Shukaitis (stevphen@autonomedia.org) by March 24th. Proposals for forms of intervention other than the reading of papers are highly encouraged.

Anarchist Studies Network: http://anarchist-studies-network.org.uk
Minor Compositions: http://www.minorcompositions.info

Stevphen Shukaitis is an editor at Autonomedia and lecturer at the University of Essex. He is the editor (with Erika Biddle and David Graeber) of Constituent Imagination: Militant Investigations // Collective Theorization (AK Press, 2007). His research focuses on the emergence of collective imagination in social movements and the changing compositions of cultural and artistic labor.

**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)

‘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

‘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

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

Karl Marx (Communist) Economist to Speak at UW-La Crosse

Karl Marx

KARL MARX (COMMUNIST) ECONOMIST TO SPEAK AT UW-LA CROSSE

February 17, 2012

Wisconsin

World-leading Marxist economist to speak at UW-La Crosse

One of the world’s leading Marxist economists will speak about the world’s current economic crisis during a UW-La Crosse presentation.

Prabhat Patnaik speaks on “Alternative Perspectives on the Global Economic Crisis” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, in the Hall of Nations in Centennial Hall. A reception will follow. The presentation is free, but donations will be accepted to fund future international scholar speakers through the UW-L Foundation’s Ambassador’s Roundtable Account.

One of the world’s leading Marxist economists will speak about the world’s current economic crisis during a UW-La Crosse presentation.

Prabhat Patnaik speaks on “Alternative Perspectives on the Global Economic Crisis” at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23, in the Hall of Nations in Centennial Hall. A reception will follow. The presentation is free, but donations will be accepted to fund future international scholar speakers through the UW-L Foundation’s Ambassador’s Roundtable Account.

Read more at UW LaCrosse via Vicki McKenna

See: http://wisupnorth.com/2012/02/karl-marx-communist-economist-to-speak-at-uw-la-crosse/

**END**

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

‘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

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

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